THOUSANDS of lives could be in danger following the Transport Secretary's decision to omit the safety risk of an air crash involving 'many casualties' from his approval of Terminal 5.

The threat posed by such a tragedy is contained within planning inspector Roy Vandermeer's report on T5 but was not mentioned by Stephen Byers in his comments to the House of Commons on Tuesday last week.

Members of pressure group HACAN Clearskies have since described the omission as 'disappointing' and claim it is evidence that the government has 'something to hide'.

But Mr Vandermeer has played down the comments and said that the threat to Heathrow had to be seen against the entire report, which led Mr Byers to approve the ambitious plans for the £2.25 billion terminal.

The last crash at Heathrow occurred more than 30 years ago when a plane hit reservoirs near Staines, killing all the passengers. But the increased risk posed by allowing more flights, coupled with the most recent tragedy in New York in which an American Airlines airbus plunged from the sky into homes, has heightened fears.

Mr Vandermeer's report contains a statement saying that the fact there had not already been a crash at Heathrow is 'more by luck than judgement'.

It also states: "From this the possibility of a crash and other public safety points of view, development at either Gatwick or Stansted would be preferable to that at Heathrow."

In spite of this, Mr Byers backed plans for the new terminal, which will open in 2007 and result in 480,000 flights a year 20,000 more than last year's total.

John Stewart, chairman of HACAN, commented: "It is significant that the inspector has put his concerns in writing and disappointing that Mr Byers made no reference to it in his statement.

"We will not go away until the government gets serious about cutting the number of aircraft over London."