London City Airport today unveiled plans for a £200 million expansion which would let it double its number of passengers over the next decade.

The East London airport’s owners are seeking planning consent for an extended terminal, a new taxi-way and additional parking stands for larger aircraft.

The new facilities would allow City to increase the number of take-offs and landings by 50,000 a year to 120,000 — effectively six million passengers — by 2023, for which they were granted consent four years ago.

But campaigners raised concerns over noise and air quality and called on Mayor Boris Johnson to ensure the airport’s American owners delivered local jobs and growth on the scale of other projects in the Royal Albert Dock — most recently the £1 billion Chinese investment in the “Asian Business Port” which is creating 20,000 jobs.

The airport, owned by American infrastructure fund GIP which also has Gatwick and Edinburgh in its portfolio, wants to use larger aircraft to build capacity at peak hours as 60 per cent of its customers are business passengers.

Chief executive Declan Collier said: “Today we are presenting the detail on how we propose to build the infrastructure for 50,000 more flight movements a year to 120,000 by the mid-2020s. The timing is right as everyone knows that London is moving to the East so our catchment area is growing.

“Sixty per cent of our customers are business passengers and the economy is growing so the potential is great.”

Last year three million passengers used City Airport thanks to an influx for the Olympics but the business is still saddled with losses following its £465 million purchase in 2006.

A new fleet of Bombardier C Series aircraft would serve the airport. Mr Collier said: “The aircraft that will serve the airport will be quieter and cleaner and we will put in place enhanced noise mitigation; all our modelling shows the noise increase will be negligible.”

However John Stewart, of the anti-expansion group HACAN, said: “There is a suspicion locally around bigger planes — those they are proposing to land there have never been tested in service. Residents have already seen noise by stealth when they replaced turbo props 15 years ago with bigger jets and the locals see history repeating itself. Claims that there will be no extra noise are theoretical.”

Alan Haughton, of Stop City Airport, said: “We have grave concerns about air quality. The airport does not deliver economic benefits for the area compared to similar sized sites at Excel and ABP and it should be a priority for the Mayor to maximise this value.”