Mayor says third runway at London's busiest airport would be disaster, as plans for Thames estuary hub are grounded

Boris Johnson has signalled he will continue to battle Heathrow expansion, despite being told that his plans for a four-runway Thames estuary hub are to be rejected by the airports commission.

Sir Howard Davies, the commission chair, who Boris Johnson has frequently antagonised, will announce on Tuesday that the mayor's preferred option had been dismissed from the formal process, leaving Gatwick and Heathrow on the shortlist for its ultimate recommendation for additional runways in south-east England.

The mayor has faced criticism from the London Assembly over the time and funds devoted to the scheme, nicknamed Boris Island, and is unlikely to engage further with Davies.

However, Johnson believes the commission process is unlikely to deliver a solution that will be implemented by the next government, and could revive his estuary plans as an MP.

While Johnson has argued along the same lines as Heathrow for a larger hub, saying that Gatwick could not provide the kind of airport capacity that UK business needs, he rebuffed calls from Heathrow to back its third runway, saying it would be a disaster.

Writing in the Telegraph, the mayor said the expansion plans were "desperately short-sighted" and "barbarically contemptuous of the rights of the population", whose health he said would be put at risk. He added: "We need scale and ambition to compete, and Heathrow is no answer."

He added that a third runway would be "a disaster for hundreds of thousands of people living under new flight paths, who currently have no idea of the peril. Heathrow is already by far the noisiest airport in Europe, about a hundred times worse than Paris. A third runway will mean there are more than a million people in the city affected by noise pollution of more than 55db."

Johnson, a prospective MP for nearby Uxbridge, said expansion would mean a rise in medical problems linked to noise pollution, as well as more road congestion.

Last week Heathrow's new chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, wrote an open letter to Johnson asking him to support the campaign to expand his airport.

He said: "Britain definitely needs a successful hub airport if it is to compete in the global race. This leaves two choices: expand Heathrow or build a new solution in the Thames estuary. If your own proposal for a new Thames estuary airport is not shortlisted by the Airports Commission then Heathrow will be the only hub option left in the race."

The Confederation of Business Industry in effect backed a third Heathrow runway by calling on the commission to recommend a single, larger hub airport, arguing that other solutions would not "deliver the new connections to emerging markets that we desperately need".

Heathrow said it showed that "British business is backing Heathrow as the UK's only hub airport to connect the country to global growth".