expansion

From our own correspondent: Amsterdam's seventh runway

By Richard on 25/03/2008
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Schipol airport occupation

While activists and residents across West London gear up for the mother of all battles over Heathrow's third runway, across the Channel dutch environmentalists are trying to block Schiphol's seventh! In an arms race to rival the cold war, the three main airports - Heathrow, Schiphol and Frankfurt - are all competing to out-expand each other.

Schipol may have six runways, but it carries 32% less passenger traffic, making it the twelth biggest international airport. Unlike Heathrow, which got privatised a while back, Schiphol is still owned by the Dutch government. Of course, like all governments, the Dutch seem to think that climate change doesn't apply to airports, and are plans to make Schiphol twice as big.

The decision on expansion is being taken on the 27th of March (this Thursday) - coincidentally the same day T5 opens and we pop down and flash mob it. Rest assured that campaigners won't go down without a fight - activists from across the Netherlands have already been taking action, including a runway invasion back in 2006. Watch the skies...

Flash mob! Ahh! Saviour of the universe!

By Richard on 24/03/2008
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Flash Gordon


There's something about big infrastructure projects that get people all excitied. Personally I look at a new bridge, road or building and think "that could have been a playing field". But the recent hubub over Terminal 5 must take the biscuit, with correspondents lined up around the block to compare tales of airports they've visited on their travels. Honestly, you'd think there was a prize for passing through the most departure lounges!

The airport opens to the public this Thursday, so if you've nothing to do (or feel like taking a sickie) come to the T5 Flash Mob. Get a 'stop airport expansion' t-shirt by emailing stopairportexpansion@gmail.com or calling 0845 458 2564; when the clock strikes 11am, whip your jacket off and let everyone know you what you think. Wearing a t-shirt in public isn't a crime - it's about the only thing you can do in the Terminal that's not illegal!

11am, Thursday 27th March. International Arrivals (Ground Level), Heathrow Terminal 5.

Whose consultation is it anyway?

By Richard on 18/03/2008
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Harriet Harman

Some very odd comments from a government Minister last week. Conservative MP Justine Greening spoke about the extraordinary collusion between the DfT and BAA, and demanded a debate in the House of Commons about the third runway. Harriet Harman replied that "The accusations of collusion are utter nonsense" and that "all decisions on adding capacity at Heathrow will be taken independently by BAA".

While it's normal for the inner circle to ignore all the evidence laid before them (seriously, did she even read the Sunday Times article?), her second comment was decidedly strange. Was she suggesting that BAA will take the decision as to whether to expand Heathrow or not? If so, what was the consultation all about? Or did she mean to say all decisions will be taken "independently of BAA", or "independently by the Government"? Or was this just a shocking display of just how right we were when we called Parliament 'BAA HQ'?

IATA: "We have too much capacity"

By Richard on 17/03/2008
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Empty plane

Times are hard for the world's airlines, amidst rising fuel prices and fears that economic downturn will keep bums off seats. Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has warned that over-confident airlines bought too many planes last year, and now have too much capacity.

Bisignani told the Guardian that the industry faced stagflation, with the oil price driving up costs while a weak global economy pushed down earnings. "We have too much capacity. Yields [average ticket price] are down and we need to consolidate."

Music to our ears Gio! If airlines can't even fill the planes they have, why should we create more capacity by expanding airports? Perhaps we should be closing terminals instead...

Turn up the spin: how politics works

By Richard on 16/03/2008
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Spin dial

Imagine you run BAA. You quite want a runway at your airport, but no one else does. Your runway will require a whole village to be flattened, including three schools, a graveyard and 750 houses. Building the runway will make it very difficult to meet our climate change targets. But you really, really want the runway, because then you'll make loads of cash. What do you do?

Simple - you hire lots of ex-Labour apparatchiks to work at your company, and use their contacts ruthlessly. Meanwhile your mates in government hire a whole bunch of your ex-employees, until you've created one big incestuous family and blurred the lines between your company and the people who run the country. Sorted!

Stansted expansion is declaration of war

By Richard on 12/03/2008
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Stansted_1

The public inquiry into lifting the flight cap is not even finished, and already BAA are eyeing up the true prize - another runway and terminal at Stansted airport. While everyone's eyes are on Heathrow, the Airport's owner unleashed monstrous proposals to double the size of the airport by 2015 and serve 68 million passengers a year by 2030.

Unsurprisingly, Stop Stansted Expansion have taken this rather seriously, calling it "tantamount to a declaration of war on the local community and global environment", and have vowed to use "every means at its disposal" to defeat the plans. But it's not just SSE which is up in arms over the plans. Essex County Council have vowed to fight it "tooth and nail"; the Eastern Regional Green Party dismissed the plans as being "driven by corporate greed and blind ignorance to what they are inflicting on communities and the environment." Even the National Trust is up in arms, because of the impact on nearby Hatfield forest, 10,000 years old and counting.

What does Plane Stupid think of these plans? Do you even need to ask? We'll see you at the barricades!

Heathrow councils challenge night flights

By Richard on 12/03/2008
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Night flights

If the Government thought the end of the consultation marked the end of hostilities, then they're in for a shock. Bolstered by growing militancy across West London and the UK, local councils are upping the ante. With talk of a judicial review of the consultation being banded about like cheap tickets at a Ryanair sale, Richmond, Wandsworth and Windsor and Maidenhead are taking on night flights.

The councils, backed by the Greater London Authority and a host of other West London boroughs, are seeking to challenge the government in the courts over the legality of the current night flight regime, which they say is noisier than allowed, and therefore illegal. It doesn't stop there though; according to Richmond council's leader, Serge Lourie, "This challenge is another important step along the road to our ultimate goal - a total ban on night flights."

Night flights are strictly limited - in theory - but in practice this leads to more and more airlines rushing to get in before the deadline, causing more noise in the process. With BAA under fire from all sides, and the DfT desperate to pretend it didn't collude with the Airports Authority over the consultation, pressure is growing on Ruth Kely to reign in the industry. Will she rise to the challenge? Doubtful, but perhaps the courts will do what Ministers are too afraid to do - just say no.

DfT and BAA collude over consultation

By Richard on 09/03/2008
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Parliament 5

It was collusion on a massive scale; a stich-up so great that no one would believe it - until 5 of us took to the rooftops to shout about it. Documents obtained by Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act show beyond any doubt that BAA and the Department for Transport sat down to fiddle the figures and re-write the consultation on expanding Heathrow airport. But that was just the beginning...

After the rooftop action last week, someone slipped the Sunday Times even more documents (1 / 2 / 3 / 4), and their investigative reporters looked into it further. What they found showed that the collusion went further than even we'd imagined - that the government abandoned its own data on noise and pollution in favour of dodgy data collected by BAA. They set up 'Project Heathrow', headed up by senior civil servant David Gray, to fix the "strict local environmental limits" in favour of expansion. In the words of one official who worked on the project: "It’s a classic case of reverse engineering. They knew exactly what results they wanted and fixed the inputs to get there."

Ediburgh airport: new runway surface, same BAA spin

By Lucy on 09/03/2008
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Roam

Six members of Plane Stupid Scotland attended an information evening hosted by BAA about the impact that runway resurfacing will have on local communities around Edinburgh Airport. BAA wants to resurface the main runway at Edinburgh airport, renewing its life for 10 years and enabling it to cope with the planned increase in passenger numbers.

The resurfacing work will mean that flight paths will be changed, causing noise pollution over houses that have not previously been affected. Noise pollution from aviation has been linked to high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, strokes and problems in children’s mental and physical development. Unsurprisingly, BAA is keeping kind of quiet about all that - come to think of it, they kept pretty quiet about the consultation meeting as well. The only advert in the local paper gave the wrong venue.

Lord Soley throws a strop

By Richard on 07/03/2008
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Lord Soley

The House of Lords is a rarefied place, where quiet debate is the order of the day, and ne'er a voice gets raised. Until, that is, Lord Soley of Hammersmith weighed into a gentlemanly debate about Heathrow's expansion.

Lord Berkeley began the debate, with the reasonable question, "Following the end of the consultation period, what are their latest plans for the third runway at Heathrow?" and the Minister, Lord Bassam, was giving the usual waffle about "strict local environmental limits" and what-not. Into the fray charged Soley, who, having declared an interest as the head of pro-expansion group Future Heathrow, said angrily:

"Organisations such as the Sunday Times and the Independent that are campaigning for the closure of Heathrow... might also stop doing irresponsible things such as giving details of how to get on to the roof of the Houses of Parliament and how to join organisations that want to do so."