🛫 London Gatwick Airport expansion was backed by UK Government, and Safe Landing responded in the media with our positions.
🎙️ George Hibberd, former airline pilot and Safe Landing community member, talked on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show:
🎙️ Finlay Asher, aerospace engineer and Safe Landing community member, appeared on BBC Radio 5 with Nicky Campbell:
🎙️ Finlay also appeared on LBC News:
So, what is our position?
💡 We think British Aviation’s future lies in innovation, not expansion. We should focus the pioneering spirit that built the Spitfire into innovating the low-carbon flying of tomorrow.
✈️ Zero-carbon aircraft are our ticket to greener, cleaner, and quieter flights. They can reduce air and noise pollution for communities living under flight paths and provide improved connectivity for families across the country. But we need airports to provide a clear route to market.
⚡ Our proposal is for the UK to pause airport expansion plans and instead transform facilities for a zero-carbon future. By leading this transition, we think the UK could create far more economic benefit from job creation in Research & Development, exporting cutting-edge technologies, and ensuring the industry thrives within environmental limits.
📉 If the UK doubles down on conventional airport expansion, we foresee a future where too many airports and aircraft are built over the coming decade compared to the level of conventional flying actually possible. Our fear is that this leads to stranded assets, with investors losing out and job losses for aviation workers in a “boom-and-bust” scenario.
🌍 Before further airport expansions are permitted, we’d like to see the UK Government set-out a carbon budget for aviation. This would show how total fossil fuel use must reduce with time, and how the budget will be subdivided to each UK airport. Airports would then need to be confident that expansion plans could be achieved within these limits.
👉 We attended the Gatwick Airport Expansion public planning inquiry at the start of 2024, and you can read more about this and our submissions to the inquiry here: https://safe-landing.org/gatwick-airport-inquiry