Airport News
Below are news items relating to specific airports
UK airports face multimillion-pound business rates bills – money that should be paid to councils
Heathrow and Gatwick airports are facing £ multi-million business rates bills, despite the pandemic having grounded aircraft and dramatically cut their incomes. The airports are among thousands of UK companies set to appeal against their rates bills. Heathrow apparently owes £113.2m for the current tax year, the highest of any site in England and Wales, according to an annual review of business ratepayers by Altus Group, a real estate adviser. Gatwick has the next biggest bill at £29.2m. Business rates, which are paid to local councils, are calculated on the basis of rateable values — effectively an estimate of a property’s rental value at a given date. Rateable values are set according to rents on April 1 2015. They are not based on how well, or how badly, a company is doing. Heathrow bleated that the rates were based on “a world in which people flew”. The airports argue that rates relief will help them protect jobs. Some sectors - - retail, hospitality or leisure - have been given rates holidays. The money from the rates is a key part of the income of councils, and if not paid, then the funding and spending of councils is at risk.
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Southampton Airport expansion plans go to second consultation – no date yet set
The airport plans to extend the runway by 164m to allow for larger 190-seater aircraft, and more flights. It wants to double the number of passengers. Its plans will go to a second public consultation, by Eastleigh council, before a decision is made. Environmental campaigners and two neighbouring councils, Southampton and Winchester, have raised concerns over noise and air pollution. The airport makes the usual statements about lots of new jobs, and local economic boost (in reality, more of the passengers will be people in the area taking holidays abroad, taking their leisure money out of the UK). Local group, AXO, Airport Expansion Opposition, has been leading opposition to the plans. A final decision is expected to be made by Eastleigh Borough Council, but everything is held up by the Covid pandemic, and no date has been set. The council said: "We are awaiting amended information in support of the application. Once we have received this, we will undertake a full re-consultation on the proposed runway extension."
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BA cancels all flights from Leeds Bradford Airport to Heathrow
British Airways has cancelled all its flights from Leeds Bradford airport to Heathrow. It is dropping a number of routes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which will see its network shrink. They must know that the Leeds Bradford link does not make them money. For many years the Leeds Bradford to Heathrow route was operated by British Midland, which later became BMI. It dropped the link in 2009, citing lack of profitability. BMI was later subsumed within British Airways. BA re-launched the service between Leeds Bradford and Heathrow in 2012. But the route has always struggled commercially - rail to London is a better option. Initially there were three round-trips a day, but for the summer 2020 schedule – which never began – only 10 departures each way were planned. It was Yorkshire’s last air connection with London. Most passengers will either move to Manchester flights or use the LNER rail link, which reaches the capital from Leeds in around 2 hours, 15 minutes. Leeds Bradford is pressing ahead, rather bizarrely, with expansion plans. Heathrow always made out that increasing air "connectivity" to the regions was a key benefit of a 3rd runway (that is also now seriously delayed ... if it ever happens ..)
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UK airports likely to cut £1bn of construction projects: construction industry setback
The Covid crisis and the dramatic cut in demand for air travel means airport expansion projects will not be going ahead any time soon. As much as £1bn of capital investment is now on ice, deferred or cancelled, according to analysis by Construction News. Heathrow's plans for a 3rd runway are now delayed, if not entirely cancelled. Heathrow had a capital expenditure budget of £1.1 billion for 2020, but this has been cut to about £450 million. Of that it had already spent £224m on capital works in the 1st quarter of 2020. That means far less work for construction firms. Gatwick says it is deferring its capital expenditure plans “for the foreseeable future”. Birmingham Airport is delaying a £30m extension of its terminal indefinitely, even though ground was broken on the project at the start of the year. Edinburgh Airport has said expenditure on some projects would be deferred. Longer-term projects have also been hit. Luton Airport says it would no longer submit its DCO for the construction of a 2nd terminal in June, with no new date given. There is no detail of plans for Manchester and Stansted airport works. There will be jobs lost in the construction sector, with more competition for what work there is.
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Gatwick has been urged to drop expansion plans by GACC campaigners due to the Covid pandemic
There are almost no flights at Gatwick, nor have there been for weeks, due to the Covid pandemic lockdown. When flights will resume is not known, but even aviation optimists think it could take 3-4 years (or more) for air travel demand to again reach the level in 2019 - if it ever does. However, the airport says it is still going ahead ahead with plans to bring its current emergency runway into use as a full runway. But local campaign, GACC (the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign) has written to Gatwick's CEO, Stewart Wingate, asking the airport to drop its expansion plans, arguing not only that there is no credible demand case, but it would be incompatible with national and local environmental goals. Peter Barclay, GACC chairman, said the group sympathised with employees and others whose jobs had been affected, but believes there is no credible case for expansion at Gatwick. It is also undesirable that the planning process would absorb council and other resources that should be focused on supporting people and businesses impacted by the pandemic. GACC says the plans for the emergency runway should be withdrawn.
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Bath and North East Somerset Council rejects Bristol Airport application to increase night flights in summer months
Bath and North East Somerset Council has rejected an application by Bristol Airport to increase the number of night flights. The airport wants to increase the number of night flights to 4,000 throughout the whole year, starting in summer 2021. Currently the airport is allowed 3,000 night flights throughout the summer months and 1,000 in winter. The airport wants to be able to move some of their winter allocation to the summer, when demand is higher. Bath and North East Somerset Council rejected the application - stating it would have a negative impact on people living in towns near the airport. The request for more flights comes after the council opposed the expansion of Bristol Airport in March 2019. Then in March 2020 North Somerset Council threw out the plans, (which included increasing passenger numbers by an extra two million each year and building more car parks) on the grounds they were “incompatible” with the council’s declaration of a climate emergency. The extra night flights would cause noise nuisance to people in both councils.
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Supreme Court to hear Heathrow appeal, against judgement on the Airports NPS by the Appeal Court, on 7th and 8th October
The Supreme Court has announced that it will hear an appeal from Heathrow Airport and Arora Group on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October 2020 on the plans to expand Heathrow Airport by adding a third runway. The appeal was granted by the Supreme Court on 7th May, but the dates of the appeal were announced today. Granting of the appeal by the Supreme Court followed an earlier landmark ruling by the Court of Appeal at the end of February which stated that the government has not taken into account the Paris climate change agreement when drawing up its plans to expand Heathrow. Reacting to the news of the hearing dates, Paul McGuinness, Chair of the No 3rd Runway Coalition, said: “These dates are sooner than some expected. Perhaps because the Supreme Court is as keen to clarify this important area of developing law, as our communities are anxious to see Heathrow expansion shelved, once and for all. “The sooner this misguided project is put of its misery, the better. So we welcome these dates.”
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Greenpeace activists occupy a Schiphol runway to protest coronavirus aid to polluting aviation sector
Greenpeace activists occupied a runway at Schiphol airport on 14th May morning, to protest against the billion €s in support going to the aviation sector during the coronavirus crisis. Greenpeace wants strict sustainability conditions to be attached to this aid. The Koninklijke Marechaussee, a policing force that works as part of the Dutch military and is responsible for airport security, said it would detain the 11 Greenpeace activists who were protesting, and remove them from the Aalsmeerbaan runway at Schiphol. The runway is currently being used to park KLM planes. They brought a small bridge with them to get across the ditch that separates the public road from the secured area at Schiphol, and bicycles to get to the runway as quickly as possible. Greenpeace said: "KLM emits more CO2 than the largest coal-fired power station in the Netherlands." The government should only give KLM funding if it has to cut carbon emissions. This has to be done by more fuel efficiency, fewer flights, and short haul flights replaced by train journeys. Greenpeace also wants conditions attached to aid for other major polluters.
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Leeds Bradford airport submits plans for new terminal building & more passengers (4m to 7m a year) despite Covid fall in demand.
The airport has submitted a planning application to Leeds City Council, to replace the current terminal building with a new one by 2023, to increase passenger numbers from 4 million a year to 7 million a year. Opponents to the plans say that will make the climate emergency "worse" and that the current pandemic means there's "no need" for it. Local people, in Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport (GALBA) say the expansion will increase CO2 emissions, at a time when countries around the world are being urged to drastically then. It will also bring more noise for local communities, increased air pollution, and more traffic congestion. Instead "We need to rebuild a healthy economy in Leeds. We don’t need an unsustainable development like this.” Leeds City Council declared a climate emergency in 2019, but conveniently does not include the CO2 emissions from the airport's flights in its carbon budget. But the flights alone would exceed Leeds’ entire carbon budget by 2035. The airport is trying hard to persuade the Council that its expansion is needed, in competition with Manchester, and the (alleged) economic benefits it would bring would be huge.
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Manchester Airports Group to get £260m that its 10 council owners borrow from government
In the absence so far of financial support from government, the ten Greater Manchester local authorities - which have a majority stake (64.5%) in the Manchester Airports Group (MAG) - are planning to borrow themselves in order to lend £250 million to it. MAG owns Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports. The councils have privately agreed to take out significant levels of low-interest borrowing from the government’s loan board. They may not start to see any repayments for a couple of years, but are hoping that by that point it will have returned to some semblance of normality. Manchester council is expected to provide the biggest share of the loan package, at around £143m, in line with its larger stake in the company. It is understood the other nine boroughs are expected to put in £13m each. Senior local authority figures said the move was aimed at protecting significant long-term town hall investment in the airport, along with safeguarding tens of thousands of jobs that rely on it as a major engine of the local economy. Manchester airport still has a couple of arriving flights per day. It is possible that as many as 50,000 jobs may be directly, or indirectly, linked to the airports. If the sector has to shrink in future, many of those jobs may be lost.