General News
Below are links to stories of general interest in relation to aviation and airports.
European airlines having to fly empty flights due to continuing slot use requirement
During the height of the Covid pandemic, the EU suspended the normal slot allocation process for airlines, that had forced them to use at least 80% of their slots - or lose them. The aim is to ration space at busy airports. During Covid, most airports had below half as many flights as in 2019. Now the EU has decided to start reinstating the slot use rules, and in December the European Commission set the threshold to 50% for the winter travel season. Lufthansa Group, which includes Brussels Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss said it would have to run18,000 unnecessary flights from mid-December to mid-March to comply. That is crazy in terms of carbon (and airline costs, for zero benefit). Lufthansa said it plans to cancel 33,000 scheduled flights by the end of March because of a slump in demand caused by Omicron. In the US, slot rules are still suspended. In the UK the partial suspension (50% use) continues until the end of March 2022. Greenpeace called the empty flights “absurd” and pointed to “a new low for the sector that is kept afloat with government support”.
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Covid caused a 71% drop in international flights for UK in 2021 – in future the aviation sector may be smaller
The Covid pandemic triggered a 71% drop in international flights in and out of the UK in 2021, says a new report m by aviation analytics firm Cirium. About 406,060 international flights operated from the UK in 2021 compared with 1,399,170 in 2019 before travel was restricted. UK domestic flights also fell by nearly 60%. Ryanair remained the largest airline in the UK, with over 100,000 UK flights. easyJet had over 82,000 flights. The busiest international route was between Heathrow and New York's JFK. 80% of routes were to European destinations. The director on Newquay airport expects that “the ‘old normal’ is not going to return” for airlines and airports, and it will be at least 5 years before the industry recovers to its 2019 size, if it ever does. The pandemic has made people far less care-free about air travel. He expects there will be much less business travel now that companies have become used to Zoom and Teams. Discretionary trips abroad such as stag parties might go to UK cities instead. And people will prefer package trips, protected by cancellation insurance, over independent travel.
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The Aviation Communities Forum and the Aviation Environment Federation join forces
The Aviation Communities Forum (ACF) was set up in 2015 following a number of airspace change trials and has always worked very closely with the team at the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), supporting each other on noise and airspace policy issues. There are mutual advantages in bringing the two organisations together under the AEF, and so that will start from 1st January 2022. This initiative will embed the ACF’s noise and airspace work in a more robust membership and governance structure and give it more access to social media capability and potentially funding. For AEF, it will increase the organisation’s capacity on noise and airspace issues, and help to ensure that policy positions are consistently well informed by people’s personal experience of these impacts. There will be benefits to the members of both organisations, which in any event overlap very substantially.
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British Airways launches its Gatwick short haul cheap flights subsidiary, BA Euroflyer
British Airways is to have a new short-haul subsidiary at Gatwick, starting in March 2022. Tickets for the subsidiary, known as BA Euroflyer, have gone on sale, with 35 destinations initially. It will have three planes initially, in creasing to 18 by May 2022. The aim of BA Euroflyer is to try to remain competitive with Gatwick's dominant low-cost airlines. In March flights will go to Amsterdam, Larnaca, Paphos, Seville, Tenerife, and Verona - all just holiday destinations, with flights starting under £50. Then other holiday destinations will be added. According to the airline, from a passenger’s perception, there should be no difference when flying on mainline British Airways or BA Euroflyer. Just what the planet does not need; instead of reducing the demand for air travel, making unnecessary flights even cheaper.
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CAA allows Heathrow to increase passenger charge from £22 to £31.19 from January – to be reviewed again
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has allowed Heathrow to charge its airline customers more in the period from 1 January 2022, as an interim measure, for six months. Heathrow's current price control expires on 31 December 2021 and the final decision and licence modifications for a new 5-year control period (H7) will not be made and take effect until the summer of 2022. At present the airport can charge up to £22 per passenger, and it wanted to increase that to £43 in January 2022. The CAA now says Heathrow can charge £30.19 per passenger. The CAA says: "Once we have set the final price control for the H7 period, any difference between it and the holding price cap will be trued up or down." The rise to £31.19 is an increase of 37%, compared to the current inflation rate of 5.1%. Shareholders have received more than £4bn in dividends since 2012. Airlines are deeply opposed.
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Local MP, Bim Afolami, and community groups ask Gove to call-in Luton expansion plans
Bim Afolami, MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, has called on the government to review plans to allow for a million more passengers per year through Luton Airport, rising from 18 million to 19 million. On 2nd December, Luton Borough Council (which owns the airport and decides its planning applications) approved the airport's expansion plans and varying the noise conditions it operates under. Now Bim Afolami has asked Communities Secretary Michael Gove, at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to "call-in" the decision. The DLUHC says it would consider requests for a call-in, taking the decision from the council, to government. This is usually when an application has wider impacts than just the local area, which Luton's extra flights definitely would. Another reason for call-in is if an application conflicts with a national policy - climate in this case. Bim said the decision to approve the expansion "completely ignores the environmental and cross-boundary impact". Local groups, including the Luton and District Association for Control of Aircraft Noise (LADACAN) and Harpenden Sky, have also written to the Minister asking for call-in.
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Southampton Airport runway extension decision set for judicial review
The residents group, GOESA Ltd, that has been challenging plans to extend the runway at Southampton Airport, have won the right to take the matter to judicial review (JR). The judicial review will take place in the New Year, submitting evidence to the High Court, but the date is not yet known. GOESA Ltd is crowdfunding to raise the money for the legal costs. The plans to extend the runway by 164m (538ft) were approved by Eastleigh Borough Council in April. Initially campaigners against the plans had their request for a JR refused by the High Court, but that has now been overturned. Rowan Smith, the group's solicitor, said: "They will now have another opportunity to convince the court that permission for an expanded Southampton Airport was unlawfully granted and should be reversed." The airport claims all sorts of economic benefits from the runway extension. The leader of Eastleigh Borough Council hopes the legal processes can happen quickly, so the airport can proceed quickly with its plans, which he claims are good for the regional economy....
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Preposterous claim by Leeds Bradford airport to become “net zero” by 2030 (ignoring the planes)
Airports are very fond of making grandiose claims about their efforts to cut their carbon emissions, from their buildings and ground operations, and reduce their environmental footprint. That is all very welcome. But it is merely disingenuous and frankly misleading as the claims to be "net zero" or "carbon neutral" ignore the emissions from the flights, that happen because of the airport. Generally the emissions from the airport itself are around 5% - that sort of figure - of the total emissions generated by the overall activities of the airport and its flights. Now Leeds Bradford - trying to increase number of flights - is making claims about how it will be "net zero" (excluding flights) by 2030. The term "net zero" does not mean a lot. Emissions can only be "net" if offsets are bought - there are few offsets that are effective in genuinely reducing carbon, over decades. Carbon capture and storage would reduce carbon, but it is many decades away, on any significant scale. As most passengers using the airport are people who live relatively near the airport, going on leisure trips, the airport is keen that they reduce the carbon impact of their trips to and from the airport. The airport CEO wants them to travel in electric cars ...
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Shell and its plans to produce “sustainable” jet fuels, using plant oils and animal fats
Shell is an enthusiastic proponent of so-called "Sustainable Aviation Fuels" (SAF). They claim that "SAF can be made from renewable sources such as used cooking oil, municipal waste and woody biomass. It is ... has the potential to reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80%, compared with conventional aviation fuel." But Biofuelwatch and others are seriously concerned about the use of plant oils, including palm oil, that Shell considers acceptable. Used cooking oil could be seen as a genuinely lower carbon fuel, but there are limited amounts of it. There have been frauds involving companies making money by claiming virgin oils are "used." Biofuelwatch says Shell has signed a contract to buy 2.5 billion litres of aviation biofuels over a 5 year period from a refinery sourcing soya and animal fats, currently under construction in Paraguay. Cattle ranching - the source of the animal fat - is the main cause of the destruction of the Chaco forest. Shell plans to produce biofuel in Singapore, where there is pressure from Malaysia and Indonesia to use palm oil, directly or indirectly linked to habitat loss and deforestation. With immense world demand for palm oil, for human food, this cannot be justified.
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Government £15 million funding for 8 companies, hoping to make low carbon jet fuels
The DfT has announced the spending of £15 million for 8 companies that hope to make the (dreamed of) low carbon jet fuels that the industry so desperately wants. None of the funding is, as far as can be ascertained, going into development of plant or animal lipids. Many of the contenders intend to use domestic, commercial or woody waste, to convert this using gasification and the (energy intensive) Fischer-Tropsch process, into fuel. One wants to use sewage. Another wants to use industrial flue gases. Another wants to use direct air capture CO2, combined with hydrogen from electrolysis. There are grandiose claims about how much fuel will be made, how low its lifetime carbon emissions will be. In reality, it is unlikely that using forestry waste (not tree trunks) will produce much. Domestic waste is a very variable material, that has proved difficult to reliably turn into fuel in any quantity (and it needs people to throw away enough food, plastic, paper and card). Many require large amounts of electricity that is genuinely produced from renewables, competing with other uses. And producing fuel is generally a less efficient use of electricity than using it directly for heating or movement. So a lot of pie in the sky. Watch how these develop in the next few years ...