General News
Below are links to stories of general interest in relation to aviation and airports.
English airports to benefit from new £100m covid support package
Commercial airports across England and ground handlers serving them will benefit from up to £8 million each under a new government finance package. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said the £100 million package will from next year provide support for 24 airports which have been hit by travel restrictions placed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. It will be used to address fixed costs and be the equivalent to the business rates liabilities of each airport in 2020/21, capped at £8 million per site and subject to certain conditions. Mr Sunak said: "This new package of support for airports, alongside a new testing regime for international arrivals, will help the sector take off once again as we build back better from the pandemic." The airports to benefit from the package are: Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Carlisle, Doncaster Sheffield, East Midlands, Exeter, Gatwick, Heathrow, Humberside, Isles Of Scilly, Lands End, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool John Lennon, London City, Luton, Manchester, Newcastle, Newquay, Norwich, Southampton, Southend, Stansted, Teesside International Airport.
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Overturn airport jobs crisis with a Green New Deal for Gatwick
There is great concern around many airports, about the number of people who have lost their jobs, or will lose them in coming months. A new report by 3 organisations, the PCS trade union, Green New Deal UK, and the Green House Think Tank shows how new jobs could be created in the Gatwick area, for those now unemployed. Their analysis indicates that around 16,000 "green" jobs could be created around Gatwick if an ambitious job creation strategy was adopted. And they calculate that the cost would be comparable to the amount of APD that Gatwick air passengers might pay in 2021 - around £329 million (calculated as the proportion of all UK air passengers that go via Gatwick - about 15.6% in 2019). This number has been chosen, as the airlines (through Airlines UK) have been lobbying to have APD suspended for a year in 2021; if that happened, it might mean a loss to the Treasury of around £2.1 billion. The £329 million (approx) would be able to fund perhaps x13 as many "green" jobs (such as building retrofits, low-energy transport, restoring nature, and social care) as would be secured in the aviation sector. And these jobs would help avoid the excessive vulnerability of the Gatwick area of being too dependent on aviation.
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Boris Johnson’s hope for a zero carbon transatlantic flight dismissed as a gimmick – at best a one-off
Boris Johnson’s “jet zero” goal of a commercial transatlantic flight producing no carbon emissions by 2025 is a “gimmick”, according to experts, who say technology alone cannot solve the impact of global aviation on the climate crisis. Such a flight could only be a one-off and would encourage the view that other measures such as taxing jet fuel and frequent fliers were not needed to tackle aviation’s carbon problem. The aviation industry says more fuel efficient planes and buying millions of tonnes of carbon offsets can compensate for big future increases in passenger numbers and carbon emissions. Instead independent experts say new taxes to deter flying are vital, to reduce demand. There may be a very small contribution from alternative fuels, made using surplus renewable energy (not competing with land needed for agriculture or causing deforestation) in future decades, but that is speculative. Long-haul electric or hydrogen planes are unlikely before the middle of the century, if ever, by which time emissions should already have been cut to zero. Tim Johnsons, from AEF, said as well as taxes, regulation was needed, and the inclusion of international aviation emissions in countries' national carbon plans submitted to the UN. Currently they are exempt.
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Chancellor’s business rates subsidy of £8 million covers just 7% of Heathrow’s £120m bill
Heathrow is angry that it is having to pay most of its business rates, while supermarkets and many other businesses are given a 100% waiver. The government has given airports a subsidy of up to £8 million each this year, to pay their business rates. That is enough to cover the whole amount, for small airports. But Heathrow says it only covers 7% of their rates bill, of almost £120 million, part of which it pays to Hillingdon Borough Council. Heathrow is struggling with a drop of around 82% in its passenger number. It is having to furlough its entire senior management team except its chief executive, to cut costs. Gatwick is probably due to pay £29m in business rates this year, while Manchester and Stansted face bills of £14m and £12m respectively, so the £8 million will not cover their rates bills either. Supermarkets have been given around £1.9 billion in rates help, because initially it was feared there could be problems with food supply. In fact supermarkets have done very well out of Covid, with less food eaten out of the home. Chancellor Rishi Sunak said: "... we have supported them throughout this crisis through the job retention scheme, loans and tax deferrals."
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UK cross-party group to lobby for Covid funds in areas that depend on airports
Cllr Steve Curran, the Labour leader of Hounslow council and Henry Smith, the Conservative MP for Crawley, have written an Opinion piece in the Guardian about the sorry state of their areas - with Heathrow and Gatwick areas badly hit by the collapse in demand for air travel. They say they "have the awful distinction of heading the national league tables for furloughed and unemployed workers. ...There’s little prospect of aviation returning to anything like its previous levels, not even with the advent of a vaccine, not in the short term. The damage may well prove to be permanent ... In Hounslow...and Crawley ... 40% of our workforces were being supported by the state at the end of the summer. This number is likely to worsen. It is similar for parts of Birmingham, Essex, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Teesside, Newcastle and Glasgow and the other districts where concentrations of airport workers live." They say it is not only the air crews and pilots but all the support workers. There will be an Aviation Communities Summit on Tuesday 24 November – to assess the economic and social harm, and to ask the government to establish an aviation communities fund to meet the immediate and longer-term needs.
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Even with so few flights, due to Covid, global aviation in 2020 still exceeding its CO2 target for 2050
In 2019, emissions from the global civil aviation sector were more than 900 million tonnes of CO2. In 2016 the figure was around 814 million tonnes, and around 650 million tonnes in 2005. IATA has a target that the sector's carbon emissions will be half their level in 2005, by 2050 ie 325 million tonnes. And that is to happen, while the industry aims for compound annual growth of 3%. This year, due to Covid, global demand for air travel has been down hugely, with airports like Heathrow having as much as 80% fewer flights than a year ago. But IATA has admitted that even with that immense reduction in flights, the sector will still have emitted more than 325 million tonnes of CO2. This highlights the scale of the challenge for the industry, to "square the circle" of trying to keep growing, but emitting less carbon. This issue is to be discussed at IATA's virtual AGM on 24 November. The industry body ATAG is anticipating that demand for air travel, and hence carbon emissions, might be 16% lower than pre-Covid forecasts b y 2050, as there has been behaviour change and social change, caused by the pandemic.
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To save money, Heathrow to put all its staff onto furlough for a month each, between 1st December and 31st March 2021
Heathrow is now to furlough its entire senior management team apart from its chief executive, John Holland-Kaye. It will also pave the way for more permanent job losses, as it is very unlikely that the 2019 level of demand for air travel will return for years, if ever. Sky News reports that it has seen emails sent by Heathrow executives which detail plans for a new voluntary redundancy scheme and a requirement for staff to be placed on furlough for at least four weeks between 1st December and 31st March. Sky says: "Sources said the furlough requirement would apply to every Heathrow employee other than John Holland-Kaye." Not only senior management. The airport is estimated to have lost £1.5bn since the start of the Covid pandemic. It is losing about £5m every day while it remains open, with so few passengers or flights. The number of passengers was down 82% in October, compared to a year earlier. There have been talks with the trade unions, about job cuts, big pay cuts, worse pension terms and worse employment terms for many of the 5,700 people who work for the airport. There will be a 4 day strike in December, and unions say Heathrow "will grind to a halt".
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Airport groups write to the Prime Minister to say the taxpayer should not have to pay for the decarbonisation of aviation
A number of airport community groups have written to the Prime Minister, in response to a letter that he has been sent by the lobbying body, "Sustainable Aviation. The UK aviation industry leaders are asking the Government to co-finance the sector’s decarbonisation. The community groups are pleased the industry is starting to realise that it must address its climate change effects and other adverse environmental impacts. Instead of yet more aspirational words, the industry should now start taking decisive and long-overdue action. Regrettably, however, its willingness to do so appears to be conditional on the taxpayer bearing the cost of the transition it needs to make. That should not happen: there is no economic or social case for public investment in aviation’s decarbonisation. Most flights are for leisure purposes; a high proportion are by frequent flyers; in any one year, about half the UK population does not get into a plane. The sector already receives an effective subsidy, by not paying VAT or fuel duty. Government’s role should be to regulate the industry’s emissions and other adverse environmental and health impacts properly, by setting and enforcing challenging targets and defined timescales. Aviation's decarbonisation should be paid for by the industry, not by the taxpayer.
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Aviation points, mainly on future “Sustainable Aviation Fuels” from Boris’ 10-point plan for a “Green Industrial Revolution”
The Government has produced a new 10-point plan, "for a Green Industrial Revolution - Building back better, supporting green jobs, and accelerating our path to net zero." Much is aimed at creating new jobs in new sectors. There is little about aviation, and nothing of much substance, except hopes for "sustainable aviation fuels" (SAF) for future use. It says government will put £15m into FlyZero – a 12-month study, delivered through the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), into the strategic, technical and commercial issues in designing and developing zero-emission aircraft that could enter service in 2030. Also a £15m competition to support Sustainable Aviation Fuels production. They will establish a Sustainable Aviation Fuels clearing house to enable the UK to certify new fuels, driving innovation in this space. There will be a consultation in 2021 on a Sustainable Aviation Fuel mandate to blend "greener" fuels into kerosene, which will create a market-led demand for these alternative fuels. The mandate would start in 2025. Government will invest in R&D for the infrastructure upgrades required at UK airports to move to battery and hydrogen aircraft. And there will be a consultation on an Aviation Decarbonisation Strategy in 2021.
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Leeds Bradford Airport expansion could COST region £3.1bn over 26 years, claims think tank
The think-tank, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), has worked out that the proposed expansion of Leeds Bradford Airport could cost the region up to £3.1billion in lost economic activity by 2050. The plans would enable the airport to handle 7 million annual passengers, up from around 4 million in 2019. Most passengers will be on low cost leisure flights. The claims by the airport ignore the huge loss to the UK because people who fly abroad on holiday do not spend that money in the UK. The airport also claims (as all airports always do) that the expansion will create many new jobs. In fact, the aviation sector becomes increasingly automated, with fewer and fewer jobs per 1,000 passengers - and this has accelerated through the Covid-19 crisis. NEF says: “The predicted business benefits are overstated, because businesses are making less and less use of air travel, especially in the fallout from coronavirus." Also that: "With the leisure and hospitality industries on their knees, this expansion would damage the local recovery from the Covid pandemic.”