General News
Below are links to stories of general interest in relation to aviation and airports.
Four airlines have so far benefited from £1.8 billion of Bank of England lending, for Covid crisis (with no CO2 conditions)
British Airways, EasyJet, Wizz Air and Ryanair have taken £1.8bn from the government’s rescue finance lending. Money has come from the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility. This is despite ministers’ assurances on a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis. Other high carbon sectors have also benefited. The 4 airlines alone have taken £1.8bn in lending from the scheme so far. Aircraft engine-maker Rolls-Royce has taken a £300m bailout. Campaigners say the government must attach new conditions to the support it is giving, which could top £67bn in total to, to all sector companies - rising from the e so far borrowed more than £16bn borrowed so far. Society needs to decide if assistance should be given to high carbon industries, at a time when carbon emissions need to be drastically cut, quickly. Greenpeace said: “Airlines have been given exactly what the chancellor, the prime minister, economists and the public said they should not be given – billions in cheap and easy loans to keep them polluting, without any commitments to reduce their emissions or even keep their workers on the payroll.”
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Heathrow trying to get out of paying its business rates bill (£113 million) to councils and government
Heathrow is trying to get out of paying its £113.2 m business rates bill, The airport's business rates are the largest in England and Wales. They are split between Hillingdon Council – the local authority, which receives £16.3m, with the rest going to the Greater London Authority and central Government. The rates are calculated, in accordance with an estimation of Heathrow’s rental value, as at 1 April 2015 - not on the success of the company. Heathrow say their rates bill should be cut because it was “based on a world in which people flew”, but campaigners believe that they should be paying the full £113 million bill on the basis that the money goes towards the community and a failure to pay could jeopardise many local projects that are funded through the rates. Paul McGuinness, Chair of the No 3rd Runway Coalition, said: "A responsible company is expected to set aside (preferably in a separate account) all its anticipated tax liabilities. Lest we forget, the rates bill that they owe to the community is broadly the same size as the £100m dividends payment that they made, so willingly, to their foreign shareholders just a few weeks ago”.
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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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Airlines are lobbying government to allow flights, with no quarantine, from 45 countries (“air bridges”)
The UK is due to start imposing 14-day self quarantine on any passenger arriving in the UK, by air or ferry or train, from the 8th June. This is considered by many to be far too late, but the government claims this is a sensible time to impose it. But the airlines believe quarantine would mean nobody would want to travel to the UK, certainly not for a holiday. And they feel few Brits will want to go abroad, if they have to lock themselves away for 2 weeks. So the airlines are lobbying for no less than 45 COUNTRIES to be excluded, so people could enter the UK from those countries with no quarantine. The choice of countries appears to be those that Brits most like to travel to, with odd additions and omissions. The hope is that these countries will allow Brits to holiday there, and encourage their citizens to come here. The idea is that the "air bridges" would be between countries with low Covid transmission. The problem is that the UK rate of transmission is currently not low. There are serious concerns that allowing so many people to enter the UK would increase Covid transmission. There is also the risk of the "Dublin dodge" by which people in countries not on the air bridge list can still enter the UK, quarantine-free.
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Open letter to ICAO – the CORSIA scheme should not be weakened, just because of Covid
Thirteen organisations concerned with aviation carbon emissions and carbon trading, have written to ICAO to ask that they stick to the intentions for how the CORSIA scheme is set up, and do not weaken it. The stated purpose of CORSIA is to help the international aviation sector achieve “carbon-neutral growth from 2020”. It is due to use as a baseline the aviation CO2 emissions from 2019 and 2020. However, with the Covid pandemic, airline carbon emissions will be much lower than anticipated this year. If ICAO used 2019 and 2020, the amount of carbon the sector could emit, and the cost of emitting it, would be far lower than anticipated. So IATA wants to change the rules, so the carbon baseline only considers 2019, not including 2020, which would result in significantly lower offsetting requirements for airlines compared to the current CORSIA design. In fact, under most recovery scenarios, the change sought by IATA would eliminate all offsetting requirements for the duration of the CORSIA pilot phase and potentially several years thereafter. The rules need to be adhered to.
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“Aviation Climate Alliance” – first newsletter – what could the post-Covid aviation sector look like?
Many organisations are united in their determination that when the aviation sector emerges from the Covid pandemic and lockdown, it will have to be slimmed down, and commit to effective and real cuts in its carbon emissions. There will need to be low-carbon jobs, in place of jobs in high carbon sectors that will need to change. A new informal grouping has been formed, between trade union and environmental campaigners, to help push for environmental and climate conditions being placed on any government assistance for the aviation sector, and more "green" jobs in future. It is named the "Aviation Climate Alliance", and its membership includes AirportWatch, the PCS union, the Stay Grounded movement, the Campaign Against Climate Change, and the Aviation Communities Forum (ACA). It will produce regular newsletters, putting many of the news items and relevant pieces of information together, to help campaigners access the news and facts. The first newsletter has been produced, and can be seen (see link). It was kindly put together by Tahir Latif, of the PCS union. To be added to the mailing list, tahirlatif51@icloud.com.
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New “Future of Aviation Group” set up – Chair Henry Smith MP – “to fight for the future of UK aviation”
The aviation sector has fared very badly (as have so many others) in the Covid pandemic lockdown. People have not been able to travel, for the genuine reason that the number of infections needs to be reduced, to keep people safe from a disease that can make some people very ill indeed. The sector wants preferential treatment by government, to help it out. It always tries to make out that it is vital to the economy (in reality, must of the aviation industry sucks British money abroad, as Brits spend on their foreign trips and holidays). Now MP for Crawley, Henry Smith, has set up a new industry lobby group, calling itself the Future of Aviation Group. He has written, with 3 other MPs, to Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, asking for clarity about how the recovery of the sector can be supported by government. They want clarity from government on many issues including quarantine arrangements for all passengers arriving in the UK; clarity on the Covid health measures airlines should agree internationally; consideration of business rates relief; and support for domestic air routes.
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Jet2 holidays and flights secured with emergency £172 million cash boost
Jet2 and Jet2holidays are owned by the Dart Group, based in Leeds. It grounded all flights since March, due to Covid, and is planning on re-starting some after the 1st July. Now the company has managed to raise £172 million in a bid to stave off the impact of coronavirus. To raise the money to keep the company afloat, with no flights, it has managed to pool together an extra £172 million by selling almost 30 million shares to investors. These were sold at a price of 576.5 pence per share, with the scheme apparently "significantly oversubscribed". This may keep the company solvent for the next few months. They hope to be able to encourage as many Brits as possible to take bucket and spade holidays, and city breaks, as soon as possible. Campaigners at Transport & Environment (T&E) have produced a tracker, for state bailouts of airlines in Europe, with details of amounts, conditions etc, which can be seen at https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/Airline-bailout-tracker_8_May_2020.pdf
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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 ..)