Plane Stupid Scotland shuts Aberdeen airport — updated

protest end­ed update — see below main arti­cle ::: 3rd March — Nine young pro­test­ers from the cli­mate action group Plane Stu­pid Scot­land have this morn­ing shut down Aberdeen air­port by set­ting up a golf course on the taxi­way. They have sur­round­ed them­selves with for­ti­fied secu­ri­ty fenc­ing whilst anoth­er group are occu­py­ing the roof of the ter­mi­nal build­ing and have unfurled a ban­ner read­ing, “Nae Trump Games with Cli­mate Change”.

The peace­ful protest began at 02.15am this morn­ing whilst the run­way was closed. Plane Stu­pid aims to pre­vent the sched­uled reopen­ing of the run­way at 5am. The group intends to main­tain its block­ade for as long as pos­si­ble to pre­vent the release of thou­sands of tonnes of green­house gas emis­sions into the atmos­phere.

Pho­tos avail­able for down­load and media on our Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/planestupid. All pho­tos licensed under Cre­ative Com­mons.

The activists entered the run­way by cut­ting the fence and scaled the roof climb­ing lad­ders. Dressed as Don­ald Trump, sport­ing wigs and golf­ing attire, with crazy golf clubs and balls, the group are ‘putting’ on the tar­mac. The ban­ner on the fenc­ing erect­ed by the group reads “Plane Stu­pid Scot­land Golf Open 2009”.

Don­ald Trump is sup­port­ing the expan­sion of Aberdeen air­port where his super-rich friends will arrive to play golf on his con­tro­ver­sial golf course. BAA Aberdeen said they wel­come Don­ald Trump’s Golf Course. Like Alex Salmond, Trump wants to bull­doze over demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion to envi­ron­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing projects like air­port expan­sion. Both Trump and BAA’s plans face fierce local oppo­si­tion.

One of the activists on the taxi­way, Jon­ny Agnew, 22, from Edin­burgh, said:

“We have been failed by the gen­er­a­tion of Don­ald Trump and Alex Salmond. Despite a cat­a­logue of sci­en­tif­ic reports warn­ing them that they can’t keep on with avi­a­tion growth – even if that hin­ders their abil­i­ty to jet in for a week­end of golf – they con­tin­ue with dis­re­gard for all of us, who will end up deal­ing with the impacts of the cli­mate cri­sis.”

He added:

“The real­i­ty is that our generation’s future is van­ish­ing so that peo­ple like Don­ald Trump and his super-rich friends can jet into Aberdeen for a round of golf. The expan­sion of this air­port just can­not go ahead.”

Anoth­er, 24 year old Tilly Gif­ford, a social work­er from Glas­gow, said:

“Alex Salmond wants to let the Span­ish share­hold­ers of BAA, Don­ald Trump and his super-rich Amer­i­can friends con­crete over Scot­land and its efforts to stop run­away cli­mate change.”

She added:

“Arc­tic ice is melt­ing, the sea is already ris­ing and experts warn the world’s rain­forests could col­lapse. Our gen­er­a­tion is already start­ing to feel these impacts as the warm­ing kicks in so it’s obvi­ous that it’s going to need to be us that urgent­ly puts the brakes on expand­ing unnec­es­sary air­ports.”

The cam­paign­ers chose to close Aberdeen after the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment gave its back­ing to the expan­sion of capac­i­ty at the air­port by 1.5 mil­lion pas­sen­gers by 2015. Avi­a­tion is Britain’s fastest grow­ing source of emis­sions, already amount­ing to at least 13% of the UK’s cli­mate emis­sions.

With plans in the Scot­tish government’s ‘Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work’ for growth at Scot­tish air­ports includ­ing Glas­gow, Edin­burgh and Aberdeen — as well as Heathrow and Stanst­ed — experts from the Tyn­dall Cen­tre for cli­mate research say avi­a­tion pol­i­cy alone will scup­per any chance the UK has of hit­ting its cli­mate tar­gets.

25 year old Dan Glass, a com­mu­ni­ty work­er from Glas­gow, said:

“We’re here to say it can­not hap­pen, and our gen­er­a­tion won’t let it hap­pen. The sci­en­tists tell us we’ve got sev­en years to make emis­sions peak then drop, and if we fail, the peo­ple on this run­way and their entire gen­er­a­tion, and our chil­dren, willl live with the con­se­quences. That’s why we’re doing this.”

For more information/interviews:

Dan on 07507085963
Katie on 07786381674

For pho­tos – www.flickr.com/photos/planestupid

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Sev­en mem­bers of the cam­paign group Plane Stu­pid were detained at about 0820 GMT after releas­ing them­selves.

Two oth­er pro­test­ers, who remained on the roof of the main ter­mi­nal build­ing, were detained lat­er.

The protest began at about 0300 GMT. There were no flights to or from the air­port until after 0900 GMT.

BBC video
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At 09.30am Plane Stu­pid Scot­land’s protest at Aberdeen air­port has come to a close after six hours. The eleven peo­ple, includ­ing local res­i­dents that this morn­ing breached the air­port fence have now been arrest­ed.

The pro­test­ers were told by police to dis­man­tle their peace­ful protest because the taxi­way they were secured to was need­ed by an emer­gency heli­copter. A baby appar­ent­ly required urgent treat­ment, and any oth­er approach would cause delays. Obvi­ous­ly the safe­ty of the pub­lic was of para­mount con­cern to the activists and so they duly removed them­selves.

Plane Stu­pid has sub­se­quent­ly spo­ken to both the Acci­dent and Emer­gency unit of Aberdeen hos­pi­tal, and its press depart­ment. They were unaware of any trans­fers request­ed by air this morn­ing. Not only that, but spokesper­son Les­ley Mid­dle­ton said:

“We have our own heli­pad which we use in emer­gen­cies. Of course you can’t antic­i­pate what may hap­pen, but in all my years of work­ing here I can’t think of a time when we’ve used Aberdeen air­port. The only cir­cum­stances I can imag­ine where we’d need to get access to the area would be if there was an acci­dent at the air­port.”

The pro­test­ers are now look­ing into the con­duct of the police and are con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a com­plaint.

Plane Stu­pid Scot­land has, dur­ing the last week of Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work con­sul­ta­tion, effec­tive­ly shed light on the illog­i­cal expan­sion plans. At a time of eco­nom­ic reces­sion and loom­ing cli­mate cri­sis Scot­land has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be at the fore­front of a secure and sus­tain­able future and to take a strong posi­tion to tack­le cli­mate change. They also linked the plans for air­port expan­sion with the cur­rent devel­op­men­t’s of Don­ald Trump’s Golf Course in Aberdeen­shire.

Katie Mor­ri­son, from the group Plane Stu­pid Scot­land said:

“It is unnec­es­sary to expand Aberdeen air­port as 58% of flights are domes­tic and could be replaced with high speed rail link. We ask that the gov­ern­ment stop play­ing around with big busi­ness and start win­ning the race against run­away cli­mate change. Trump’s golf course and our gov­ern­ments planned expan­sion will con­crete over Scot­tish democ­ra­cy.”

The activists were in high spir­its as they removed them­selves from the air­port but gen­er­al feel­ing was of annoy­ance at the under­hand­ed tac­tics used by the police which lured the pro­test­ers in and took advan­tage of their car­ing nature.

The activists are cur­rent­ly being held in cus­tody in Inverurie and are being charged with breach of the peace. It is like­ly that they will be appear­ing in court tomor­row morn­ing, all sup­port is wel­come and will be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.

We will inform you of any updates as they hap­pen. Good work Plane Stu­pid Scot­land, time to cel­e­brate anoth­er suc­cess­ful action.