Plane Stupid stage ‘Corporate Takeover’ at London City Airport

June 10th: 5 eco activists have shut down oper­a­tions at Lon­don City Air­port. The group, who are wear­ing pin­striped suits and bowler hats entered at 2.30 am today. They cut through the perime­ter fence and formed a human wheel clamp around one of the airport’s busi­ness jet fleet at the west end of the run­way. The need to avoid sparks around high­ly flam­able avi­a­tion fuel could meen that the nor­mal process of cut­ting them out of their arm­tubes could be severe­ly ham­pered.

Check out the pho­tos on our Flickr pho­to­stream.

Video

The ‘eco-takeover’ puts the spot­light on the self­ish­ness of pri­vate jet use:

“Because of their low pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty, small jets emit between five and 10 times more car­bon per pas­sen­ger than com­mer­cial flights,” said spokes­woman Nan­cy Birch. “In an age where we face poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, this is no longer an accept­able form of trans­port. It’s time that pri­vate jets were ground­ed for good.”

Until the down­turn, the pri­vate jet busi­ness was the fastest grow­ing seg­ment of the avi­a­tion sec­tor. Over the last ten years it has expand­ed by almost 50%.

“This is yet anoth­er exam­ple of the insane rush towards mas­sive air­port and flight expan­sion,” Birch con­cludes. “The avi­a­tion indus­try seems to think it can pol­lute its way out of cli­mate change. But any­one with half a brain will know that this is just plane stu­pid.”

Lon­don City air­port blights the lives of some of the poor­est peo­ple in Lon­don. Newham has been known to expe­ri­ence air pol­lu­tion lev­els which reg­u­lar­ly exceed EU safe­ty lim­its for high­t­ly tox­ic chem­i­cals such as Nitrus Oxide and has the high­est lev­els of mor­tal­i­ty in under 30s in the UK from asth­ma, a mat­ter that Asth­maUK are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing.

While it seems the group have suc­cess­ful­ly shut down the pri­vate Jet cen­tre part of the air­port, locals are report­ing that pub­lic flights start­ed run­ning from City from 7am. No one is claim­ing that the pro­test­ers have yet been arrest­ed or removed, which sug­gests that the Air­port are breach­ing health and safe­ty by con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions in this restrict­ed area. If the five are still in posi­tion then they will have been locked on for 7 hours and a half hours now…

——

Police cut­ting teams weren’t sight­ed in the area at the time the press team were forced to leave. Acsess roads have now been shut down, and the woman with the phone in the arm­tube can’t take calls any­more, so it’s dif­fi­cult to get any news of what’s going on. More pho­tos are avail­able on the Plane Stu­pid web­site, check out the flickr stream.

——

Notes to the edi­tor

A total of 27 local and region­al air­ports around the UK are cur­rent­ly seek­ing to expand their activ­i­ties.

Lon­don City Air­port recent­ly received local author­i­ty per­mis­sion to expand its com­mer­cial flights from 80,000 to 120,000. The air­port aims to increase this total to 170,000 by 2030.

Activists tar­get­ed Lon­don City Air­port because it is one of the key dri­vers of the pri­vate jet busi­ness. The air­port cur­rent­ly sees an aver­age of 170 move­ments (take-offs and land­ings) per week. The airport’s Jet Cen­tre pre­dicts this fig­ure will increase to more than 530 a week by 2030.

Lon­don City Air­port was closed at the time of the eco-takeover. Secu­ri­ty was giv­en two hours’ warn­ing before the first flights of the day.

The airport’s Jet Cen­tre com­pris­es a mix­ture of pri­vate­ly-owned jets and a for-hire busi­ness jet oper­a­tion run by Pri­vate­Jet.

——
8:30am update & local group press release:

Locals are con­firm­ing that flights start­ed from city air­port at 7am. While the pri­vate Jet Cen­tre where the group are locked on does apear to have been sucess­ful­ly shut down, it is alarm­ing that the air­port is pre­pared to dis­re­gard health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and con­tin­ue to run flights in the area. There have been no reports that the group have been arrest­ed or removed so far. If they are still there then they have been locked on for 7 hours now…

For the local cam­paign group per­spec­tive see below-

PRESS RELEASE FIGHT THE FLIGHTS — LONDON CITY AIRPORT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10 June 2009

FIGHT THE FLIGHTS RESPONSE TO PLANE STUPIDS ACTION AT LONDON CITY AIRPORT

Fight the Flights is not a direct action group, but we ful­ly appre­ci­ate the frus­tra­tion that the cli­mate change activists feel in get­ting their voic­es, and con­cerns heard on avi­a­tion expan­sion, and how avi­a­tion is one of the fastest grow­ing sources of CO2 emis­sions.

It is no won­der that some cam­paign­ers feel they are being pushed into tak­ing non vio­lent direct action because the sys­tem is fail­ing peo­ple of their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties, futures and their envi­ron­ment from harm­ful ‘run­away’ air­port and flight expan­sion.

Just under a 100,000 res­i­dents in east and south east Lon­don will be affect­ed by the increas­ing exces­sive noise lev­els from Lon­don City Air­port upon expan­sion, and yet less than 10,000 were claimed to have been con­sult­ed by the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham. Most will not be enti­tled to any noise insu­la­tion. They will have to live with the con­se­quences every day of their lives, each time a flight takes off and lands. The major­i­ty do not have the option to move, and many lived in the area long before the air­ports cre­ation.

Ben­e­fits?

In just over 20 years the air­port has only man­aged to direct­ly employ 120 Newham res­i­dents out of the 406 direct­ly employed staff the air­port claim to employ.

Lon­don tax­pay­ers have also paid £24million for the air­ports secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police over the past 5 years, which the air­port refuse to pay.

In addi­tion the air qual­i­ty above Lon­don City Air­port exceeds EU direc­tive lev­els by 50% and was termed as ‘tox­ic’ but this was not acknowl­edged by the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham. In a bor­ough which has the high­est lev­el of mor­tal­i­ty in under 30s with asth­ma in the whole coun­try, Newham should be focussing on improv­ing air qual­i­ty, not adding to the pol­lu­tion by approv­ing fur­ther expan­sion at this res­i­den­tial­ly sit­u­at­ed air­port in the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area of Eng­land.

Erod­ed Democ­ra­cy

Res­i­dents have been con­stant­ly thwart­ed and ignored by this gov­ern­ment and the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham when pro­vid­ing evi­dence against the expan­sion. Requests for a pub­lic inquiry into the planned 50% expan­sion of flights at Lon­don City Air­port was refused by Hazel Blears, Sec­re­tary of State in 2008, whilst the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham showed no con­cern that 100s of homes in Green­wich will now be in the crash zone and failed to address the risk to res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ties who live, work or trav­el through the crash zone in both Newham and Green­wich. How­ev­er in con­trast the gov­ern­ment and coun­cil appear to con­sis­tent­ly lis­ten to the avi­a­tion at the expense of the com­mu­ni­ties: this is expan­sion at any cost.

With a gov­ern­ment that does not lis­ten to local con­cerns on the effects of expan­sion on third par­ty safe­ty, increas­ing pol­lu­tion lev­els, the effect on res­i­dents health and children’s devel­op­ment, and the con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change, it is no won­der that we are see­ing actions such as this more fre­quent­ly.