Archived press release

Robin hood to rob residents of peace and quiet

27 April 2005

Friends of the Earth warned today that the new Robin Hood Airport, near Doncaster which opens on Thursday 28 April 2005, will add to carbon dioxide emissions from the region and blight the lives of local communities because of aircraft noise and traffic congestion. The predicted expansion of air travel across the UK will make it impossible for the government to meet its own carbon dioxide reduction targets to tackle climate change.[1]

The Government is forecasting that emissions from regional airports will increase by around 350% by 2030. [2] The new airport, a converted RAF airfield at Finningley, is forecast to handle over a million passengers in its first year, already over four times the number originally predicted when planning permission was granted only 3 years ago [3].

Friends of the Earth's aviation campaigner Richard Dyer said: "The government has said that tackling climate change is one of the world's greatest challenges, yet they are encouraging a massive expansion in air travel, which is the fastest growing source of climate change emissions. The rapid increase in flights is driven by the falling cost of flights due to the UK air industry being effectively subsided by £9 billion per year, as it pays no VAT and aviation fuel is untaxed. We now have the ludicrous situation where it can be cheaper to fly than to travel by car or rail within the UK."

Doncaster Council plans to build a new road across open countryside from the M18 Junction 3 to deal with all the extra traffic generated by the airport, with most of the £50 million cost to be met by the public purse [4]

The new airport will bring aircraft noise, even at night, to the quiet skies over Finningley and surroundings, which will extend as far as Bawtry. Finningley will have a 'quota count' for night flights which will permit thousands of night flights to be made every year. The quota is 40% less than Heathrow's, but its use of smaller aircraft means that this may permit more actual flights.

Richard Dyer added: "The true cost of cheap flights for local communities around Finningley will be blaring aircraft noise, disturbed nights and overcrowded roads. Even before it opens Peel, the airport operator is stating that it will hugely exceed the growth forecasts made just 3 years ago. I doubt this airport would have got approval if Peel had revealed at the public inquiry just how many passengers would really be using it."[5]

Notes

[1] Tony Blair said in September 2004 that climate change is "…a challenge so far reaching in its impact an irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence."

Commons Environmental Audit Committee:- "If aviation emissions increase on the scale predicted by the DfT, the UK's 60% carbon emissions reduction target which the Government set last year will become meaningless and unachievable"

[2]. Aviation and the Environment Using Economic Instruments DfT 2003 Table D6. The Government set targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from all sectors, excluding aviation, by 2010, and a 60% reduction by 2050.

[3] At the public inquiry in 2002 held to gain approval to open the airport, Peel forecast that just 300,000 passengers would use it in its first year; now they stating that this number has surged to 1,300,000 passengers.

[4] In 2002 Peel claimed that the airport would not need a better road link until after 2015 (then 13 years away). Immediately after the inquiry they then reversed their position and, with Doncaster Council, are seeking to drive a £50 million road link across open countryside from M18 Junction 3, almost entirely at the public expense.

In the absence of any rail service, almost all users of the airport will arrive by car; some 2500 parking spaces have already been provided

[5] Peel are also forecasting that Finningley will reach its 2.3 million passengers limit in just half the projected time - by 2010. This will have major consequences for the Airport's environmental impacts.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust