The UK Government's U-turn on new airport capacity in England defies all logic, argues Natalie Bennett. We must end our obsession with 'high speed projects' and invest in low-speed sustainable transport.
As the UK Government prepares to build new runways in SE England, Chris Goodall points out that air travel forecasts have been cut by 35% in the last six years. So why should we believe the latest numbers?
Rural communities all over India are battling against a land grab of epic proportions. And one of the biggest causes of land grabs is for airports to support India's domestic aviation boom. Rose Bridger reports from Kerala, where four new 'green field' airports are meeting stiff local resistance.
Today BAA, the UK airport operator, announced its plans for a second terminal at Stansted airport. The plans, backed by the Department of Transport and costing £2.2 billion, will allow Stansted to carry an additional 33 million passengers by 2030 giving it a total of 68 million passengers a year - larger than Heathrow today.
“Hot on the heels of the Stern report and Tony Blair’s grave warning that we only have ten years left to tackle climate change, the Department of Transport is due to publish a progress report on its 2003 Aviation White Paper, some time before the end of the year.
The government insists that Britain needs to massively expand its airports to cope with a
rapidly growing aviation industry. In actual fact, the sector’s boom years could be over