Airport that serves private jets hit with major backlash over future plans: 'The lowest of the low and the worst of the worst'

Protesters gathered last month outside the Farnborough Airport in Hampshire, England, to speak out against the expansion of this facility, which serves only private planes, the Alton Herald reported.

A decision is expected this summer regarding the expansion, which aims to almost double the airport's capacity to 70,000 planes a year by 2040. On April 13, groups including Extinction Rebellion, Alton Climate Action Network, Farnborough Noise Group, and the Friends of the Earth rallied outside the airport with signs bearing messages like "It's plane stoopid."

"This will also mean more night flights and holding stacks at 3,000 feet over places like Petersfield and Farnham," said campaigner Colin Shearn, per the Alton Herald. "The impact of these decisions will be felt by future generations in terms of pollution and climate change but more immediately in house prices and noise disturbance."

Airports are a difficult enough neighbor as it is, given how they disrupt peace and compromise the air quality around them. When they serve private planes — which produce all that noise and toxic, Earth-warming pollution — for just a handful of people, it adds insult to injury.

"Quite frankly, we're opposing that they're here at all," said an Alton protester in a video shot by XR, per the Alton Herald. "We've had the OK from the government to expand Heathrow, Gatwick, and Luton, which is insanity considering the ecological and climate crisis we're facing.

"But to expand this airport, which is for private jets, for me is the lowest of the low and the worst of the worst. These are people flying away for the weekend to go skiing."

They're not wrong about the outsized impact of private planes. A recent study found that just 250,000 people accounted for private flights worldwide — and that in a year, their travel produced more air pollution than Tanzania, a country of 67 million people. Not only that, but the use of private jets is increasing rapidly, often without any passengers aboard at all.

Wasteful air travel like that needs to end if we want to protect both our communities and our planet from the impact of air pollution.

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