Air Madness: Road's Mistakes Repeated

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Author: Cedric Pulford

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AIR MADNESS Road’s mistakes repeated ‘When the downsides of traffic became apparent, it was politically far too late to do anything about it. Recent attempts by governments have been like trying to hold the tide back with a saucepan. As a nation we have set out on the same course in the air’

www.pulfordmedia.co.uk/ituri


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Also from Cedric Pulford and Ituri Casualty of Empire (history) Eating Uganda (history/religion) Our Vanishing Freedoms (politics) Siren Society (politics) JournoLISTS: 201 Ways to Improve Your Journalism

Acknowledgements Grateful thanks to Michael Meech and Roderick Thomson for reading and commenting on the 3rd edition manuscript; also to the following for help and advice with the various editions of Air Madness: the late Maurice Landergan, Paul Barrett, Michael Brown, David Brummell, David Gant, Tim Johnson of the Aviation Environment Federation, John Stewart of HACAN, Helen Szamuely, staff of the Civil Aviation Authority. None is responsible for any of the facts or opinions given in this book – and some are certain to disagree with them


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AIR MADNESS Road’s mistakes repeated Cedric Pulford

ITURI


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Copyright © Cedric Pulford, 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Air Madness 3rd edition published 2008 by Ituri Publications 4 Chestnut Close Woodford Halse Northants NN11 3NB (UK) First edition 2003 Second edition 2004 ISBN (3rd edition) 9780953643080

Text set in Century Schoolbook 11/13 pt with headings in Bliss by Book Production Services, London Printed in Great Britain by Lightning Source Front cover photo © Austin J. Brown

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher www.pulfordmedia.co.uk/ituri


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Contents ROADS: THE EXPERIENCE 1 Beloved monster

3

AIR: THE PROSPECTS 2 Sky-high growth

55

3 Climate concern

95

4 Decibel din

119

5 Crowded skies, vanished acres

141

6 The scourge to come

159

7 The way ahead

177

8 Beyond balance

185

Twelve points for campaigners

203

Twelve questions for discussion groups

204

Index

207

Tables Principal UK airports White paper (2003): main proposals Night flights, continental Europe Quota counts of aircraft Land area of airports

68–69 93 130 131 151


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‘Looks like the Mayor has extended the congestion charge upwards’ From the (London) Evening Standard, 12 March 2003. Reprinted with permission


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PREFACE The central idea of this book is that we must act (we as individuals, as a nation, as a world) if aviation is not to follow motor traffic down the path of environmental disaster. We can learn from the history of the car, which is why the first section is about motoring. However, those who prefer to take this as read may choose to skip to the air section starting on page 55.


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ROADS: THE EXPERIENCE


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ONE BELOVED MONSTER

LIKE the man said, don’t hassle me about the end of the world; I’ve got problems of my own. Who wants to read a beard-and-sandals book about flying as they set off for that shopping trip to New York or that mini-break in Budapest, as they plan that summer holiday in Ibiza and that winter holiday in Zermatt? Well, I hope you do. This book is not actually predicting the end of the world, but the coming decades may well see the end of our world on present trends. That great independent scientist James Lovelock has brought out the distinction in The Revenge of Gaia (see Chapter 3). Aviation is playing a full and expanding part in global warming, the driving force behind climate change. And flying is throwing up some other nasties along the way. Air Madness is also about the destruction of homes, the loss of green fields. It is about more air noise, almost everywhere, even in the heart of the country, and safety fears in crowded skies. Nor does it end there. Airliners are buses of the sky – and who wants buses when they can have taxis and cars? Behind the growth in commercial flying is a steady expansion of corporate and private flying. Even the flying car – the family Ford – may be moving from science fiction to reality. All these activities have their environmental downsides too. We are like diners in a fancy restaurant. We are enjoying ourselves hugely flying all over the world, but we know a big bill is coming. At the least we should acquaint ourselves with the menu prices.


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4 Air Madness: road’s mistakes repeated

For anyone troubled that much of the book is negative in tone, I say “Yes it is”. I believe the gravity of the situation demands nothing less. At the same time, it’s no use just crying “We’re all doomed!”, like Private Fraser in Dad’s Army. The final chapter offers grounds for hope and suggests some solutions. Let’s not pretend it will be easy, however. To understand about the plane menace, let’s begin by looking at the motor car. This may seem like comparing oranges and apples, but they are more like oranges and grapefruits or even two sorts of apple. They are also fruits that have grown at different rates. The centenary of the world’s first powered and controlled flight, by the Wright Brothers, fell in 2003, so the aeroplane is almost as old as the car. But whereas the car has in its social usages reached maturity, or some would say old age, the plane today remains a teenager on the verge of adulthood. Just as the motor car satisfied desires more thoroughly than the private carriage – faster so that it destroys time, farther ranging so that it destroys space – so it has increased the downsides of travel – noisier, more dangerous, more polluting, more invasive of privacy, a destroyer of time and space. These are the same downsides that, a century later, we are busy repeating in the air. In this chapter we look at the history of motoring for the many pointers it provides for the possible future of aviation. That future – for the moment – remains in our hands. Here are some of the themes in this chapter: The social limitations of the motor car, as well as its benefits, were well recognised by the thinking classes at the beginning. As motoring spread in the 1930s, those people were seduced by its attractions and forgot about its many drawbacks. By the time those drawbacks were rediscovered, in


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Beloved monster 5

the 1960s, it had become politically impossible to constrain the spread of motoring. The appetite for motoring cannot be appeased. More facilities, like new roads, generate more demand. Demand reduction measures, like congestion charging and in the future road pricing, are no more effective. This is because demand for motoring is highly inelastic: people wish to carry on virtually regardless of price or other costs. The car lies behind the sprawling suburbs that have devoured so much green space, continuing a trend that started with railways. By consensus there is an acceptable level of deaths on the roads. This is reflected in generally lenient penalties for unsafe driving. The safer the vehicle the more risky the driving. In other words, we return the level of risk to the maximum with which we feel comfortable. Manufacturers pander to the market with unneeded performance and fuel extravagance. Constant traffic has desensitised us to noise. We may not notice it anymore, but our bodies do through damage to our health. If you don’t like some of what has happened on the roads in the past century, think about what the next century may mean in the air. And read on.

The ‘shock of speed’ THE motor car was controversial from the start. Pioneer motorists who thrilled to the “shock of speed” and even revelled in the breakdowns and the frequent punctures were more than matched by the wider public, who resented the noise, the danger – and the dust. Britain owes its ubiquitous tarred roads to the car, and it is almost impossible to imagine the distress


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caused by motor vehicles raising havoc on surfaces intended for nothing faster than a horse and cart. William Plowden, in his classic account of the evolution of the car*, quotes a witness who told a commission of inquiry that after a Sunday afternoon walk he returned home “as if I had come out of a flour mill”. Another witness, living beside a road, found: “All the plants under glass were spoiled, all the flowers were spoiled, all the strawberries and grapes were spoiled, and our health was injured. I had an inflamed throat all the summer and my eyes were very troublesome.” There were more major difficulties, like the deaths and injuries of other road users, or the intemperate speeds at which “road hogs” drove their vehicles, all fuelled by resentment of the “motor toys” of the rich. In the Edwardian dawn of motoring few imagined that these noisy, smelly, uncomfortable and unreliable machines would in the course of the 20th century become universal. They would become objects of desire far transcending utilitarian travel purposes. Millions would be married to their motor cars, which, however, would be lover as well as wife. Humanity has always valued movement, and in the horse age those who could afford them ran carriages. But these were rare ... just how rare is suggested in Henry Fielding’s Amelia (1751): the hero as a humble tenant farmer indulges his desire for a carriage. His richer neighbours consider this such an outrageous example of getting above oneself that they boycott him and start the downfall that leads to prison. In the 19th century, the early railways made large profits carrying freight and as a somewhat unexpected revenue bonus found the public had a great desire for travel. The railway was the first means of transport to

* The Motor Car and Politics 1896-1970 (The Bodley Head, 1971)


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demonstrate that for the masses travel could be enjoyable in itself*. The motor car opened up the countryside for leisure and for living. In his autobiography, Rudyard Kipling tells how in 1902 he bought Batemans cheaply because the previous owner thought it was too far (four miles) from a railway station. When told that Kipling would be using his Lanchester “contraption”, the vendor said, “Oh, those things haven’t come to stay.” Years later the man acknowledged that he should have charged twice the price for the house†. So the car emerged upon a waiting world. The question was whether the car could develop mechanically from a toy to a tool. Nor could the thinkers of the time have foreseen the mass production that would finally put a car within reach of almost everybody. In the 1920s, it was assumed that cars were a transient phase between horse transport and the plane. Peter Thorold (see above) says it “became understood, particularly among the young, that the car was merely a forerunner, and that the future of passenger transport, except perhaps for short runs, lay with the helicopter and light aircraft”. That is a future that has yet to unroll. The motor car has moved from resistance to acceptance and back to resistance – if we accept as resistance the campaigning efforts of greens and at least lip-service paid by most members of the public to the idea of restraining the car. Until 1909 British local authorities were responsible for maintaining the roads in their districts. Many ratepayers resented having to pay for the damage caused by through traffic. In that year, Parliament * Gareth Rees: introduction to Early Railway Prints (Phaidon, 1980) † Quoted by Peter Thorold in The Motoring Age (Profile Books, 2003)


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approved the creation of a Road Board, based on the principle of hypothecating (or earmarking) the revenue from motor taxation for the building, tarring and upkeep of roads. The Road Fund was to have a long and controversial history with governments proving unable to resist raids on the fund, but the immediate effect was to defuse the political issue of the car. Other problems, like noise, speeding and accidents, remained but it seems that the solution to road funding swept away the public’s concerns. Plowden comments: “Even allowing for the other preoccupations of Cabinet and Parliament in the years after 1909*, the disappearance of the motor car as a topic of political debate is striking.” In 1910, after more than a decade of motoring, there were just 53,196 cars on British roads. They were about a third of total motor vehicles. The proportions were similar in the last year before the First World War: 132,015 cars out of a total 388,860 motor vehicles. It was to be 1932 before cars outnumbered other motor vehicles. By that time there were 1,127,681 cars out of 2,227,099 motor vehicles. In August 1939, just before the start of the Second World War, the number of motor vehicles was still extremely small by modern standards, 3,148,600, of which cars were 2,034,400 (around 7% of the present total). This was the time when the joys of the open, and by now well tarred, road could be savoured before other drivers came along and spoilt it! The car was a top priority for those who could afford it throughout the interwar period. The motoring journalist L.J.K. Setright writes: “The car manufacturer could say what Matthew Boulton, in partnership with James Watt to make steam engines, said to Boswell in 1776: ‘I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have – power’.” (Drive On! 2002) * The run-up to the First World War, 1914-18


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Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World describes, ironically, a utopia in which everyone is permanently happy, particularly through promiscuous sex and use of the drug Soma. The irony is that this paradise has been achieved by eliminating many things that humans had considered central to their identity: family, culture, art, literature, science and philosophy*. Christianity, in Huxley’s vision, has been supplanted by the Fordian religion, the year being AF 632, formerly AD 2540. The new clock began ticking in 1908 – the year Henry Ford started to make his Model T car. It is too early to say whether the rest of Huxley’s prediction will come true, but already in AF 100 more people make a religion of their car than go to church.

All over this land IN a role reversal worthy of the TV comedy Absolutely Fabulous, the youngster of aviation helped the adult of motoring† to prosper. The First World War had spurred technical progress in aviation, and the car industry profited from this, L.J.K. Setright notes in Drive On! Perhaps even more important were the public images of the two modes of transport. “The very existence of the aeroplane helped the car: when the car was the very newest thing, people were wary of it as something experimental and hardly a sound investment, but once the aeroplane had taken over as the extensor of human ambitions, the car became quite acceptable,” says Setright. The car therefore moved “from a demon to a respectable citizen”, in Mark Liniado’s words in Car * †

www.wikipedia.org In Ab Fab, the daughter tries to talk sense into her daffy mother


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Culture and Countryside Change*. Conservationists no longer sought to restrain the car as a threat to the beauty and tranquillity of rural England. The car, in fact, became the chief means by which the middle classes could explore those beauties and tranquillities. Instead, conservation efforts were directed at restricting unsightly landscape and roadside developments including advertising. In 1929, for example, the Shell oil company was persuaded to remove nearly 18,000 outdoor advertisements. This relatively trivial environmental focus illustrates the fateful shift from resistance to acceptance that accompanied the spread of car ownership among the middle classes. Cars had ceased to be the perquisites of the rich. We are all more spurred to oppose what we can’t have! Now that the monster has got out of control, greens have to face up to the pleasurable side of motoring, and take the debate on from there. The car didn’t get where it is by advertising alone, even though cars are by far and away the most expensive consumer goods promoted on television and one of the most repetitively plugged products. Advertising, which turns vague wants into compelling needs, cannot work its magic on inert material. Cars offer freedom of movement, privacy and the pleasure of sitting behind a great deal of power on the open road (where it can still be found). For conspicuous display a high quality car is in the same league as diamonds and gold, but it can be brought out more often and seen by many more people. These treasured attributes of the car are partly formed by the car itself, so there is a self-reinforcing spiral at work. For instance, the presence of cars has given us greater expectations of movement, and has * (The National Trust, 1996)


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Beloved monster 11

also created a culture of privacy on the move (compared with the communality of public transport). For rural dwellers, far away from the frequent public transport of urban areas, there is often little choice but to own a car. People need the car because they live in the country – and yet many have moved to the country because of the car. Like the train before it, the car has transformed our expectations of where we may live. In the 19th century railways created a class of travellers, later called commuters, who no longer had to live close to where they worked. On a daily basis they travelled from quiet and pleasant suburbs to their work in the noisy and unhealthy cities. In the second part of the 20th century the car took this process further, allowing commuters to penetrate even deeper into the countryside, using their vehicles to travel to a station and taking the train to town. In the 21st century, helicopters have extended this process for the rich so that literally everywhere in the country may be considered commuterland. With the spread of choppers, light planes and perhaps in the fullness of time flying cars, the consequences for land take and regional cultures will be enormous. Thus there arose a disconnection between where we work and where we live, with many people either wanting or expecting to travel vast distances to their jobs. When the government was building new towns like Harlow and Stevenage in the Fifties and Sixties, it was already becoming too late for the integrated communities that the plans envisaged. Residential and commercial quarters, separate but adjacent, might be all very well but those who could afford it much preferred to live in picturesque villages and travel to work by car – a pattern to be re-created later in the new city of Milton Keynes.


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12 Air Madness: Road’s mistakes repeated

Nor was it necessary any longer to have offices and factories in central urban areas well served by public transport. With the attraction of lower site costs or rentals, many offices and factories moved to the edge of town or even into the country. The last years of the 20th century were the era of the business park and the industrial estate. A car was all but essential to reach them. Workers in Wrexham, in North Wales, achieved the unenviable distinction of being Europe’s most cardependent town, with 93% using the car to get to work – the same level as Los Angeles and Detroit. Meanwhile, it became increasingly common for households to contain several cars. With several earners in the family, each needed a car to get to work. Car sharing with others in the same workplace held very little appeal. It meant a loss of privacy and flexibility of movement, two of the main attractions of the car. There might be insurance complications. Driving myself to work I can play exactly the music I want, and I can come and go exactly when I choose. Few drivers were sufficiently hard pressed to need the extra money from car sharing. Through shopping and leisure, the car has transformed the geography of the nation. Edge-of-town supermarkets and Aladdin’s caves of do-it-yourself hardware would not be there without cars to carry the customers in and the goods out. Some stores provide free buses to tour the villages and bring in the car-less, but the rationale is overwhelmingly that of car access. Meanwhile, golf courses in the middle of the country depend utterly on the car, while stately homes and pleasure parks without the car would receive not hundreds of thousands of visitors each year but just a few coachloads. The shape of our towns and cities has been transformed by the car. The prewar city of Plymouth had a


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quarter-million people crammed into half the space occupied by the same population a generation later. The compact cities and towns of the horse years have been replaced by sprawling urban areas. It is partly about replacing slums with decent homes but it is also about spreading property ownership and building wide not high. Why not when access to the centre no longer depends on our feet taking us there or a tram from the next street corner? Predicated on the personal mobility of the car, second and even third homes are within reach of more and more. At the start of the 21st century one of the most pressing social problems is that in many areas local people cannot afford to buy houses. Commuters and second-homers have pushed prices beyond the reach of local wages. Well-to-do retirees looking for a pleasant spot for their last years compound this complex process, but essentially it is powered by the car, allowing easy access for the incomers. England alone has more than 300,000 second homes, with others in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Without the car the housing market outside the urban areas would settle at a level much more affordable for local people. Commuters would keep prices high in areas served by the train, but demand for second homes in areas like East Anglia and Wales would collapse. It is not only local people who suffer from a distorted property market. First-time buyers are often priced out. By 2007 starter homes were eight times average earnings in some areas. The Halifax mortgage bank reported as far back as 2002 that first-timers could not afford to buy in more than a third of 451 British towns and cities. The least affordable places of all were London and popular suburbs and commuter towns like Richmond, St Albans, Sevenoaks, Winchester and Windsor.


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But the crazy prices uncovered in the Halifax survey go far beyond the big city effect of demand driven by popularity and scarcity: many smaller places suffer from unaffordable prices because they are popular dormitories – they are within easy commuting range by car. The consequences of the car for Britain’s towns and cities were plainly set out in the Buchanan report, Traffic In Towns. This was published in 1963 after a period when the soaraway growth of private motoring had started to show itself. A character in A.J. Cronin’s The Northern Light (1958) suffers a puncture while driving from a northern city to a nearby seaside village. While the puncture is being mended “Smith kept looking down the road, hoping for a car that might give him a lift, but the only conveyance that passed was the local bus going in the opposite direction”. A few years later Smith would have been more likely to be mown down by stepping into the traffic stream. Between 1951, when the Conservative party returned to power and relaxed controls of consumer spending, and 1963 the number of cars increased fourfold – broadly, from two million to eight million. This transformation in mobility was incredibly sudden, and few people expected it. From eight million, car ownership has kept on going: the figure that stirred Colin Buchanan and his associates was around a quarter of the present total of more than 30 million. The message of the Buchanan report – widely misunderstood as a crude plea to pull town centres to bits to accommodate the car – was that society must choose how it wished to cope with the car. Things could not go on as they were. That did not stop the authorities from hoping they could, and ignoring the strategic issues for many more years.


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Much of the problem, as it emerged from the 1992 report Where Motor-Car Is Master, from the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE)*, was that for many years the Department for Transport had been in effect the ministry for building roads. (This phenomenon is repeating itself as the same department now acts as cheerleader for aviation growth.) Its fixation with roads went back even further than 1936, but the Trunk Roads Act of that year was a turning point. It gave the then Ministry of Transport control of 4,500 miles of national through routes, and the ministry itself became the builder of new trunk roads. “The fundamental significance of the Trunk Roads Act [said the report] was that, by giving the ministry a direct executive responsibility for this one aspect of transport only, it inevitably resulted in an organisational commitment to inter-urban roadbuilding at the expense of an overall and balanced view of transport needs.” It pursued its road plans without much attention at all to broader planning considerations, although new roads have immense consequences for the shape of towns, the nature of employment and pressures on land use. The department “has developed in isolation from land-use planning, focused on road construction rather than overall transport planning, divorced from railway development or operation but has successfully promoted, built and justified substantial public investment in the trunk road network”. Here then is the same myopia that now makes the Department for Transport go hell for leather for aviation growth.

* In 2003 the Council for the Protection of Rural England became the Campaign to Protect Rural England, keeping the same initials (CPRE). This book uses the new name when referring to events after the change


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An ‘acceptable level’ of deaths IF the car as the destroyer of rolling country acres is relatively new, other concerns go back to the dawn of motoring. The car has always been seen as dangerous. Relative to the number of vehicles in use, the car is in fact far less dangerous today than it was in the 1920s. The death toll, at just over 3,000 a year for Great Britain* (ie excluding Northern Ireland), is broadly the same. Improved driver competence, better road engineering and safer vehicles have all contributed to this improvement; yet much has come about because motor vehicles have taken virtually sole possession of the roads. Few children play in residential streets because of fears of traffic. Pedestrians rarely venture on country roads without sidewalks, and cyclists take their lives in their hands by joining in the traffic. Only the occasional herd of cows being driven along the road, to the fury of drivers, is a reminder that the highway is for everyone. Rail crashes generate enormous concern and extensive inquiries, yet the same level of deaths on the road, every day, goes unremarked. As a society we simply do not see road deaths in the same light as other types of homicide. We see 3,000 fatalities as an acceptable level of deaths in exchange for the convenience of the car, rather like First World War generals weighing the scale of casualties against the military value of the operation being undertaken. Can anyone doubt that if road deaths soared to 100,000 a year this would trigger a dramatic change in the way we use roads? Punishments handed out in courts are often lenient, sometimes absurdly so. No wonder relatives of the dead wail “Is that all his life was worth?” * 3,160 in the 12 months to March 2007, with 32,121 killed or seriously injured


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The worst case of indulgent sentencing discovered during research for this book concerned Emma Foa, a 56-year-old writer and jewellery designer who was killed when cycling in Kings Cross, London. Although she was wearing a helmet and a luminous reflector jacket, Foa was crushed by a turning construction lorry whose driver was looking for papers at the time. The judge described this action as “inadvertence”. The driver, Michael Thorn, aged 52, admitted careless driving. He emerged from court with a £300 fine and £100 costs. He was allowed to keep his licence, with five points added. No wonder Jean Dollimore, cochair of the Camden Cycling Campaign, described the penalty as “an absolute disgrace”. For lenience, the case of Andrew Littlejohn runs the Foa case close. Littlejohn’s inattention at the wheel caused two deaths when his articulated lorry crossed the central reservation on the M5 and hit oncoming vehicles. He pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention, and walked away from Taunton magistrates court with a £170 fine plus £59 costs and six penalty points on his driving licence. Here are some other examples of society’s casual approach to travel safety: Lorry driver Graham Jagger was involved in a crash with a minibus when five died. Magistrates at Hinckley (Leicestershire) heard that although Jagger had a sleeping disorder that caused drowsiness, he had been at the wheel for 13 hours. He was fined £2,500 and banned from driving for two years. Taxi driver Dominic Brown, 33, was able to stay driving despite notching up 19 penalty points. He admitted crashing into another car while reaching for his mobile phone. Lincoln magistrates accepted Brown’s argument that he would lose his livelihood if he were banned.


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Even sentences that look tough or moderately tough on paper are not what they seem because with good behaviour and pressure on prison spaces only half the time will be served: Lorry driver Paul Browning was found to have sent a text message on his mobile phone – here we go again – while driving. He struck and killed a young man who was standing beside a vehicle in a layby. Judge Daniel Worsley, at Southend Crown Court, sent Browning to prison for five years. Even more lightly treated was Rachel Begg, aged 19. She used her mobile phone nine times in 15 minutes while at the wheel. On the ninth occasion she was sending a text message and smashed at about 70mph into another car, killing grandmother Maureen Waites. Begg, who admitted dangerous driving, was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court to four years – a penalty described by the road safety charity Brake as “deplorably low”. Builder Gary Hart fell asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover and caused a rail crash at Selby, Yorkshire, in which 10 died. He had spent hours through the night talking on the telephone to a woman he met on the internet, and then set out on a 150-mile drive to work. Hart’s vehicle ran off the road on to the West Coast mainline, where it was hit by an express train. With an estimated closing speed of 147mph, this train was forced into the path of a goods train. Mr Justice Mackay, sentencing Hart at Leeds Crown Court to five years, described Selby as “perhaps the worst drivingrelated incident” in recent years. Hart, however, was said to be “shocked and angry” at his conviction. The law goes so far as to offer drivers positive temptation to join the uninsured, a group that is more likely than average to commit other traffic offences. According to figures unearthed by the Liberal Democrats in 2007, the average fine for uninsured drivers


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was £169 –around half the typical annual insurance premium. The fine had actually fallen by a quarter over the previous 10 years. Add to that the probability of not being caught: only one in five illegal drivers is prosecuted, often having been picked up for other road offences. Despite years of publicity about the risk of “concertina collisions”, two people died and more than 100 were injured in a pileup involving 100 vehicles on the M40 motorway north of High Wycombe. Cars were still colliding when police arrived. With wearisome inevitability the police reported that drivers had been going too fast in foggy conditions. Mobile phones are only one among a range of facilities to tempt drivers away from what should be their sole activity in a moving car: driving. Only one, but probably the most potentially lethal. A landmark study published in 2002 found that using a mobile phone at the wheel is more dangerous than drink driving. The study, by the respected Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), found that typical reaction times of drivers using hand-held mobile phones were 30% slower than those of alcohol-impaired drivers. Handsfree phones also increased reaction times. The UK blood alcohol limit is 80mg/100ml. At 70mph drivers using mobile phones took almost half as long again to stop as drivers without distractions. Compared with a normal stopping distance of 102ft at that speed, alcohol-impaired drivers stopped in 115ft – but drivers using hand-held phones needed 148ft and those on hands-free phones 128ft. In the light of these findings, it is disturbing that the legal ban on using a mobile phone while driving covers only hand-held phones. The ban was introduced in 2003 and later toughened up with the addition of penalty points on the licence. Later still, amid concern


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that the law was still being flouted, drivers were told they face up to two years in jail if a charge of dangerous driving can be sustained. The survey was commissioned by insurer Direct Line. Spokesman Dominic Burch explained: “We chose to quantify the risk involved by comparing driving performance while using a mobile phone to driving while over the legal alcohol limit. Drink driving is clearly an established danger in the eyes of drivers. Eventually we would like to see the use of mobile phones when driving, both hand-held and hands-free, become as socially unacceptable as drink driving.” It would be a start if driving a public service vehicle while using a mobile phone became socially unacceptable. It is an all too common experience to see bus and coach drivers chatting on a mobile while the lives of many passengers depend on their concentration. We should have fewer road deaths if cars were not able to go so fast and accelerate so quickly. Those who are quick to make the social case for the car would be hard pressed to say why cars must be able to reach 120mph or to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds. A car with a top speed of 60mph would do all the jobs that drivers claim to need it for; it would be safer, use less fuel and, being unable to compete on speed, boost the attraction of railways. Actor Robert Lindsay, under the apt headline Me and My Big Mouth, told the Daily Telegraph how his mother collapsed while he was on the phone to her. “I put the phone down and suddenly I was in the car. It took me 55 minutes to get from Buckinghamshire where I live to the hospital in Leicester. That’s 118 miles in 55 minutes. I walked in and I held her hand and she died.” Apart from the sheer exaggeration – it would be impossible to average more than 120mph unless Lind-


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say had transferred to a helicopter – this quote illustrates the all-too-common belief that our needs trump everything: it is all right to speed and to endanger others if my personal circumstances are urgent enough. Romantic novelist Erica James was, it seems, happy to admit to being an aggressive driver. “She likes to be first away from traffic lights, loves accelerating around corners to test the handling of a vehicle and despises automatics because they can’t change gear fast enough,” the Daily Telegraph carolled. Wow, make way! If driving more slowly is the answer for road safety, devices to help business users detect speed cameras spread the opposite message. Morpheous Ltd, of Rochester, announced “Fatalities from road accidents have fallen by up to 50% in areas where speed cameras have been fitted”. The logic of such information is surely to co-operate with the cameras – but no, what was being offered was a “speed camera warning device” called Geodesy, linked to a satellite-based global positioning system which “pinpoints the location of every known speed camera in England, Scotland and Wales and warns you as you are approaching one”. It was stressed – twice – that such a device is legal. From a time when the only communication device was to stop at the next public telephone box we have reached the point where drivers can make their cars their offices. The tone of the media when reporting new motoring gadgetry is invariably breathless, as with this typical example: “Ford’s 24.7 concept cars – a saloon, estate and pick-up – are suitably big, boxy and versatile. Yet their interiors posit a brave new world of internet access and having your e-mail read to you by your dashboard. Don’t fret: you talk face-tofacia to switch on wipers and lights and, inevitably, log on to any internet chat room you fancy.” The “wholly


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interactive car” was said to be “a favourite notion” of Ford’s vice-president of design, J. Mays. Faced with the technology people can hardly be blamed for using it. But it would take a supreme optimist to believe that drivers will use mobile phones, listen to their emails and take part in internet chat only when the car is snugly parked in a layby. Convenience technology lay behind the tragedies of two children. Five-year-old Michael Dury, of Croydon, played with buttons in a car and activated an electric window. It closed up and strangled him. It was reported that one of his parents had left the vehicle for a moment to fetch something from the house. Sarah Henderson, also aged five, died in the most harrowing way imaginable when a Mercedes 230 estate car rolled into the River Thames at Shepperton. Her grandfather had started the car and then returned to the house to fetch his glasses. Despite desperate rescue efforts by Sarah’s father as the car moved forward, she could not be freed from the back seat where she was strapped in and drowned in the river. She died because of three elements in the design of the luxury vehicle – two of which are purely convenience features. The parking brake on the Mercedes was foot-operated, making it impossible, according to a police accident investigations officer, to apply the brake from the passenger side while the car was moving. An automatic choke was installed which, the investigator explained, would operate in cold weather tending to move the vehicle forward. Even if Sarah had freed herself from the seat belt she still would not have got out. Child safety locks meant the back doors could be opened only from the outside. Neither Michael nor Sarah would have died in a car from before the era of special features – cars with rolldown windows, a handbrake, a manual choke and


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back doors that could be opened from inside. At least, we may think, car (and lorry) drivers are safer in their vehicles than they have ever been. The motor industry extols every sort of safety feature, and no doubt has some more up its sleeve to be introduced over time. For drivers this level of security may be an illusion. More effective brakes don’t lead to more efficient braking: instead, as any pedestrian or cyclist will testify, they allow drivers to approach corners and junctions faster than they did before – returning the risk of an accident to its former level. In other words, drivers adapt to circumstances, maintaining a constant level of risk that each individual finds acceptable – behaviour known as risk compensation. Thus safety benefits become adopted as performance benefits, as Robert Davis indicates in Death on the Streets*. “Interventions for ‘road safety’ tend to redistribute danger and accidents, rather than eliminate them,” he says. Dr Gerda Reith, a lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University, pointed out that human beings have a dual way of looking at risk. She said: “If you want something quite badly and there’s not much chance you’re going to get it, you tend to think that the probability of getting it is higher than it really is [eg, winning the National Lottery]. But if there’s something negative that could happen to you, then you tend to think that it won’t happen.” On just such a basis do millions of us drive every day.

Scary theory of taking risks RISK compensation as a publicly debated safety issue has its roots in a 1975 research paper by a University * (Leading Edge Press and Publishing, 1993)


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of Chicago economist, Sam Peltzman. He concluded that a plethora of vehicle safety standards from the US government had had no effect on overall traffic fatalities. Because of changes in drivers’ behaviour, safer vehicles may have saved some occupants’ lives at the expense of more pedestrian deaths (precisely the fear generated by 4x4s a decade later). In 1982, G. J. S. Wilde of Queen’s University, Ontario, argued that risk is an inherent part of our psychological makeup. Not only can we not avoid risk, we need risk. James Hedlund neatly explained* Wilde’s risk homeostasis hypothesis (the term now being used interchangeably with risk compensation): “Wilde hypothesizes that we each have a ‘target level of risk’ and measure risk on our own ‘risk thermostat’. If the perceived risk of a situation exceeds our target level, we will act to reduce it. And if the perceived risk is lower than our target level, we will attempt to increase our risk back to our target level through more dangerous actions.” The term risk homeostasis is taken from the selfregulatory mechanism by which we unconsciously maintain body temperature. Hedlund himself pointed out that risk compensation pervades other areas of our lives. Many sports, for example, like ice hockey and American football, require players to wear protective equipment. Some players have compensated by acting more violently within the confines of the rules. In the UK, John Adams of University College, London, concluded that seat belt laws were not effective. He unsuccessfully opposed their introduction in Britain, commenting that “protecting motorists from * In the journal Injury Prevention (2000), which reprinted his Haddon Memorial Lecture at the Fifth World Conference on Injury Prevention and Control. This section is based largely on the lecture


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the consequences of bad driving encourages bad driving”. Like Peltzman, Adams believed that vehicle safety measures reduced risk for passenger car occupants but increased risk for pedestrians and cyclists. Risk compensation has become widely accepted, but not everyone is convinced. Addressing topical concerns about sports utility vehicles, Graeme D. Ruxton of the University of Glasgow denied that unsafe behaviour by the drivers of 4x4s supported the theory (British Medical Journal, 2006). This theory, he spelled out, implies that because drivers feel intrinsically safer in bigger, more robustly built vehicles they can indulge in unsafe behaviours without putting their life unduly at risk. Ruxton preferred what he called a “simpler explanation”: variation in personality or other traits linked to car choice and behaviour in the car. “There is a strong chance that traits that affect decisions about which car to buy also affect in-car behaviour,” he wrote. “For example, people in their 60s are less likely to own a sports utility vehicle than those in their 30s and to use a mobile phone at any time (whether in the car or not). Sex is another likely confounding factor, as are numerous personality traits.” No scientific theory (even Darwinism) commands universal support, but risk compensation among its other merits provides an explanation for the paradoxical experience that removing road markings or switching off traffic lights may reduce accidents. In other words, in these situations our comfort level for risk is lowered and we take more care. In a Dutch experiment, the fatality rate at dangerous junctions dropped to zero when traffic lights were removed. The reason for the improvement was that drivers had to keep eye contact with other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians instead of allowing the signals to dictate their driving behaviour. They slowed


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down to less than 20mph, when a child is five times more likely to survive than one hit at more than 30mph. The same reverse psychology was used by Wiltshire County Council, which removed the centre white lines on sections of five main roads. All were in or near towns. A council official said the lack of central guidelines created “a measure of uncertainty” and made drivers more careful. As aircraft become safer, perhaps pilots engage in risk compensation more than we realise! This book is not suggesting, however, that there is a safety issue here, or likely to be one. It does become increasingly an issue, however, as private flying expands. The demon driver on the roads translated to the air is a terrifying prospect. Unless we manage to alter our collective mindset, the same acceptance of fatalities, the same casual approach to safety and the same determination to take risks will be seen with even worse consequences.

Horse manure, and worse IN the dawn of motoring the car was hailed as the paragon of cleanness that would clear the streets of horse droppings. So it has. Yet we would not think much of a doctor who cured a skin ailment while failing to deal with kidney disease. Streets are clean of horse droppings, and worse pollution fills the air. Emissions from motor vehicles are among the main sources of greenhouse gases, which underlie global warming. The Stern review on the economics of climate change, published in 2006, found that transport was responsible for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions* – * The figure is for worldwide emissions in 2000. The current level will be higher


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equal to those of industry. Pollutants include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, benzene and hydrocarbons. They also pose a more immediate risk than climate change, bringing on respiratory ailments, coronary problems and cancer. Transport emissions are an important part of our “carbon footprints”. Offset schemes are intended to keep these in check by, for example, planting trees to soak up carbon dioxide. Offsetting, however, is no easy fix as is explained in Chapter 3. Catalytic converters reduce emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide but increase the output of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas. Diesel engines are at once greener and less healthy, putting the ecologically minded motorist in a quandary. Diesel produces less carbon dioxide than a petrol engine, but more nitrogen oxides and particulates. A badly maintained diesel engine is much “dirtier” than a badly maintained petrol engine. Professor Roy Harrison of Birmingham University said US research extrapolated to Britain suggested that particulates caused about 4,000 lung cancer deaths a year – about one-tenth of the total. The provisional figures indicated that mortality rates increased 6% for every additional 10 microgrammes of particles per cubic metre of air. A solo car driver produces three times as much carbon dioxide as a train passenger travelling the same distance. Thus over the 110 miles from London to Birmingham: car 30.7kg, train 10.8kg. Other modes are bus/coach 16.0kg and plane 28.3kg. It needs three occupants in the car to match the emissions of train travellers (each person in the car accounting for 10.2kg)*.

* www.transportdirect.co.uk


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The European Commission (EC) wanted an eventual ceiling for cars of 120 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre travelled (g/km), but pressure from the industry and the motoring lobby forced it to downgrade this to 130g/km. The average for cars sold in 2005 was 162g/km. Here are examples of cars and their emissions, in rising order of pollution (all g/km): Toyota Prius, 104; Citroen C1, 109; Fiat Panda 1.2, 127; Renault Clio 1.2, 139; Volkswagen Golf 1.6, 163; BMW 330, 174; Ford Mondeo 1.8, 182; Mercedes-Benz E320, 202; Porsche 911 Carrera, 266; Range Rover 4.0, 389*. When cars have more than one occupant these figures are correspondingly reduced, but around 70% of cars and vans entering UK towns and cities in the morning peak period contain only the driver. The dilemma for ecologically minded petrol-heads could not be clearer, nor the argument for car sharing on journeys to work. These numbers have focused attention on finding less polluting alternatives. The petrol-driven internal combustion engine would be readily recognisable to the 19th century automotive pioneers. In their motive power and most else, cars are a Victorian technology with 21st century refinements. Manufacturers are often accused of not trying hard enough to produce cleaner alternatives to the petrol engine, but they say that we the public don’t want them. At least the petrol/electric hybrid has established itself as a favourite with bien pensant road users. Every self-respecting film star arrives at a premiere in a Toyota Prius. Hybrids switch themselves to the motive source best suited to the road conditions: electricity for the stop-start circumstances of urban driving, petrol for the open road. The Prius is low in pol* Daily Telegraph, February 2007


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lution because of the use of clean electricity, but further back in the fuel cycle the generation of that electricity (unless from a nuclear power station) has produced pollution. Electricity generation is one of the main areas of polluting emissions. The hydrogen fuel cell, if it ever becomes practicable for cars, will be in some ways the ultimate non-polluting power source: the only emission is water vapour. Again, look at the overall fuel cycle: a great deal of electricity has been used to produce the hydrogen. Other problems associated with the hydrogen fuel cell are storage of the hydrogen at the correct temperature and the monitoring and avoidance of hazardous leaks. Although it sounds scary, so is petrol. We are driving around in bombs, except that we have got used to it. General Motors demonstrated a prototype hydrogen-powered car called Hy-wire, with the motive unit producing 94 kilowatts of power (equivalent to 126bhp). Its performance characteristics were stated as: top speed 100mph; 0-60mph 16 seconds; fuel consumption equivalent to 16-35mpg. Russell Bray of the Mail on Sunday reported on the unusual ride: “Frankly, the silence when cruising is eerie. Pedestrians wouldn’t hear you coming ... just the gentle hiss of steam coming from the exhaust pipe.” Biofuels are another technology promising less pollution. All sorts of crops can be turned into fuel for diesel engines. Vegetable oil from the fish and chips doesn’t have to be thrown away! The people of Llannelli, Wales, put their cooking oil to good use, but were stopped by the police because excise duty on petrol was being lost. The current popularity of biodiesel goes some way to fulfilling the hopes of Dr Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, who never intended it to run on a form of petrol. In 1900 he demonstrated the engine


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running on converted peanut oil. John Vidal wrote in the Guardian: “Diesel was motivated by a humanitarian vision. He thought that his highly efficient engine, which was adaptable in size and could use various fuels, would allow threatened independent craftsmen and artisans to take on the large industries which virtually monopolised the dominant power source of the time – the expensive, fuel-wasting steam engine.” Alas, biofuels land us in another quandary. We solve one environmental problem and produce another. Vast acreages are needed to grow energy crops on the required scale, most likely in the Majority World where it will lead to food shortages, the expulsion of communities from their land and forest clearances. Paradoxically, the last effect produces the result biofuels are meant to avoid – leaving more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as the trees that absorb it are chopped down. That much of this is happening already became clear in 2007 when the United Nations’ World Food Programme announced that maize, wheat and soyabean prices had risen by 50% over the past five years. A key reason is farmers growing crops for biofuel rather than food. Alternatives to petrol lessen the problem of polluting emissions, but will not solve it. The only non-polluting motor car is a stationary one with the engine off. In Britain, a prime cause of environmental pollution is juggernaut lorries carrying goods that could far more cleanly be carried by rail. The CPRE’s Where Motor-Car Is Master (see earlier this chapter), makes clear that rail freight had been declining for decades before juggernauts came along. Now everyone (except hauliers) wants goods back on the railways, but the die was cast as far back as the Fifties. The huge public investment in building motorways, which started in


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that period, was a hidden subsidy for road haulage. The desirability of keeping freight on the railways was recognised, but British governments of the day did little about it: “In many other countries it was realised that the construction of large motorway systems brought a need to regulate road haulage operations in the wider interest; but in the UK the Ministry [of Transport] merely deplored the railway deficit and washed its hands of the fact that its own actions were increasing the railway’s freight difficulties.” Juggernauts are the offspring of motorways, but they have become common on lesser roads and urban streets as they make deliveries to stores. One of the worst pollution problems caused by the use, or rather misuse, of motor vehicles is the system of “just in time” deliveries. This means that supermarkets no longer maintain large warehouse stocks, but receive deliveries daily of the items they need (including exotic fruit and vegetables air-freighted into the country – itself an environmental issue). It also means fleets of lorries, many mainly empty, dashing around the country. These journeys would not be needed with conventional warehousing. Praised by business leaders and hailed as an extension of consumer choice, just-in-time is a case of business being unwilling to look beyond short-term profits to the wider social issues.

Rivers of noise THE motor car, like water from a leaky pipe, gets everywhere, destroying privacy and assassinating remoteness. When Dorothy Wordsworth rented a cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District she was worried


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that her poet brother William would be disturbed by the passage of the carrier’s cart twice a day. Modern writers would think themselves fortunate with one hundred times that traffic flow. In The Missing Three-Quarter, Sherlock Holmes describes a fruitless search in the Cambridge area for the vanished man: “Chesterton, Histon, Waterbeach, and Oakington have each been explored, and have each proved disappointing. The daily appearance of a brougham and pair could hardly have been overlooked in such Sleepy Hollows” (from The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1904). See them now! We have become desensitised to noise so that we barely notice the river of traffic flowing past our doors in the cities or the motorbike scramblers beating up bridleways in the country. Often it is the most attractive streets that suffer the most: the avenues in towns laid out before the motor age and picture postcard villages where vehicles force their way through streets whose shapes date from medieval times. There is no respite from traffic noise over vast areas of the countryside. Motorways can be heard from two miles away, or more. Noise nuisance is made worse by the thoughtlessness of many drivers. The arrogant motorist of yesteryear has become Everyman in his lack of awareness of those around him. A single car or motorbike with an exhaust that has been altered to produce maximum noise sends an in-yer-face message that is heard in hundreds of homes. People who would not think of singing and dancing in the street at three in the morning are happy to stay chatting around the car with the engine running, under the windows of those trying to sleep. It is seen as normal to treat the car to a prolonged (and unnecessary) “warm-up” at 6.30am, a time well calculated to wake up neighbours in front bedrooms. Doorbells could be removed for all the use that


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taxi drivers make of them: the only way to announce one’s arrival is to sound the horn, whether it is four in the afternoon or four in the morning. The car is a perfect symbol of how society tends to disintegrate into its individual elements. For Philip E. Slater, in The Pursuit of Loneliness (1970)*, a private means of transport is one of the ways in which Americans “attempt to minimize, circumvent, or deny the interdependence upon which all human societies are based”. He wrote: “An enormous technology seems to have set itself the task of making it unnecessary for one human being ever to ask anything of another in the course of going about his daily business.” Slater’s other examples are a private house, a private garden, a private laundry, self-service stores and do-it-yourself skills. (If Slater were writing today he doubtless would include email, which has drastically reduced the number of business phone calls to the extent that some people find phone calls from a stranger threatening.) Because of this desire for avoidance “we less and less often meet our fellow man to share and exchange, and more and more often encounter him as an impediment or a nuisance: making the highway crowded when we are rushing somewhere ... taking the last parking place ... Because we have cut off so much communication with each other we keep bumping into each other, and thus a higher and higher percentage of our interpersonal contacts are abrasive.” Thus is road rage born of the culture of isolation. In Coventry Cathedral in 1996, a service to celebrate the centenary of the motor car proved too much for campaigner Angel Quercus. In the city of Lady Godiva and supported by members of Friends of the Earth and Roadpeace, she appeared naked in the cathedral shouting, “This is in memory of my mother * published by Beacon Press, Boston


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and thousands of others who have died.” The service acknowledged the downside of the car before celebrating the motor industry as “the lifeblood of the Midlands”. As the highlight of the service an 1897 Daimler and a new electric Peugeot 106 were driven down the cathedral aisle – a memorable occasion when two objects of worship, God and the car, came together under one roof.

The dance goes on THE 20th century was the century of the car, and the 21st century looks as if it won’t be much different. Alistair Darling, when he was transport secretary, admitted that road congestion would not be reduced by 2010 as called for in the government’s 10-year transport plan. On the contrary – in a message of deep gloom for those already in despair at the country’s strangulated roads – congestion was expected to rise by 11-20%. On motorways and main trunk roads the increase would be 1-15%, and in large towns and cities it would be 920%. We are addicts who know about the problems, but we are willing to lay all aside for the next fix of sheer convenience. According to the Commission for Integrated Transport, Britain has the most congested roads and worst commuting times in Europe (and things are expected to get worse). Almost a quarter of main inter-urban roads suffered delays of an hour or more compared with 9% in Italy, 8% in Germany and 4% in France. British roads were used more intensively than in any other European Union country except Spain. The commission, which was advising the government, said roads and railways had been “starved of investment” for half a century and public spending on


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infrastructure still lagged behind that in most EU states. Although there is one car for every two adults in Britain, vehicle ownership clearly has not reached saturation point. Perhaps, like infinity, saturation will never be reached. In the United States, there are more cars than licensed drivers. In Britain, the number of cars is predicted to increase by at least a third over a decade. By 2016, according to the government’s Highways Agency, traffic will be between 36-57% higher than in 1996. The agency found that motorways and trunk routes made up 4% of the country’s roads but carried two-thirds (67%) cent of road-borne freight traffic. Most of these cargoes would be travelling long distance, underlining the trade lost by railways. Commercial traffic has switched so decisively to road that it needs the faith that moves mountains to foresee another distribution pattern. In the meantime, a hillock was shifted with an announcement about parcels, long driven off the railways in significant numbers. English Welsh & Scottish Railway was to establish a network of parcel services from Walsall in the Midlands to Mossend, Aberdeen and Inverness in Scotland with trains travelling at up to 110mph. The £1m project, which was mainly funded by the Scottish Executive, was said to enable nearly one million lorry miles to be removed from Scotland’s roads each year. EWS was eyeing a London to Scotland parcels service. Twenty-eight academics headed by Professor Phil Goodwin of University College, London wrote an open letter to the British government urging more action to manage worsening traffic conditions. Professor Goodwin said: “On current trends we expect progressive, steady deterioration in traffic conditions and congestion. There isn’t any possible way of building enough road capacity to outpace growth in traffic.”


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In London, the school run was exposed as a major contributor to congestion in figures compiled by Trafficmaster for the Evening Standard. During half-term journey times were reduced by up to 50%. The “school run” proves to be an understatement as parents use their cars to carry children to an everwidening range of activities. A survey for car repairers Autoglass found that London mothers typically make 28 trips a week ferrying children. In the stress of trying to get somewhere on time, mothers were even prepared to put their own children at risk. One in five had been involved in an accident on these trips, more than one in three sometimes forgot to belt up their children and a similar number admitting cutting up other vehicles. More than half admitted jumping traffic lights. One of the world’s most ambitious attempts at traffic control was launched in London in February 2003, covering a central zone of eight square miles. This was extended four years later to most of the adjacent areas of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster (although Mayor Ken Livingstone’s two main political rivals vowed to abolish this extension). The mayor, it was widely believed, had grasped a nettle that other politicians avoided. Drivers entering the congestion charge zone had to pre-pay £5 a day (now £8), with exceptions for essential users and reductions for zone residents. Those who entered the zone without having paid were sent penalty notices. The computerised charging system – based on cameras reading number plates – suffered many teething troubles, with frequent complaints of cars being recorded when they were nowhere near London. However, by the autumn the mayor was buoyant about the scheme. The official report, Congestion Charging: Six Months On, said congestion was at its lowest since the mid-1980s. According to the report, 50,000 fewer cars per day were entering the charge zone, but only 4,000


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fewer people – suggesting a shift to the use of public transport. If it seemed too good to be true, it was. The mayor’s annual report for the year 2006 had to admit a “significant reduction in decongestion” (a veiled way of putting it). Buried in the detail and ducked in the summary was the finding that vehicle speeds in the congestion charging zone were falling back to where they were before the charge came in: 15 kilometres per hour (9mph) in 2006, 16kph (10mph) in 2005, 17kph (10 1/2mph) in 2003, the first year of charging. The precharging speed was 14kph (8 1/2mph). Just as disappointing was the finding that upon the introduction of the scheme congestion had dropped by 30% but by 2006 was a mere 8% lower. The mayor unconvincingly blamed roadworks, but even London does not have enough roadworks to explain this trend over years. Mayor Livingstone then upped the ante by announcing a plan to exempt from the congestion charge cars with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, ie those producing up to 120g/km of carbon dioxide. The plan also included a trebling of the charge, to £25, for vehicles producing above 225g/km, a bracket that includes large sports utility vehicles (4x4s, or “Chelsea tractors”), some high-powered sports cars and luxury cars. The 100% exemption for low-polluting cars gave their owners every encouragement to drive into central London. The mayor announced he was taking another look at the plan after greens pointed out he would be adding to the congestion he wanted to avoid. Four years on, the sad lesson from the London congestion charging scheme appeared to be the inelasticity of demand for personal transport, that is, that pricing has only a limited and declining deterrent effect. This has implications for a national scheme of road


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pricing. Salvation, it seems, may lie elsewhere. The small Midlands town of Daventry has plans for a form of public transport that at last offers the prospect of prising people (voluntarily) out of their cars. Personal rapid transit (PRT) is a community facility that provides what until now has been the unique selling point, and the special attraction, of the car – privacy. The Daventry scheme, as described to an international conference of transport specialists in the town in 2007, involves 50 kilometres (31 miles) of track in loops with 50 stations, meaning a station within easy reach of all the busiest areas. Driverless pods wait offline at stations. When occupied and instructed where to go, the pods leave the siding and join traffic on the loop. The pod seats up to four people and is personal to the user. No-one has to share even if there are others at the station. Since no-one expects to wait more than one minute for the next pod, that would not be a hardship. PRT is not a new idea, and if it exists nowhere in the world* that is for several good reasons. These include cost, policing of the automated system, obstacle avoidance on the track and recovery from breakdowns. Daventry, however, is keen to give it a go and write itself into transport history.

For the lack of a crystal ball IF the policymakers of 1910 had been able to see the long-term effects of the car, it is unimaginable that * The Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system in West Virginia, USA, has existed since the 1970s. It is not a true PRT because the cars are communal


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they would have acted as they did. Or rather as they failed to act to balance car use with broader social needs. Railways would have been promoted as longdistance people movers instead of being left in the hands of private enterprise and later in the interwar period overshadowed by the transport ministry’s obsession with roads. Driving to work as the sole occupant of a car, or taking the car instead of the train for inter-city business trips, would have been seen as deeply anti-social, and probably penalised by regulation and taxation. The entitlement of motor traffic to invade every lane and byway would have been felt as incompatible with peace and privacy. There would have been no motorways because there was no need for them Unlimited engine size and performance would have been unlikely to escape legislation. Cars that reach the legal speed limit in second gear, with advertising that encourages speeding, would have been viewed as destroying safety on roads and streets. Four-by-fours would have been a common sight where they belong, off the roads, but the idea of a “sports utility vehicle” would have been seen as oxymoronic nonsense. There are vehicles for sports and vehicles for utility, but why should anyone want to combine the two? Cyclists would have had priority over cars on all roads and (since the equivalent of the Lycra lout has existed since the birth of the bicycle) pedestrians would have had priority over cyclists. In the event, car use has been unrestrained and until recently the policy was to build more roads to accommodate it. Even in the 21st century, after abundant evidence that new roads create more traffic, that mentality dies hard. New Labour’s brave plans on taking office in 1997 about restraining car use died with the motorists’ fuel


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tax revolt of 2000 – the first and for years the only time the Blair government lost its electoral lead over the Conservatives. Matters of war, pensions, health and public transport might be shrugged off by battered voters, but cars never! In 1910, policymakers could not know that the car, still little more than a hobby for the rich, would become the beloved monster of today. At first sight, the policymakers of 1950 have more to answer for. This was at the edge of the period when car use in Britain leaped upwards: the policy response not only failed to foresee the dangers but also stimulated traffic growth by planning super-fast inter-urban motorways. However, to curb traffic would have been politically impossible by then. It would have denied mobility to blue-collar people just when they were able to afford it. The only time that the motorisation of the world might have taken a different road was at the beginning. Traffic has grown under a laissez faire paradigm where roads are free for all and anyone who can afford a vehicle can have one. The alternative social benefit paradigm – stillborn in 1910 – sees road space as a scarce resource to be rationed for the general good. It also recognises that motor vehicles are dangerous as well as useful – another reason for the state to act. Few people have difficulty with the principle of restricting use of scarce resources or dangerous substances, although they may bitterly dispute where that principle is applied. Radio frequencies, for example, are allocated by the authorities to protect emergency communications and to avoid a babel of overlapping broadcasts. Heroin cannot be bought across the counter because the state recognises a duty to discourage an individual’s self-destruction. Another group of everyday products are useful and dangerous at the same time. Tobacco, the trigger for a


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range of conditions from cancer to hypertension, is pleasant to smoke. The humble aspirin can cure our headaches, but may cause gastro-intestinal bleeding. If their downsides had been realised at the outset, tobacco would probably be banned and aspirin available only on prescription. If our Edwardian forebears had been able to see the future, the ubiquitous car would have been similarly restricted. The social benefit paradigm, many will say, could never have prevailed because economics dictated otherwise. But it is unsound to argue that the way things happened is the only way they could have happened. For example, the Protestant Reformation was not bound to happen in some countries of 16th century Europe and not others, while in yet other countries it was done and then undone; but that is how events worked out, forever changing the history and character of Europe. In the interwar period it was generally believed that “road and rail transport were by nature complementary” for goods and commuters, according to Peter Thorold’s The Motoring Age. Perhaps a small shift in attitude by government would have kept them that way. Present attempts to manage car usage, little as they are, are welcome but are far too late in the day. Speed bumps, chicanes, ever more roundabouts even in the open countryside, all treat the symptoms and not the cause of the illness. Turning the motorway hard shoulder – designed for breakdowns and access of emergency vehicles – into an extra lane is a desperate expedient (known to the Department for Transport as “innovative thinking”). It was announced in 2007 for the Birmingham motorway box, with the prospect of a national roll-out. In the economists’ jargon, these are supply side solutions. They cannot work while traffic continues to


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grow. What is needed is the demand-side solution of persuading people to drive less. But there is no government campaign adapting the Second World War slogan: is your (car) journey really necessary? There is only the slightest attempt (through taxation) to tackle the problem of the cars themselves. Manufacturers have a heavy responsibility for creating much of the danger of motoring but behind the manufacturers are we, the public, ever eager for the next drop of performance. The advertisement industry and the motoring press continue to be heedless about safety and pollution. The Kia Sportage Titan was advertised under the headline Phwoar x Phwoar. Despite the clever pun about this 4x4, the advertisement perpetuates the threadbare connection between cars and sex – the car as a birdpuller. The official CO2 emissions for the Kia Sportage Titan were stated as 187-237g/km. At the top end this is almost double the European Commission’s desired level. The Dodge Nitro was headlined in a national newspaper “Controlled aggression”, and described as: “Allnew, mid-size SUV [sports utility vehicle] featuring aggressive styling, which is likely to be the car’s selling point”. SUVs, in fact, are the perfect expression of the meme-me culture. Mostly destined never to see a field, they give the owner feelings of security and superiority while threatening other road users and spewing extra CO2. The connection between aggressive driving and accidents does not inhibit media coverage of 4x4s and other performance vehicles. On the contrary, as we saw above, aggressive driving is frequently celebrated. Without a sea-change in attitudes, we can expect the same sort of publicity for private planes when the time comes. The consequences will be even more extreme.


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Among policymakers an alternative to the laissez faire paradigm is struggling to emerge: some have yet to catch up with the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which in 1994 published a landmark blueprint of 100 proposals to shake the UK’s obsession with the car. Of lasting significance is the commission’s detailed analysis, showing how the car came from almost nowhere after the Second World War to overwhelm other modes of travel. It called for a reduction in the roads programme with the observation that new roads actually increase traffic. The point was new to most of the public, although known to transport experts for years. Gabriel Roth, for instance, wrote in Paying for Roads (Penguin Books): “Most people are aware of the difficulties created by the increasing use of motor cars and by the inadequacy of our roads to cope with them. The trouble obviously lies in the shortage of road space, but this is no ordinary shortage, for improvement of the road system appears to result in the generation of yet more traffic.” Tentative the conclusion may be, but this observation appeared in 1967. It is also noteworthy that the issue of road pricing was around even back then. Roth noted that in London and many other cities average speeds in busy times were around 10mph, the speed upon which he based his arguments for road pricing. He went on: “People will not make a regular habit of spending hours in traffic jams. When conditions become so bad that that speeds fall to nine or eight miles an hour they cancel their journeys, travel at different times, go by train or by bicycle, or walk.” In 2006, according to the Mayor of London’s official figures, average vehicle speed in the central London congestion zone was 9mph. And still the cars keep coming.


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The Newbury bypass in Berkshire is an example of a new road generating traffic. It was opened in 1998 after a massive conservation battle, the “Third Battle of Newbury” following the two battles of the same name in the 17th century Civil War. The forecast traffic level for 2010 was in fact reached in 2004. Shaun Speirs, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “We strongly opposed the bypass because we knew it would generate extra traffic and cause increased sprawl. It has done both of those, and has also proved more dangerous [than the former main road through the town].” The former Conservative government approved some contentious road schemes including Newbury and the fearsomely ugly cutting at Twyford Down, near Winchester. In its later years, however, it started down the green trail by rejecting some road schemes, particularly Oxleas Wood in London. The successor Labour government began with a cautiously tougher line on car use, but by 2007 had moved so far back in with the roads lobby as to approve 50 miles of 10-lane motorway on the M1 north of Leicester. The extreme sensitivity of the roads issue is shown by the government’s quick abandonment of the plan to raise petrol prices after the mass protest by motorists in 2000 and by 1.8 million signatures on the Downing Street website in 2007 protesting against road pricing. An ITV Teletext poll asking whether drivers should pay per mile to use roads recorded 95% no and 5% yes. Government faces an uphill struggle to introduce road pricing. In the full-blown form favoured by officialdom, this would charge drivers different fees to use different sorts of roads (more for town centres, less for the country) and perhaps also to travel at different times of day. Most costs are caused by congestion, it is argued.


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Because of the huge opposition to road pricing, government appeared to pull back. More limited plans envisaged city congestion zones on the pattern of London* and charging on motorways. A rollout to cover the entire road network was likely on hold rather than abandoned. Road pricing in its ultimate form would be a further disaster for the English countryside, already ravaged by motorways, trunk roads and flightpaths. Motorists wanting to escape the toll on the most popular roads will seek out the lesser roads – adding to the despoliation of rural areas. The countryside would be better protected by reverse road pricing. We should pay more for the privilege of using byways and lanes (with an exemption for residents), with motorways and trunk roads at a nominal cost. The effect would be to concentrate vehicles on the roads most suited for them, and free most of the country from the spreading plague of traffic. Road pricing is seen as the antibiotic of last resort to restrain traffic, but motorists suspect it would be another form of taxation – a reasonable fear given the Treasury’s dislike of hypothecation, or earmarking revenue for a particular purpose. The satellite-based technology needed to implement the charges also raises privacy concerns, with the authorities able to track the movements of every vehicle. The equipment needed for a position-based charging system is not expected to be available for the mass market until at least 2014. Meanwhile, 1,500 cameras make a ring around the central London congestion zone, using automatic number plate recognition to link vehicles to their ownership details and enforce the charging scheme. * Despite money on offer for pilot schemes, city congestion zones elicited little interest from the local authorities that would run them


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Worries that information would be used for purposes beyond road pricing proved well founded with the announcement that police would have access to data from the London congestion charge. The purpose was to fight terrorism. Previously such information could be given only on a case-by-case basis; now the “bulk transfer” of information would be allowed. No great political gumption is needed to spot the thin end of a whopping wedge. After the terrorists, the animal liberationists? And after them? By chance, the answer emerged at the same time: it is all of us who commit offences great and small. The Home Office, apparently inadvertently, released papers suggesting that motoring data would be used nationwide and for all types of crime. The papers, the Daily Mail reported, revealed that proposed legislation “would allow the bulk transfer of automatic number plate recognition data from third parties to the police for all crime-fighting purposes”. The misuse of technology to create a surveillance society puts in jeopardy the public’s eventual acceptance of road pricing. It remains to be seen how inelastic the demand for driving would be under road pricing. The experience of the London congestion charge, referred to above, suggests that drivers might absorb the costs and carry on motoring. In other words this and other mitigation measures are likely to fail unless motorists experience a dramatic change of attitude – a conversion on the North Circular Road. There is little sign of such a shift. Drivers agree in general that traffic growth must be curbed. Restrictions are fine as long as they don’t apply to me. That is because I am a special case. Even dedicated greens tend to develop a blind spot when it comes to cars. Dick and Brigit Strawbridge, living in Cornwall with echoes of The Good Life television series, and described by the Daily Telegraph as


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“extreme green”, nevertheless told the newspaper that they run two motor cars – a situation somewhat redeemed by the fact that one does 70 miles to the gallon and the other runs on biodiesel. Nicholas Mavroleon, a former hedge fund manager who is now more interested in hedges and other forms of silviculture, told the Evening Standard “sheepishly” that he runs an A-class Mercedes. “I don’t want to sound like a barmy tree-hugger,” he explained, plainly succeeding. Stuart Clenaghan, co-founder of a company that arranges carbon offsets, told the same newspaper “with a grimace” that he has a BMW. At least he is producing work for his company to tackle. While obvious lifestyle contradictions are a disservice to the green movement, the average motorist is not helped by an all-or-nothing approach to car ownership. Some greens give the impression that the only virtuous motorist is the ex-motorist, but this approach helps the fanatical driver. Every car owner can find at least one reason for keeping the car with a clear conscience. A more productive approach for most people is to keep the car and voluntarily replace it with bus, train or bicycle wherever it is practicable to do so. We don’t need to take the car to pop to the corner shop, or to drive from London to Birmingham for a meeting when the train will take us there. Yet this self-denying ordinance is open to the difficulty that people are paying twice for the journey. The car, in fact, locks us in to motoring. Like other pieces of technology, once we have it we need to use it in order to justify its cost (at least to ourselves). In time, it just might stop being socially acceptable to use the car where easily accessible substitutes exist, in the way that most people no longer see drink-driving as acceptable. It is through a process like this,


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rather than traffic management or penalty charges, that the world might return to motoring sanity. Don’t bet on it though. The best opportunity was lost in the dawn of motoring, and few drivers want to give up their wheels for a paradigm. We have seen in this chapter how the spread of the motor car to its present state of near-universality has been achieved at enormous social cost. Many now agree, too late, that the ways in which motoring has developed is wrong. Consequences include: new roads that generate yet more traffic; noise that damages physical and mental health; pollution that is a major contributor to climate change; sprawling suburbs that devour fields and green belts; remote places that are no longer remote, with the loss of privacy; tacit acceptance of a certain level of deaths, and correspondingly lenient penalties for unsafe driving; manufacturers who glory in producing extravagant performance, even though risky behaviour is hard-wired into many drivers; a motoring culture that spells failure for mitigation measures like congestion charging and road pricing. The subsequent chapters will argue that these same outcomes await us in the air, with arguably even more malign consequences, unless we act now to balance our need for travel with the broader issues of a healthy society and a healthy world.


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A WORLD THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN An alternative vision of our times AS the Edwardian age morphed into the interwar years and those into modern times, cars stayed a luxury. This was brought about by taxation, making the driving test more difficult (incredibly, there was no compulsory driving test in Britain as late as the 1930s) – and simply not making up the roads. In reality, the extensive programme of tarring roads carried out in the 1920s encouraged more traffic as the road-building programme did later on. Cars became less attractive when manufacturers co-operated with the government in limiting performance. Engines were made to produce a top speed of 55mph (88kph) – plenty enough for personal mobility but not enough to encourage speed merchants, whose needs were catered for in off-road leisure circuits. Private alteration of a car to increase its performance became a criminal offence and largely ceased to exist. Like cock fighting, also illegal, it happened but in secret and on a small scale. Limiting the top speed of cars gave a fillip to railway travel. With trains able to travel at more than twice the speed of cars, it seemed pointless to use the car for long-distance journeys. Buying a car became a discretionary purchase with many who could afford it choosing not to. Ordinary people did not resent being car-less anymore than they resented not being able to dine at the Ritz Hotel: what mattered was the quality of alternative transport arrangements. The railways flourished, both for long-distance and commuter journeys. Towns and cities stayed compact, and expansion tended to follow the railway lines, so no-one was very far from a station. There was, needless to say, no traffic congestion. The railways enjoyed a benign circle of increasing investment and traffic growth. Much of the investment came from the government, which put the railways at the centre of national transport strategy. The attraction of trains was increased by the switch to diesel and electric. Britain was among the world’s leaders, and steam engines were largely phased out in the 1930s (a generation before it actually happened).


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The railways continued to be the main carriers of goods traffic. Roads were unsuitable for long-distance haulage, so rail and road maintained their 19th century partnership with lorries taking the freight onwards for local delivery. Of course, improvements were made to reduce trans-shipment costs and delay. These included packaging goods in containers and ingenious “road-railers” that ran on both track and road. Opinion surveys found little dissatisfaction among the car-less, who in the interwar period were helped by the improvement of the railways, the spread of bus services and innovative council schemes to collect people from their homes (of the sort that actually were not tried until half a century later by which time the genie of universal car ownership was out of the bottle). Buoyant demand produced a flourishing car hire sector. Many people declared that it was pointless to buy a car when one could be so easily borrowed. Nobody was refused because of his or her insurance record: the government was the insurer for hire cars, and its client base was so large that it could easily accommodate a few bad drivers. The expansion of the railways, together with shipbuilding, continued the demand for steel and engineering components, but these industries did not grow in the way they would have if cars had gone into mass production. As a result thousands were spared the tyranny of the low-paid assembly line, finding employment instead in a range of high-value craft industries and social work activities. Car factories were small scale, with much work done by hand. The conveyor belt – tried by Henry Ford in the United States, but with limited success – was a rarity. Although the motorisation of the world generally proceeded in a controlled and considered way, there were renegade countries. France was famous for its let-’em-rip approach to cars, and Paris was noted for its traffic jams. Cars were much cheaper in that country, which sometimes made visitors angry – until they thought about the traffic jams and the running costs.


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The low-key motoring sector spilled over into aviation, with the result that aircraft were used only on journeys for which they were most suited: intercontinental and longer trips where the train took too long. There were no internal flights in the UK. Private flying, while not banned, was a rarity. It was widely viewed as deeply anti-social because of the disturbance of the many for the benefit of the few. Each individual enjoyed a lifetime air miles allowance that was generous enough to allow a single round-the-world trip each year, or several shorter trips. These allowances were strictly non-transferable and non-tradeable. It was recognised that otherwise the rich would buy air miles from the poor, denying the latter group the benefits of travel. Nor could the well-to-do get round the allowance with private aircraft. These flights also counted against the allowance. Younger people aged between 18 and 30 had a larger allowance than their elders. This was so they could experience other countries and contribute to the building of one world. Business, on the other hand, had no separate allowances and anyone making a business trip had to do so out of the personal allowance. At first, this was seen as draconian, but the measure had been in place since the birth of aviation. Soon nobody thought anything about it, communicating as the 21st century dawned by telephone, email, fax, videophone, teleconferencing, interactive websites and even letter. Most Britons felt that these transport arrangements produced the right balance between the opportunity to travel and a clean, quiet and healthy environment. Or in a more down-to-earth way, they meant that travelling was fun.


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AIR: THE PROSPECTS


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TWO SKY-HIGH GROWTH

JUST as cars have conquered the land, so aircraft are poised to conquer the skies, with the same environmental downsides in even more extreme form. Later chapters will review the issues of pollution and climate change, noise, safety, land take, privacy, and the growth of private flying. But first we should consider how this subject of aviation growth has broken out into the public space after years of being restricted to green groups. It is easy to see why. The continuing and substantial growth in flights and the numbers flying are being backed by the government at a time when worries about climate change have come to the fore. The official policies of encouraging aviation growth and of reducing polluting emissions are plainly contradictory. But the government is in denial. Aviation in Britain is growing on the back of tax concessions worth at least £9bn a year. The industry is one of the most powerful lobbies in the country, and zealously defends its privileges. It pays no fuel tax and no value added tax on any aspect of its operations. It has a lucrative franchise to sell duty-free goods. There are no emissions charges on domestic, European or international flights. Airlines pay landing charges to airport operators, and travellers face a modest air passenger duty charge (to be replaced from November 2009 with a charge per flight rather than per passenger). And that’s it.


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The Department for Transport published its white paper, or strategic proposals, The Future of Air Transport, in 2003 and officially reaffirmed it in 2006. Unless a future government withdraws the white paper – a key green demand – it will be the standard for aviation development for years, so it is important to know its details. Aircraft have been around almost as long as the car but, fuelled by the tax concessions described above, are only now coming into their own as a mature transport system – and a threat. When Orville Wright made the world’s first powered and controlled flight (lasting 12 seconds) in 1903, motoring was in its infancy. It was less than 20 years since Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler had produced the first practical horseless carriages. The legendary Model T Ford, which revolutionised the world’s motor industry with its 15 million production run, was five years into the future. H.J. Dyos and D.H. Aldcroft*, explaining the early years in Britain, say the economics of the two industries were quite different. The motor vehicle found a large and growing demand for surface transport that it could easily tap. The aeroplane had little in its favour except speed: the early aircraft were very inefficient with low capacity and high maintenance charges; people distrusted what they felt was a dangerous mode of travel. “There were no fortunes to be made in aviation as there were in developing motor transport,” the authors remark. The difficulties were long-lasting: “Few if any British air operators ever made a real profit in the interwar years.” The government had to come to the * British Transport: An Economic Survey from the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth (Penguin Books, 1974. First published by Leicester University Press, 1969)


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rescue in 1921 after the four pioneering air companies were unable to continue operations. Six companies, including two French ones, had been working the London-Paris route, but it was “inconceivable” that the route could support that number. Many routes, in fact, have been persistently uneconomic up to the present. However, the aviation industry’s situation overall was transformed after the Second World War. A mass market for foreign holidays emerged, followed more recently by cheapie flights allowing weekend breaks on the far side of Europe. The internationalisation of business meant a huge rise in this type of travel. The expansion of Western economies has left business leaders with the means and the appetite for corporate jets, while technology is bringing the prospect of personal air travel in forms barely imaginable.

Blueprints for the future THE event that catalysed opposition by green groups was the Department for Transport’s 2002 consultation document, The Future Development of Air Transport in the United Kingdom, with its headline prediction of a near trebling of numbers flying by 2030. In response to this trend, the DfT signalled a huge expansion of airport capacity, with options including a third runway at Heathrow, up to three new runways at Stansted and a brand-new airport at Church Lawford, near Rugby. To its critics the consultation document was a classic “predict and provide” exercise of the kind discredited for roads since at least the early 1990s (and with housing for more than half a century, since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 put paid to concreting


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the countryside*). The DfT insisted that the approach was not that of predict and provide, but for many people if it looked like a duck, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck it undoubtedly was a duck. The number of air passengers across the country, if growth was unconstrained (and the DfT did not seek to constrain it), was expected to rise from 180 million to 500 million annually by 2030 (with 300 million of these using airports in the South East). This could even be an underestimate, as the consultation document acknowledged. Growth projections have often been wrong, and this one was based on fare assumptions that looked shaky right at the start of the 28year forecasting period. The figures assumed a 1% per annum fall in fares in real terms, but fares were falling at twice that rate. It could also be an underestimate because since 2002, when the consultation document appeared, immigration particularly from Poland and other east European countries has taken off. These are frequent flying people as the migrants and their families back home visit one another. The UK population is predicted to reach 71 million by 2031 (2006: 60.5 million), further adding to the demand for flights. The difficulty, in fact impossibility, of making reliable forecasts over such a long period is illustrated by the peak oil issue. In this case, the prospects point in the other direction, to soaring oil prices feeding * This did not deter the Labour government in 2007 from announcing a massive house-building programme in response to assumed future demand, despite overwhelming public support for maintaining the green belts. The government was helped in this return to predict and provide by the 2006 Barker review of land use planning, which purported to put a monetary value on the countryside. A leading exponent of the dismal science, Kate Barker – a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee – illustrates Oscar Wilde’s truth about knowing “the price of everything, but the value of nothing”


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through into dearer flights and reducing demand. The experts disagree when world oil output will max out – some say we have passed peak oil already – but most agree that it will be before 2030. Even more astonishing was the expected growth of air freight. The consultation document pointed out that air freight had doubled between 1969 and 1989, had doubled again in the following decade and was expected to rise even faster over the next 10 years. It was mainly high-value items – like tropical fruit and vegetables – and express parcels. If demand was unconstrained, it was predicted to rise from 2.1m tonnes in 1998 to 13.6m tonnes in 2030 – a more than sixfold increase (548%). For anyone already troubled by night freight flights, the news got even worse: express parcels were expected to take a growing share of total freight demand. These, the document explained, needed 24hour airport operations for next-day deliveries. Already in 2000 at the main London airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton) there were a total of 13,000 air traffic movements (ATMs) between 10pm and 6am. The elaborate consultation looked more like a charade when the Department for Transport produced The Future of Air Transport, its white paper, the following year. This remains the official policy for aviation, reiterated in a “progress report” of December 2006. Publication of the white paper was on December 16, 2003 – one day before the centenary of the Wright Brothers taking to the air for mankind’s first powered, controlled flight. The DfT had simply taken the high growth scenario from its earlier consultation document and sought ways to meet it, to the tune of 470 million passengers a year by 2030. The white paper approved new runways at


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Stansted, Heathrow, Birmingham and Edinburgh with two more possible runways, and new terminals and other expansion at airports around the country. For greens, the plans were about as bad as they could be, particularly the absence of any attempt to limit growing travel demand. Or indeed a recognition of the need to do so. Instead, the government was determined that “over time” (a weasel phrase) the price of air travel “reflects its environmental and social impacts”, which is not at all the same thing. What price, for example, do you put on polluted air or aircraft noise or land concreted over for airport development? Making the aviation industry pay for its so-called external costs only has value if the environmental and social impacts are lessened or removed. Yet the white paper made clear that the industry has great capacity for absorbing costs without affecting growth. If the environmental and social impacts are not lessened or removed, charging is simply a revenueraising device or a way for the government to go through the motions of taking action. Here then was predict and provide, which even the DfT’s own consultation document of the previous year had seemed to warn against! The white paper stressed the need to balance the economic growth produced by aviation with environmental and social factors, particularly noise. It acknowledged that noise at night “is widely regarded as the least acceptable aspect of aircraft operations”. The consultation launched in 2002 had “underlined the significance of aircraft noise as a key environmental impact in the public mind”. Economic considerations were never far away, however. “We will bear down on night noise accordingly, but we must strike a fair balance between local disturbance, the limits of social acceptability and the economic benefits of night flights.”


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The white paper was long on environmental rhetoric, but short on specifics. An increase in air passenger duty – a flight tax on travellers – was ruled out (although a modest rise was imposed in 2007 by Gordon Brown in one of his last acts as chancellor of the exchequer). The introduction of value added tax on tickets and other airline transactions was not mentioned. Emissions trading was the one substantial way in which the government sought to show it would deliver on its green pledges. Emissions trading is a system whereby industries and companies are allocated amounts of pollution. Those that clean up their act can sell the unneeded part of their quotas to others who are exceeding theirs. If you can get round the politics (that is, you set the quotas low enough to produce a satisfactory reduction in pollution overall), and also the ethics (the well-to-do can buy their way out of trouble), emissions trading is attractive as a policy instrument. In the white paper’s words, “it guarantees the desired environmental outcome in a way that other instruments, such as charges, do not”. With aviation, however, it was very much a “jam tomorrow” proposal. Nor does emissions trading do anything about other nuisances of growing numbers of aircraft. Flying is not part of the emissions trading schemes operated by the European Union and the Kyoto climate accord. It is to be included in the next EU phase, which starts in 2011. It is likely to be in an “open” scheme – meaning that airlines can carry on polluting by buying quota from other sectors with a likely effect on their development and the products and services they offer. The Kyoto process is due for renewal around the same time (2012), creating a further opportunity for aviation to bear a share of environmental costs. No


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genuine technical obstacles exist to bringing international aviation and shipping into the next Kyoto period, a workshop in Oslo organised by the Norwegian government and European Environment Agency concluded. In December 2007, 15,000 politicians, officials, green activists, lobbyists and journalists jetted to the paradise island of Bali for a United Nations conference on saving the planet from climate change. Commentators questioned whether the uptake would have been so enthusiastic if the location had been Dusseldorf. The Future of Air Transport rejected all suggested new airports, including that at Rugby (Church Lawford) proposed in the consultation document. This at least was a benefit. The DfT preferred to develop many of the existing airports in all parts of the United Kingdom. The first of the new runways, expected by 2011 or 2012, was at Stansted. This would increase the airport’s capacity from an estimated 19 million passengers per annum (mppa) in 2003 to around 80mppa. A key advantage as seen by the white paper was that noise impact (since the airport is in a rural area) would be less than for the alternatives. The government would not promote or pay for the £4bn Stansted runway – raising the issue of who would. Heathrow-based airlines would resent paying for a runway they have little or no use for. Meanwhile, possible private investors might wonder about the business prospects of London’s number three airport, miles farther away from the capital than Heathrow. A third runway at Heathrow (shorter than the existing two) was considered to generate the greatest economic benefits of any runway option, but was put back to 2015-2020 because of air pollution around the airport, especially nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulates. The date was not set solely out of concern for


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residents’ health but by the knowledge that an expanded Heathrow was unlikely to meet the EU’s mandatory NO2 limits due in 2010. From 2015 “there would be a substantially better prospect of avoiding exceedences [sic]”. The DfT, in other words, was gambling on future technology, leaving local residents in limbo as to whether the runway will be built. The air pollution at Heathrow is made worse by the M25 and M4 motorways nearby. The M25 is the road that this same DfT is planning to expand to 12 lanes in the airport area. Noise restrictions, said the white paper, should be applied so that the 57dBA [decibels]* noise contour would be no larger than in summer 2002, when it was 127 sq km (49 square miles). Extra capacity to be achieved by the third runway was not stated, although with other measures overall capacity at the airport would rise to up to 128mppa, or double the then-capacity. Expansion at Gatwick was influenced by an agreement between BAA, the airport operator, and West Sussex County Council, ruling out a second runway until 2019. A new runway to be built after that date would be considered if the Heathrow pollution problems were not overcome, said the white paper. While understandable as a fallback position, the effect is to blight properties for years to come. The same applies to the possible runway at Glasgow (see below). This “generalised blight” occurs long before statutory remedies come into effect. According to the white paper, airport operators will be offering non-statutory schemes to address the problem. * A measure of average noise in decibels as heard on the ground: 57dBA is officially considered to be the level at which people start to be disturbed, although the measure understates the actual level of disturbance (see Chapter 4)


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The runway option preferred for Gatwick would increase annual passenger capacity to 83mppa, up from 40mppa. The Future of Air Transport did little to redress the concentration of airport capacity in the South East, which has such serious consequences for quality of life in that region. It also means that passengers from elsewhere in the country expand their carbon footprints going to and from London airports. One of the stated reasons for rejecting a new airport between Coventry and Rugby (Church Lawford) was that “significant constraints [would be] imposed on airport capacity in the South East”, as if that would be a bad thing. Instead, a shortened runway for Birmingham International was chosen with the condition that it should not be used at night – a proviso that looked born to die. Manchester, with two existing runways, is the only credible contender for a second UK hub airport, after Heathrow. The white paper noted the possibility, but proposed no steps to bring this about. It said Manchester, where another terminal was proposed, was using easily less than half its capacity – 19mppa against a potential of at least 50mppa. The proposed runway at Birmingham, midway between Manchester and London, makes the emergence of Manchester as a hub less likely. The Department for Transport acknowledged noise concerns at Manchester, where 70,000 people might find themselves within the 57dBA noise contour by 2030. However, this is less than the number accepted for Birmingham, where 81,000 are expected to be within that contour in 2020. A former submariner, Bryan Smalley, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, well expressed the case for a Northern hub airport. In the 1960s he was told to take his boat on a courtesy visit to Manchester (surely one


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of the world’s unlikeliest locations for a submarine). When he asked why, he was told that half the population of England lived within a 50-mile radius of Manchester. Manchester’s case for expansion is matched by the airport’s own appetite for growth. Although Manchester is often seen simply as one of Britain’s regional airports, the magazine Aircraft Illustrated found that it was among the world’s 20 busiest airports, with more than 90 airlines serving around 175 destinations. Even before the white paper passengers had been forecast to rise from 17mppa in 2000 to 40mppa by 2015. Manchester’s rate of growth has “alarmed both environmentalists and local community groups”, the magazine commented. In Scotland, a new runway was preferred at Edinburgh over one at Glasgow International. A key reason was that Edinburgh was expected to remain the focus of express freight and flown mail into Scotland. Glasgow was to have substantial terminal development, which with other developments would allow growth to be accommodated “under even the most optimistic [emphasis added] of forecast scenarios”. However, the need for another runway might arise towards the end of the plan period (ie, by 2030), and land should be reserved. There was likely to be “little pressure to develop land north of the airport, which might be needed for a second runway at Glasgow airport, because of existing land use and ecological designations”. The Air Transport White Paper Progress Report published in December 2006 was a polemical presentation by a government department that doubtless felt under siege. For example, the benefits of tourism were cited without mentioning that the UK runs a huge tourism deficit – Britons abroad that year spent more than double what visitors to Britain spent (see below).


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Increased use of public transport to reach Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham airports was cited but without giving percentages. Growth projections were said to be “fully in line” with the 2003 forecast. Passengers at UK airports were up 14% since the original white paper – an annual growth of almost 5%. Civil Aviation Authority figures over a slightly longer period show an even faster growth rate. Terminal passengers, all UK airports: 2001, 181m; 2006, 235m. This is annual growth of 6.0%. Much of it comes from the UK domestic market even though these flights compete with railway (and road) travel. Some locations are less than 200 miles apart, and air takes longer overall than rail. The Times reported that available seats on domestic flights had risen by one-third in six years, from 30m in 2001 to 40m in 2007. Airlines offered 50,000 seats a week between London and Manchester (198 miles), despite the two cities being served by a fast train every 30 minutes that takes just over two hours. Airline executive Jim French said: “The high cost of rail is making it much more attractive to fly.” The Times cited a return airline ticket in the morning peak between London and Manchester as costing £80 while the standard class open return train fare was £230.The cost of tickets is the single biggest factor inhibiting the choice of rail rather than budget airlines and cars. When unfavourable comparisons are made between air and rail, it is the turn-up-and-go rail fare that is quoted. Advance purchase rail tickets offer deep cuts, but they may be hard to find and they are not generally available at peak times. If aviation’s tax exemptions were removed, the fares imbalance would be reduced. If all transport modes paid their true environmental costs, travellers would flock to railways because they would be cheapest. That


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sort of costing regime requires the political determination that the government currently bestows on aviation, and a willingness to lead public opinion rather than be led. The progress report played the DfT’s favourite tunes of EU emissions trading (although this does not currently include aviation) and carbon offsetting. The latter was made to sound easy: £10 to offset the pollution consequences of a transatlantic return journey; £30 for an Australian round trip. In other words, carry on flying and pay a trivial amount to do so with a clear conscience. As the next chapter explains, only in a fantasy world is the answer that easy. Luton has been graphically described as London’s bucket-and-spade airport because of its concentration on cheap holiday flights. It celebrated handling one million passengers in a month for the first time in July 2007 – days after it delivered good news for greens, and presumably investors, by scrapping plans for a new and improved runway and terminal. Luton’s customers include easyJet, Ryanair, Flybe, Monarch and Thomsonfly. In the previous seven months alone, it opened up 18 new routes to destinations across Europe and North America. Airport owner TBI unexpectedly shelved plans for the replacement runway, choosing “to focus on making the most of the existing airport site”. Emily Armistead of Greenpeace said: “This is great news for the climate. The airlines operating out of Luton have been pushing a binge-flying culture that’s deeply damaging to the environment.”


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PRINCIPAL UK AIRPORTS, BY PRESENT SIZE (million passengers per annum)

London Heathrow London Gatwick London Stansted Manchester London Luton Birmingham Glasgow Edinburgh Bristol Newcastle Belfast International Liverpool John Lennon East Midlands Aberdeen Leeds-Bradford London City Prestwick Belfast City Cardiff Southampton Bournemouth Exeter Norwich Lydd (Kent)

Current

Predicted at 2030

increase %

67 34 24 22 9.4 9.1 8.8 8.6 5.7 5.4 5.0 5.0 4.7 3.2 2.8 2.4 2.4 2.1 2.0 1.9 1.0 1.0 0.7 0.003 (ie 3,000)

116 – 128 1 62 – 83 81 50 30 32 – 40 15 20 10 – 12 10 8– 9 7 – 10.5 12 – 14 4–5 7 82 6 4 5 7.1 1 3–4 2 4.4 1 2 2

73 82 238 127 219 252 70 133 75 85 60 40 55 25 150 233 150 90 150 274 200 100 529 66,567


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This is a table that does not appear in the 2003 Air Transport White Paper. The 2030 predictions have been assembled from figures in the text of that document where given – bizarrely, passenger numbers are not mentioned for Heathrow – filled out from the Department for Transport’s consultation document of the year before and airport operators’ websites. The white paper numbers are often hedged with conditionals like “approximately”, “nearly”, “almost” and “more than”. For the sake of clarity, this table gives only the numbers. Where 2030 predictions are expressed as a range, the percentage increase is calculated from the lower volume to give a conservative figure. Current figures are from the CAA’s UK Airport Statistics 2006. The 2030 predictions are from the white paper where these are given; otherwise predic tions from the 2002 DfT consultation document or airport operators 1 Consultation document (but NB, the white paper gives a near-static 2-2.5mppa for Southampton) 2 Airport operator’s website (and NB, the Lydd figure is for 2014)

It’s the economy, stupid BEHIND the government’s acceptance of aviation growth lay the conviction that it was essential for the economy. When the then-transport secretary, Alistair Darling, said “doing nothing is not an option”, he cemented the view that the government was ready to accommodate the aviation industry’s demands. “As a first step we need to do all we possibly can to make the most of existing capacity. But on any view that is not enough. We have built the fourth largest economy in the world; air travel is crucial to our expanding economy.” Ministers had clearly been persuaded by the economic case for aviation. It was a great British success story. The industry provided more than 180,000 jobs in the UK, and indirectly supported three times that number of jobs. Foreign tourists, many of them carried by air, were worth £13bn a year* – about 1% of gross domestic product. * By 2006 this had risen to £16bn


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British Airways’ chief economist, Dr Andrew Sentance, addressed the Confederation of British Industry’s national conference in November 2002, and appealed to business leaders to get onside with airport expansion. Quoting a report by Oxford Economic Forecasting (mainly paid for by the aviation industry), Sentance said good air links were vital for innovative high-technology and other high value-added industries, such as financial services. He declared: “The [aviation] industry cannot deliver these economic benefits unless it has access to the infrastructure needed to support its expansion.” By 2006 concern for the environment had been stirred into the mix, but the message was the same: that transport, and acceptance of transport growth, are inseparable from economic success. Sir Rod Eddington’s study of that year for the British government found “clear evidence that a comprehensive and high-performance transport system is an important enabler of sustained economic prosperity”. Eddington is a former chief executive of British Airways, so for him to have found against transport growth would be like King Herod coming out in favour of orphanages. The Eddington study said transport should pay its full environmental costs, but stressed the need to expand facilities. Strategic priorities should include the development of key international gateways (ie airports). A high-speed rail network in Britain was not necessary or cost-effective – a view strongly gainsaid by green campaigners, who want to persuade passengers to switch from air to rail for shorter journeys. Vehicle kilometres per annum are closely associated with GDP growth, Eddington found. From an index figure of 100 in 1980, both were just over 180 in 2005. This is a continuing party he is happy to attend. In


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any case, he added fatalistically, “simply stopping growth in transport demand is not a realistic scenario”. Others are not so persuaded by the government’s and the aviation industry’s favourite theme of economic benefits. The supposed need to keep the arteries of business open through airport expansion sits poorly with the fact that leisure is the main purpose of travel, as the figures directly below show. In the age of videoconferencing and the internet, the need for business travel is less. New airports and new runways create jobs, but the easier access to foreign goods and services including holidays also costs jobs in the home country. Ask fruit and vegetable farmers, or hoteliers in British coastal resorts. Aviation is part and parcel of globalisation, which has destroyed good manufacturing jobs in Western countries replacing them with service sector “McJobs”. Textiles and consumer electronics are among the UK casualties. The process – which damages workers in both the First and Third Worlds – is searingly described in Naomi Klein’s No Logo (2000). The creation of jobs is no ace of trumps for the aviation expansionists. It is disingenuous to play the job creation card when the country suffers from a shortage of Britons to fill existing jobs. This has been the driving force behind the mass immigration of recent years. Nor is job creation always good. Most of us would not hesitate to condemn a campaign that spread the joys of smoking, yet such a campaign would create jobs. Supercasinos create jobs but we wouldn’t necessarily want one in our town. Even drug trafficking creates jobs, for the traffickers. So jobs need to be weighed against their social consequences. In this light, more aviation jobs are to be found wanting. The main factor behind the growth of air travel and


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ministers’ reaction to it is the great British package holiday, and more recently the continental mini-break. Ministers believe that they mess with the public’s travel at their peril. We cannot have holidays in Spain, Cyprus and Florida, not to mention Australia, Thailand and the Caribbean, without airports and aircraft. On this issue we are all polluters now. In 2006, UK residents made 69.5m visits abroad, two-thirds of them for holidays. Overseas visitors to the UK made fewer than half the number of trips – 32.7m. The figures, from the government’s Office of National Statistics, are for all modes of travel, but air was the main mode. Apologists for aviation are fond of trumpeting what Britain gains from foreign tourists, yet they choose to overlook the massive deficit in tourism expenditure. The overseas visitors spent £16.0bn but Britons abroad spent £34.4bn. This is a tourism deficit of £18.4bn in a year. Spending is being exported – and hence jobs are lost in Britain. Hands up anyone who still thinks cheap flights bring economic benefits to the country! Short-term leisure travel doesn’t come shorter or more leisurely than groups from Britain who descend on Prague for stag weekends aided by budget flights costing as little as £18. Many men are already drunk when they arrive in the beautiful Baroque city for “cheap sex and cheap beer” visits. One bar manager complained that the stag groups “dribble into their beers and generally lower our standards”. At least the Britons have shaken off the football hooligan reputation. A police inspector said: “They are more pleasant drunk than the Germans are when they’re sober.” Just typical beneficiaries of cheap flights? Freedom-to-fly campaigners would find it tough to argue that the human rights of such groups would be infringed if flights became more expensive and they had to


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descend instead on British coastal resorts. Nor for more sophisticated UK travellers should life prove insupportable without a weekend trip to the Masai Mara, Kenya, or a day trip to a Norwegian fjord to see whales – yet both have been offered. For £1,030, two adults and one child could make a day trip to Lapland to find Santa. That’s two adults and one child. So whose outing is this? By 2024 weekenders from Britain will descend on Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town in a new generation of supersonic jets. This was the prediction of experts in a report commissioned by leisure giant Thomson. The Evening Standard reported that the experts expected the remote central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan to join the tourism mainstream. Meanwhile, Slovakia would become “the short-haul New Zealand” because of its unspoilt landscape. Unspoilt for how long? No European city was among the top five short break destinations in travel agent ebookers’ list for 2004 – the first time this had happened. The top spots were taken by New York, Bangkok, Dubai, Johannesburg and Los Angeles. The way that available flights create demand is well illustrated by the case of Matt Lewis and Nicky Bates, a young couple living near Stansted airport. They told the Channel 4 TV programme A Place In The Sun that they were spending £70,000 on a holiday home in Costa del Azabar, Spain, which they could reach for weekend breaks. Nicky explained that, beyond going to restaurants and pubs, they were “not making much use of our disposable income”. Second home ownership has been growing dramatically. At least 800,000 British families have places in the sun. An unholy alliance of developers and credulous journalists intent on filling up their weekend supplements promotes ever more distant property deals.


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Nowhere, it seems, is too far away for the British buyer in search of a “bargain”. A second-home in Borneo, readers of one newspaper were told, is “not as farfetched as you might think”. It could be yours for as little as £110,000. Here in this tropical paradise “you can peer at orangutans and clamber up the highest mountain in south-east Asia”. Never mind that the most likely place to see an orangutan is in a zoo. Most people in Borneo have never set eyes on one – but it’s the dream that counts. There’s only one practicable way to get to Borneo, and it’s not by sailing clipper. Whether it’s Borneo or Bulgaria, Spain or Florida, second home owners need airlines. They are a massive constituency against restraint in aviation growth. Tony Grayling and Simon Bishop in their study, Sustainable Aviation 2030, for the centre-left Institute for Public Policy Research, said the link between air transport and productivity growth was more readily assumed than proved, and therefore there was “serious concern” about predictions of future economic losses due to capacity constraint. They called for the “prudent” expansion of air transport, which was neither the unconstrained growth sought by much of the aviation industry nor the zero growth wanted by some green groups. In a report leaked to the Observer, this same institute, which the newspaper described as “New Labour’s favourite think tank”, called for new runways to be abandoned while existing capacity was able to be used more efficiently. Measures proposed by the author, Simon Bishop, included auctioning scarce landing slots at places like Heathrow and increased landing charges. The report said: “The key point is the Government must understand the climate change impact of future aviation growth ... Other industries are


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already footing the bill. The aviation industry is outside that. Other industries are effectively subsidising aviation.” The report slammed the government for being “in hock” to the aviation industry, according to the Observer. Flying Into Trouble, published by the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), cited a study by the government’s Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA) and said new transport infrastructure does not necessarily lead to gains in economic performance. It helps with economic regeneration only if a range of other factors are also in place. Quoting a study by Berkeley Hanover Consulting, Flying Into Trouble said the economic effect of bringing aviation growth under control would not be a net loss of jobs: it would simply mean a different distribution of jobs around Britain. Money not spent on air travel would be spent on other goods and services, creating jobs in those sectors. Flying Into Trouble claimed that Britain has potential extra airport capacity for which planning permission has been given of between 62 and 80mppa. If air travel grew until 2030 at the same rate as road traffic “the UK’s ‘capacity problem’ immediately disappears; existing planning approvals could cater for all that demand”. The government’s approach, said the AEF, “however dressed up”, remained that of predict and provide. It argued that demand could be managed by a combination of: • eliminating the aviation industry’s hidden and distorting subsidies; • charging a realistic market price for landing slots at airports (elsewhere, greens argue for capacity auctions);


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• ensuring that aviation fully meets its environmental and social costs; • encouraging passengers to transfer from air to rail for some domestic and Continental journeys; • not permitting capacity increases where these breach environmental limits, and where providing them would result in unacceptable environmental and social impacts. The environmental campaign group Transport 2000*, in a policy statement, called for aviation to be subject to the same sustainability constraints as road travel. It wanted clear strategies “for reducing the rate of growth, and ultimately the level, of air travel”. To manage demand, T2000 urged the promotion of rail as a substitute for shorter distance flights, the taxation of aviation fuel, the phasing out of duty free concessions and limits on growth in airport capacity. It also sought tougher overall limits on airport noise and pollution emissions.

First round to the industry PRESS comment made clear that the controversy over the aviation white paper was not simply eco-freaks versus the sane majority. Transport secretary Alistair Darling had declared it was not his business to stop people flying, but the left-wing Daily Mirror – read by less well-to-do people who would be most affected by price rises to limit demand – pointed out that cheap flights come at a price. The newspaper said: “The price of today’s cheap flights will be paid by tomorrow’s generations [in environmental pollution]. * Since renamed Campaign for Better Transport


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“It would be a bold government which put green considerations before the demands of travellers and the air industry. But we are entitled to expect better than another capitulation to the easiest solution.” (The Mirror was perhaps referring to the widening of the M25 and other motorway works announced earlier in the year.) Transport commentator Toby Moore, in the Times, wondered who these poor people are that the transport secretary does not want to price out of the air: threequarters of the passengers for low-cost airlines are ABC1s (professionals and managers). Moore wrote: “It might be churlish to wonder why the same regard is not given to the forms of travel that the poor actually do use. Bus and rail fares have risen by 42% and 35% respectively in real terms since 1984. “The opportunity to fly cheaply is only one source of pleasure in life. There is also the right to sleep peacefully, to breathe clean air and travel easily across your own country rather than to another.” The Future of Air Transport, in fact, gave the aviation industry almost everything it wanted, although not always as soon as it would have liked. The third runway at Heathrow was not envisaged until 2015 at the earliest. The extra runway is important for British Airways, allowing it to maintain Heathrow as the UK’s only national hub airport. BAA, the operator of Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick airports, even got a sixth terminal at Heathrow despite the bitter battles over Terminals 4 and 5. An ebullient Rod Eddington, British Airways chief executive (he of the transport study mentioned earlier), said: “For the first time, we have an effective forward-looking aviation policy which recognises Heathrow’s key role as Britain’s main gateway airport. “Its continuing development has been guaranteed


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with Terminal Five, the opportunity to introduce mixed mode in peak periods and a third runway with a dedicated terminal. That is excellent news for the aviation industry, customers, national and regional businesses and tourism.” In mixed mode operation planes take off and land on the same runway. Heathrow uses separate runways for takeoff and landing, and also swaps the use of these mornings and afternoons. This is called runway alternation. The system reduces disturbance to local residents, or rather shares it around, because landing planes do not take the same route all day long*. BAA’s appetite for growth evidently knows no bounds. It refused to rule out a fourth runway and seventh terminal at Heathrow – just days after a stricken Boeing 777 crash-landed in January 2008, narrowly missing houses. Most aircraft approach Heathrow over London because of the prevailing winds. Mike Clasper, BAA chief executive, commented: “Aviation is vital to the economic and social wellbeing of the UK, and we are pleased that the government has taken such a long-sighted, strategic view in this white paper.” The airport operator would press ahead with plans for a second runway at Stansted, addressing local community concerns “as sympathetically as possible”. * Runway alternation applies with westerly operations (planes landing from the east and taking off to the west). This is 70% of the time. During easterly operations (planes landing from the west and taking off to the east) runway alternation cannot be used. This is because of the Cranford Agreement, which requires aircraft to take off only from the southern runway during easterly operations. Cranford is a community at the east end of the northern runway. The agreement is intended to spare the community from intolerable noise. It prevents the full use of mixed mode (because aircraft sometimes cannot use the northern runway for take-off). The government would like a quick expansion of Heathrow capacity, which is why it wants to end the Cranford Agreement


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BAA would also work urgently to resolve the air pollution issues at Heathrow. Clasper said BAA was strongly committed to balancing aviation growth with measures to ensure that those who fly meet the full environmental costs of flying. For green groups the DfT’s elaborate consultation, which attracted around half a million responses, might hardly have happened. The greens agreed that the environmental measures in the white paper were nowhere near enough. Friends of the Earth accused the government of abdicating its environmental responsibilities by giving the green light to a massive expansion in air travel. It dismissed the white paper’s environmental measures as “window-dressing”, and predicted that they would have minimal impact on reducing damage from the expected increase in flights. The plans had “plunged into jeopardy” the government’s long-term target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly since the release of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) from aircraft is three times as damaging as the same amount of CO2 released at ground level. Tony Juniper, the FOE director, said: “The aviation white paper is worse than we feared. The government has sacrificed its environmental responsibilities to satisfy the demands of the aviation industry. Alistair Darling’s decision to massively expand aviation will not only be felt by people living near airports, it will affect people worldwide and impact heavily on generations yet to come.” Stephen Joseph, director of Transport 2000, said: “We’ve heard a few warm words on the environment but little more than that. The industry certainly hasn’t been given the cold shower it needed to bring it into reality. This was the government’s big opportunity to


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dampen down demand for aviation and bring its environmental and social problems under control, but it hasn’t taken it.” T2000 welcomed the principle that aviation should pay for its environmental and social impacts, but pointed out that no framework was announced for making this actually happen. The group said UK aviation enjoyed tax concessions of around £9bn a year, including no tax on fuel and no VAT. The Campaign to Protect Rural England said that in the long term the white paper was “set to land a disaster on our countryside”. The CPRE supported emissions trading in order to combat climate change, but pointed out that this depended on complex and uncertain international negotiations and would take years to introduce. With no interim measures in the short term, countryside and communities “will continue to suffer from this go-for-growth approach”. Andrew Critchell, CPRE’s aviation campaigner, said: “The white paper is fundamentally flawed in its failure to address the need to manage and reduce future levels of growth. Why can’t the government understand the direct link between allowing continued massive growth in air transport and the onset of environmental and social problems such as the further loss of the tranquillity of the countryside and damaging climate change?”

Residents fight back FOR campaigners at Heathrow the new runway proposal was the latest in a long line of expansion plans and broken promises. The airport has scarcely been free of controversy since after the Second World War when a modest flying field was expanded into an international airport with three villages, Harmondsworth,


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Sipson and Cranford, right beside it. Heathrow has a habit of making nonsense of traffic projections. In 1979 the public inquiry into a fourth terminal set a limit of 260,000 aircraft movements a year. By 1992 the airport was dealing with 410,000 movements and 50 million passengers a year. The airport’s owner, BAA – which was expecting larger aircraft that did not materialise – wanted a cap of 453,000 movements, a figure it expected to reach in 2016. Instead, the figure was reached in less than half the time. Heathrow was back in the news in November 2001 when the government allowed a fifth terminal after an eight-year public inquiry. The £4.2bn building has five levels each the size of 10 football pitches. A cap on the number of aircraft movements which accompanied the government’s decision did nothing to appease conservationists, who denounced Terminal Five as a “Trojan horse” for further airport expansion (which was duly proposed the following year). Under the cap annual movements were limited to 480,000 – a daily average of around 1,300 flights. This level was already in sight just five years later (2006), when there were 67m passengers in the year. True to form at Heathrow, the latest cap was soon under challenge. The Department for Transport’s 2002 consultation document signalled a third runway, which was duly announced in the white paper the following year. This also announced yet another terminal – number 6 – and raised the prospect of ending mixed mode operation (aircraft landing and taking off on the same runway) at peak times. This would mean breaching the 480,000 limit. Nothing was retracted in the 2006 “progress report”, which makes clear that the white paper is on course for implementation. A public consultation was duly launched the following year into the third


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runway/sixth terminal/mixed mode. This package of changes would increase Heathrow’s capacity to 720,000 annual movements. By 2030 the airport is projected to be handling 116-128mppa. Fears that the Department for Transport was in the pocket of the aviation industry were reinforced with news of BAA’s role. The Observer reported that the airport operator was closely involved in drawing up the framework for the consultation, and had provided data about pollution and noise. These included assumptions about emissions from new aircraft. A spokesman said the government needed the company’s “expertise”. But Justine Greening, MP for nearby Putney, said: “To have somebody who is benefiting from any decision to expand Heathrow providing and modelling data to prove it’s OK raises questions about the credibility of the information that the public will be asked to respond to.” The announcement of the Heathrow consultation followed the news that the second Stansted runway would be delayed until 2015, which was also the possible start date for the third Heathrow runway. This raised suspicions that the Heathrow runway was the DfT’s objective all along, with the publicity over Stansted a diversionary tactic. Pressure on the Heathrow flight cap was increased by the unequal, “open skies” deal struck by the European Union and the US government in 2007, against Britain’s opposition at first. The deal opened up Heathrow to airlines beyond the existing four, British Airways, Virgin, United and American Airlines – to anyone, in fact, who can obtain the coveted landing slots. The open skies agreement allows US and EU airlines to fly to anywhere in their respective countries. However, American planes can pick up and fly pas-


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sengers within the EU; the same freedom does not apply to EU airlines within the US. American airlines may buy up to 100% of an EU airline; their European counterparts are allowed only a 25% stake in US airlines. A termination clause means that the agreement may be ended if the United States has not moved to reciprocity by 2010. In the murky world of aviation what may happen and what is likely to happen are very different things. British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh described EU faith in American promises as “naïve”. The open skies deal was expected to mean more and cheaper – even cheaper, that is – flights, stoking the pressure for the third Heathrow runway. The main Heathrow protest group, HACAN ClearSkies, said the people of London and the Thames Valley would suffer “years of uncertainty” because of the planned third runway. The houses that would make way for the runway would remain blighted. John Stewart, the HACAN chair, also expressed dismay at the prospect of mixed mode runway operation. “The threat to end runway alternation in West London will cause fury amongst local people. It is the only thing that makes life bearable for them. “It will also be a betrayal of the government’s promise that flight numbers at Heathrow would not exceed 480,000 a year.” He said the introduction of mixed mode would immediately allow 560,000 annual movements. Stewart challenged the idea that airport expansion is about meeting business needs or about liberating poorer people to fly. “Short-term leisure travel is where the expansion will come,” Stewart said. “The government seems to accept that it’s not its business to stop people flying, but this will benefit mainly the well-to-do. The country’s top 10% of earners will be


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taking six or seven weekend breaks a year [if demand is not regulated].” Nor was there any evidence that businesses would relocate from London because of failure to expand Heathrow. “The London Chamber of Commerce found – evidently to its surprise – that Heathrow expansion was not an issue for businesses. International companies are in London because it’s a thriving financial centre, not because of Heathrow.” The London chamber’s report, titled The Business Case for Airport Expansion (March 2006), embarrassingly demonstrated the exact opposite. Based on interviews with 287 firms, mainly from outside the aviation sector, the report found that only 22% thought Heathrow should be expanded. Nor were the companies demanding growth at London’s other main airports: just 34% backed expansion at Stansted and 25% did so for Gatwick. Even worse for Heathrow’s expand-or-bust cheerleaders (who include the UK government), a mere one-sixth of company directors said they would consider switching their operations to a rival European hub, such as Amsterdam or Paris, given lack of capacity at their usual airport. This was described by the London chamber as a “small but significant number”. So what does that make the other fivesixths? Stewart argued that no new runways would be needed in the UK if the aviation industry’s £9bn a year tax concessions were removed, which would limit demand by causing travellers to pay something nearer the true cost of their flights. British Airways, privately owned but the nation’s flag carrier, pressed hard to expand Heathrow, with the airline “not interested in anywhere else” in Britain, according to Stewart. It saw the third


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Heathrow runway as “the only realistic option for maintaining an internationally competitive aviation hub in Britain”. This is a sentiment that clearly speaks to a government obsessed with competition from Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt airports. The message is given out, and picked up by commentators, that Heathrow is under threat. HACAN showed, however, that Heathrow and London’s other airports are the predators, not the prey. Between 1995 and 2004 passengers using the London airports grew from 83 million to 129 million, an increase of 55%. This widened the gap with Paris (from 55 million to 73 million) and Frankfurt (from 38 million to 51 million). Only Amsterdam grew at a faster rate but from a far smaller base (from 25 million to 43 million). When the Department for Transport published its plans for Heathrow, local residents were quick to react. Outside the British Airways headquarters an un-British scuffle broke out between protesters and security staff. The protesters were angry that a formal consultation exercise was being run on an invitationonly basis. Pushing and shoving lasted for 10 minutes until the police arrived. In Harmondsworth, next to Heathrow, protesters pressed into use signs on poles left over from the previous year’s general election. The signs were reerected with No Third Runway posters pasted over the Vote Labour message – a nicely ironic although apparently unintended way of letting the world know what the protesters thought about the government of the day. Harmondsworth is so close to Heathrow that its parish priest doubles up as a chaplain at the airport. This left Father Phil Hughes in something of a dilemma in the third runway dispute. He chose to


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stand by his parishioners in the David-and-Goliath fight. “I love aviation, but the community is distraught by the runway proposal,” said the Anglican clergyman. “It affects homes, schools, spiritual life. It is wiping history off the map.” Father Phil hoped that the seemingly opposite demands of industry and community could be reconciled. “We have to increase capacity and remain competitive,” he said. “But planes are getting bigger as well as quieter. With up to 800 in a plane we may not need new runways at all.” This idea has looked like more than a pious hope since the announcement of the Airbus A380 doubledecker super-jumbo. This has a maximum capacity for 800 passengers – although whether enough of such large planes will arrive in time to save the day is another matter. Heathrow is the world’s busiest airport for international flights and its second busiest cargo port. The offbalance sheet price of the third runway is the picturesque village of Harmondsworth with its 11th century church, medieval great barn and 16th century pub, the Five Bells, and the neighbouring village of Sipson. The week-long Camp for Climate Action in August 2007 demonstrated that airports had joined road schemes in the mainstream of environmental direct action. The protesters camped on a site next to the projected third runway at Heathrow although, with the weather bestowing no favours, only around half of the expected 3,000 showed up. The airport owner BAA tried to throttle the protest with an injunction covering the airport, surrounding land, the Tube line serving the airport and parts of the motorway network. Martin Chamberlain QC argued that the injunction was “an attempt to bind five mil-


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lion people” – a reference to AirportWatch, whose members include such respectably middle class groups as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust. The move failed, BAA winning injunctions only against three individuals, one of them John Stewart, and a direct action group, Plane Stupid. For Stansted, buried in beautiful Essex countryside, the impact of a new runway would be no less dramatic. The airport came into operation after years of bitter argument, and in 1991 was handling just 1.5 million passengers. By 2002 this was 14 million, and expansion to more than the present size of Heathrow is in sight. Norman Mead, a veteran campaigner and the then chairman of the Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) campaign, said: “The idea of a second Stansted runway is illogical and undeliverable The government’s ‘green’ credentials are now totally discredited by this white paper whose clear message is ‘To hell with protecting the environment, our national heritage and local communities: planes take priority’. Well, we’ll see about that!” SSE said it was committed to pursuing “a vigorous and relentless challenge” to the second runway. This would include legal, regulatory and planning approaches, notably with British and European courts and authorities as well as the European Commission. Stansted under the white paper proposals was to be the first of the new runways. In 2007 SSE was a principal party at the public inquiry into expansion of traffic on the existing runway – the forerunner of the battle over the second runway. Both sides played the numbers game. The protest leaders cajoled their members to turn out in force while BAA, the airport owner, gave security staff paid time off to demonstrate in favour of expansion. Stop Stansted Expansion, the most professional and normally the most assured of the airport protest


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groups, handed its opponents a publicity gift by featuring TV chef Jamie Oliver and the former Beirut hostage, Terry Waite, as high-profile supporters. When he joined SSE Oliver said: “Jules [his wife] and I grew up in this area and we love it; we are going to bring our children up here. We are amongst the thousands of people in this area who are really worried and upset by these [airport expansion] proposals; we just can’t begin to imagine the devastating impact that three new runways* would have on the whole region.” BAA, the Stansted airport operator, must hardly have believed its luck. It duly reported in its newsletter Plane Talk (April 2004): “In the last couple of years, Jamie has been in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the USA many times, Canada, Italy, France, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Spain and Austria. And he didn’t take the bus to get there. “We really do like the frequent-flying chef. But he is currently jet-setting at least eight times more than the average person … Where flying is concerned, Jamie seems to want to have his cake – and eat it too. So we ask the question: Jamie flies, why shouldn’t you?” The allegation of hypocrisy was repeated by Dan Hodges, director of the Freedom to Fly Coalition: “Two of the most prominent opponents of airport expansion are Jamie Oliver and Terry Waite. We are delighted that they fly and we certainly respect their right to protest against aviation expansion, but we can’t quite see how they can justify opposing aviation expansion while at the same time flying so frequently themselves.” The Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000) made frequent flyer Michael Palin its * The white paper scaled back this proposal in the 2002 consultation document to one new runway


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president. Palin’s other life as the presenter of TV travel programmes has taken him to every continent. His travels were backed up by a well developed website with details of his programmes – Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway Adventure, Sahara with Michael Palin, and Himalaya – making it easy to follow in his footsteps. There was even a list of hotels where he stayed (which included doss houses like the Marriott and the Hilton as well as Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel). No doubt the campaign group was delighted to have a “name” to lead it, but green groups need the right sort of name. At least another prominent supporter of the Campaign for Better Transport, the actress Jenny Agutter, is publicly associated with the greens’ favourite mode of public transport – railways*. Glaring examples of saying one thing and doing another encourage the unpleasant cynicism displayed by columnist Jan Moir, who wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “I’ve yet to meet the person, politician or otherwise, who takes carbon emissions seriously. On a deep level. On a level that suggests they are going to stay at home instead of ruining the planet by having a nice holiday or a lucrative business trip. Even if they have considered it, everyone always has a good reason why their trip is necessary, but yours never is.” If this is the lady’s experience, she moves in the wrong circles. Residents around Gatwick, the second biggest London airport, thought they had reason to be grateful for a 1979 legal agreement between the county council and the airport operator, barring a second runway there until 2019. On the basis of that, the Department for Transport did not include Gatwick in its consulta* She starred in the film The Railway Children (1970), with its famous line “Daddy, oh my Daddy!”


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tion document. However, objectors elsewhere sought to dilute the chances of their areas being chosen by exporting their misfortunes. The objectors at a high court hearing were Kent and Medway councils, whose jurisdictions include Cliffe (another proposed airport); Essex County Council, whose area includes Stansted, and Norman Mead (the airport campaigner) and David Fossett, both residents of the Stansted area. The objectors did not include the airport operator BAA or any airline. Mr Justice Kay ruled that Gatwick should be included in the consultation as a matter of “rationality” and “fairness”. It was not rational to exclude Gatwick because, among other reasons, even if the 1979 agreement was to run its course about a third of the 30-year period would remain and, in any event, the consultation document was open to the possibility of an increase in runway capacity at one or more of the other locations during that third decade. It was “procedurally unfair” because the claimants would probably and legitimately wish to advocate Gatwick as an alternative solution at a later stage in the decision-making process, yet the consultation was “their only real opportunity to present their case on Gatwick without there being in place a government policy which, realistically, will present them with an insurmountable hurdle”. Gatwick area residents heard the ruling with astonishment and fury. But in law matters are seldom as clearcut as they seem to the lay person. It was a hard lesson that most things can be undone or got round. It sent a signal to protesters everywhere that they are better off fighting to the finish because deals can be unpicked later. For older campaigners the Gatwick decision was an example of the creeping expansionism that has afflicted Stansted and London City airport. Be careful what you agree to because it won’t end there!


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For the Essex objectors it turned out to be an empty victory. Gatwick was included in the Department for Transport’s final plans as a possible runway location from 2019 – but Stansted was the DfT’s choice for the first new runway. (The Cliffe option was dropped.) Messrs Mead and Fossett also made claims under two parts of the Human Rights Act 1998: Article 8 (1) (respect for private life, home and correspondence), and Article 1 of the First Protocol (peaceful enjoyment of possessions). Although both submissions failed, the case is interesting as a marker for complaints about aircraft intrusion. Many more such cases can be expected. While, all over the country, everybody found reasons for new runways and new airports to be somewhere else (when they weren’t arguing for no more runways at all), mother-of-three Kerry Rawlings, in a letter front-paged by the Uxbridge Gazette, said the Heathrow plans had left her “heartbroken and horrified”. She voiced her anguish at how noise and pollution would affect her seven-year-old son, with a history of ill health, how she feared her home was just beyond the limit for compulsory compensation and how nobody would want to buy it because the area would become “ghost towns and villages”. “How do I explain to my children that it does not matter how hard you work, the government has the power to take your home, livelihood, and indeed health away from you?” she wrote. Mrs Rawlings ended with an emperor’s-new-clothes insight: “If there is no alternative that is agreeable to the people in the whole of the country then we should manage with what we have got!” The 2002 consultation document and then the 2003 white paper at least had the merit of focusing everyone’s attention on what was happening in the air. The headline prediction of three times the number of air travellers by 2030 was easily remembered. The two


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documents prefigured battles that will last for years. The environmental opposition re-energised itself and the public started to wake up, at least to the extent of acknowledging that more and more flights might not be an unalloyed good thing. Concurrent worries over climate change greatly helped the protesters’ cause.


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THE FUTURE OF AIR TRANSPORT MAIN PROPOSALS New runways Stansted Birmingham Heathrow

2012 2016

(subject to pollution limits)

2015-20

Gatwick – poss (alternative to Heathrow third runway)

Edinburgh Glasgow – poss

after 2019 2020 by 2030

Runway extensions Bristol, Leeds/Bradford, Newcastle, Teesside, Liverpool John Lennon (poss) Terminals 6th Heathrow terminal Terminal development at Manchester and many other airports New airports rejected No new airports at Cliffe, Rugby, Alconbury, Central Scotland, South East Wales, north of Bristol Environment Support for poss EU emissions trading from 2008 Stress on minimising noise nuisance No increase in air passenger duty Stated aim of balancing economic growth with environmental and social factors The Future of Air Transport Progress Report (December 2006) showed that some dates in the white paper had been put back. These included new runways at Birmingham (2016) and Edinburgh (2020), which would not be needed “before 2020 at the earliest”. The new runway at Stansted (2012) was not expected to be operational before 2015. Runway extensions had been approved for Bristol and Leeds/Bradford, but the operators had no plans to build them. The “progress report” ascribed these changes to better use being made of existing capacity.


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THREE CLIMATE CONCERN

OUR flying habit comes at a cost to the climate that looks ever more hazardous as the years go by. Aviation is one of the most important sources of the greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), that underlie global warming. Between 1970 and 2004 greenhouse gas emissions from human activities increased by 70% worldwide. The two sectors that saw the greatest increases were energy supply, up 145%, and transport, up 120% – in other words, the sectors most associated with lifestyle. By contrast, industry was up 65% and land use up 40%*. On a conservative calculation, transport represents at least one-seventh of the world’s anthropogenic [of human origin] greenhouse gas emissions† – equal to those of industry. Aviation plays a full part: in the UK the government has set in motion an explosive growth in flying, while as parts of the Majority World develop economically flying will increase there, too. The scenario is particularly scary because flying has an especially high radiative forcing effect. This is the alteration of the earth’s radiative balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infra-red away *

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group III (2007). The present rapid industrialisation of countries like China and India, combined with the West’s lifestyle habits, may make the situation even worse in future † Methane is another greenhouse gas, much of it of non-anthropogenic origin. Aviation apologists try to blame global warming on the flatulence of cows!


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from its normal state*. Carbon dioxide is the main source of radiative forcing, but the effect of other emissions at height – nitrogen oxides, particles and water vapour – mean that aviation’s true share of climatic pollutants is two or three times that of CO2 alone. In the UK, flying accounts for an estimated 6% of CO2 emissions, but because of the forcing effect mentioned above its actual share of pollution is already at least 12%. The respected Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution pressed the point home by arguing that in a carbon trading system “the aviation industry should acquire three carbon emission permits for each unit of carbon that it actually emits”†. Aviation’s share of climatic pollution looks bound to grow since flying is expanding faster than most other areas of the economy. Sooner or later we will have no electric light in our homes and no new clothes to buy because aviation has used up all the energy that the nation can produce under our Kyoto climate accord obligations. Absurd this may be, but it is the logic of the trend that the government is encouraging. Aviation is the elephant in the room. The government knows it’s there but daren’t say so.

* Overall net radiative forcing of the climate by human activities in the last 250 years is 1.6 (Watts per sq m), according to the IPCC. The figure includes the negative radiative forcing of aerosols. The effect of aerosols explains why in the 1980s scien † The Environmental Effects of Civil Aircraft in Flight (2002)


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‘Unequivocal’ climate change THAT’S the problem, or is it? It all depends on whether anthropogenic greenhouse gases are causing global warming and whether global warming is a threat to the planet. Any doubts on either score should be put to rest by two authoritative publications: the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which came out in three parts in 2007, and The Economics of Climate Change by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, in late 2006. The IPCC is a United Nations-sponsored body made up of hundreds of scientists from around the world. It doesn’t do scaremongering. An economist like Sir Nicholas, with a belief in the imperative of growth, is not going to talk up a crisis. Both reports, however, present a frightening picture of where we are heading. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is associated with global temperature. The IPCC found that the concentration of carbon dioxide, the main GHG, had increased from 280 parts per million in the pre-industrial era to 379ppm in 2005, with the annual increase speeding up in the most recent 10 years. Even this level – which with China, India and other countries industrialising fast looks certain to increase – implies a temperature rise of 2deg C above the preindustrial figure. This will have severe consequences for Earth and its peoples this century, as we see below. Global average temperature is already 0.8deg C higher than in 1850, towards the start of the industrial period. Two other important greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, also showed increases. The emissions of the various greenhouse gases is expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), representing the


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amount of carbon dioxide that has the same global warming potential. For any remaining doubters, the IPCC says the evidence for global warming is “unequivocal”. It warns: “Even the most stringent mitigation efforts cannot avoid further impacts of climate change in the next few decades, which makes adaptation essential, particularly in addressing near-term impacts. Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt.” The IPCC does not state categorically that global warming is caused by human activities: it says it is “very likely”, which is a strengthening of its “likely” verdict in the panel’s Third Assessment Report of just six years before. The commonest climate situation described by the IPCC was based on 118 reports produced by scientists around the world. This is more than the other five situations put together, and presumably represents a consensus on what is expected to happen. This situation was for a level of 590-710ppm CO2e (485-570ppm CO2), implying a temperature rise of 3.2-4.0deg C. Sir Nicholas Stern, in his review for the British government, spells out what the world can expect at + 2deg C and at + 3deg C. At +2deg C: Falling crop yields in developing regions Crop yields cease to increase in high altitude developed nations (like Britain) despite fertilisation Up to one billion people suffer water shortages, and many are at risk of hunger Rising intensity of extreme weather events, like fires, droughts and floods Possible collapse of the Amazon rainforest Onset of irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet


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The destruction of coral reefs, the disappearance of mountain glaciers and the beginning of extreme weather make themselves felt at + 1deg C or less – the period we are in now. When global temperature reaches +3deg C – the level Stern sees as most probable – these climatic effects will continue (except that the mountain glaciers and coral reefs will be gone or irreversibly damaged). Additionally: Many species face extinction (20% to 50% in one study) Abrupt climate shifts become increasingly likely, including the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Atlantic THC of which the Gulf Stream is a part Despite these horrors, Stern accepts the stabilisation of global emissions at 550ppm CO2e (implying an increase of 3 deg C). On present trends the figure could be reached by 2035. He does so apparently because anything much less is considered already out of reach. He is clear, however, that under “business as usual” (ie doing nothing) greenhouse gas emissions would more than treble by 2100, with a 50% risk of a temperature rise of more than 5deg C. “This would take humans into unknown territory,” he comments. Stabilisation even at not more than 550ppm CO2e by 2050 will mean a reduction of 60-80% in world GHG emissions* – an unlikely prospect when the rest of the world understandably insists on catching up with the West, and the West shows little enthusiasm for curbing its own consumption appetite. The economist in Stern is surely to the fore when he declares: “The world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and * On the 1990 level. Stabilisation at a lower level, which many analysts see as necessary, means even deeper cuts


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development.” This happy thought is based on the unproven prospect of “decarbonising” the world’s economies. All it will take, at least according to Stern, is a cut of 1% of the world’s gross domestic product by 2050 – a “significant but manageable” task. Emissions can even continue to grow for the next 10-20 years. The warnings of the IPCC and the Stern rReview were echoed by another phalanx of experts under the United Nations Environment Programme. The GEO-4 – Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development – report was prepared by almost 400 experts and reviewed by more than 1,000 others across the world. It was published 20 years after the Brundtland Commission produced its seminal environmental report, Our Common Future. GEO-4 said controlling climate change demanded political will and leadership if humanity was not to continue at risk. Yet there was “a remarkable lack of urgency” and a “woefully inadequate” global response. A typical view from the Majority World about contraction and convergence was expressed by India’s former environment secretary, Pradipto Ghosh. He rejected the idea that emerging countries should cut back on growth to fight climate change. Global warming was particularly a challenge for the West, he declared. “Those countries have been at a tremendous party since the 19th century and now the party has to come to an end,” he said. “It is the West that has to get serious about this problem.” India, however, would subscribe to a long-term solution based on each country having equal emissions per head of population. This is a goal the West will find next to impossible to meet. Taking power as a key item in greenhouse gas emissions, the average American


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uses more than 20 times as much electricity as the average Indian. Equal shares for everyone under contraction and convergence would be a tough sell for Western governments, with relatively stable populations. The slices of the cake will likely get smaller and smaller. Each person’s share must reduce as global population explodes (unless reductions in emissions keep pace). Growing populations in the Majority World result from a host of factors including the need for large families to provide security in old age, lack of access to contraception and the damaging doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in this area. A carbon allowance thus touches on one of the deepest problems of development. The Stern review was commissioned by the British government, and for the authors of Fantasy Island, a book about Tony Blair’s Britain*, the review “was too weak in its analysis of the scale of the problem, with its proposed ceiling on emissions [550ppm CO2e] influenced more by what it deemed politically possible than by what is environmentally prudent”. With the IPCC and Stern reports both pointing to cuts of around 80% for the UK, the government’s Climate Change Bill announced in 2007 was out of date before it even got off the blocks. It called for a 60% cut in carbon emissions by 2050, but excluded international aviation and shipping. This omission (whatever the difficulties of allocating emissions) made the measure Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark†. Three Oxford University experts reported that Britain’s apparent fall of 5.3% in greenhouse case emissions between 1990 and 2005 is an illusion. Emissions actually rose by one-fifth, Dieter Helm, Robin * Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson (Constable, 2007) † Notwithstanding the difficulty of allocating emissions on journeys between countries


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Smale and Jonathan Phillips argue*, once international aviation, shipping and the transfer of industry to the Majority World are taken into account. Helm said the UK “may appear to have reduced emissions, but this has been achieved partially by closing down high carbon polluting industries, but then importing these carbon intensive goods”, the Daily Telegraph reported. If the IPCC and Stern suggested that the planet’s future is salvageable, even in the face of the almost unimaginable goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by four-fifths, the independent scientist James Lovelock could afford to be bleaker. Lovelock is the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis – the idea that the earth regulates its climate whatever the cosmos throws at it. The expression “saving the planet” misses the mark for Lovelock. In The Revenge of Gaia (2006), he suggests not that we humans are destroying the planet but that we are well on the way to destroying ourselves. He sees a future in which a few survivors drag out a primitive existence among the ruins. “What is most in danger is civilization [he writes]; humans are tough enough for breeding pairs to survive, and Gaia is toughest of all. What we are doing weakens her but is unlikely to destroy her. She has survived numerous catastrophes in her three billion years or more of life… “But if these huge changes do occur it seems likely that few of the teeming billions now living will survive.” Lovelock believes that a rise in carbon dioxide emissions to 500ppm is “almost inevitable”, but he does not wring his hands in despair and say do nothing. He is the green guru who advocates nuclear power. This is a * Too Good to Be True? The UK’s Climate Change Record


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clean technology to replace fossil fuels; nuclear risks, he argues, have been greatly overstated. For Lovelock, 500ppm is the level – implying a temperature rise of more than 3deg C – at which the regulation of earth’s temperature starts to fail, including the unstoppable melting of Greenland’s ice and the loss of algae floating in the oceans. (Algae absorb carbon dioxide and use it for growth.) Particularly scary is the fact that we may not even know that we have passed the point of no return (if we haven’t already). We are like a more advanced species of air traveller who has fallen into a black hole and would be unaware of the fact. “Deadly it may be [Lovelock writes], but when we pass the threshold of climate change there may be nothing perceptible to mark this crucial step, nothing to warn that there is no returning.” Lovelock will be dismissed in many quarters as a prophet of doom. And we know that prophets of doom have an appalling track record, don’t they? Somehow humanity struggles on. Apres moi le deluge. The octogenarian author, these sceptics will say, has fallen prey to the curse of old age – pessimism. We might posit a deus ex machina that will overcome our problems with global warming – ie “something will turn up”. The motor car in its day was a deus ex machina, preventing the streets of London disappearing underneath several feet of horse droppings. A man-made microbe that produces an endless supply of biofuel would remove the need for fossil fuels and with it the main source of greenhouse gases. Such a revolution was prefigured in patent applications made in 2007. The gods are capricious, however, and we can’t count on one emerging from the machinery to save us. The trouble is that old age isn’t necessarily wrong, and prophets of doom are sometimes right. Those who


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said that Rome in the fifth century CE was falling apart were right, for example. This appears to be one of those times, although the scientific evidence is at war with our natural optimism as a species or, more prosaically, our desire to take that mini-break in Budapest or that whistle stop in the Galapagos Islands.

Aircraft and the atmosphere AVIATION is a fully paid up contributor to global warming. Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is the greatest concern. Condensation trails (contrails) produced by jet engines, and composed of water vapour and particles, have a damaging effect through their influence on the formation of cirrus clouds. These clouds reflect solar radiation back towards space – and have a cooling effect on the ground – but also absorb thermal radiation from the surface and reemit it downwards. The warming effect dominates. The effect of clouds is complex, however, and not yet fully understood. The eminent climatologist, Sir John Houghton, says that in general high clouds warm the atmosphere and low clouds cool it. Other factors are the nature and size of the cloud particles and the thickness of the cloud. (Global Warming: the Complete Briefing, [Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn 1997]) A dramatic illustration of the warming effect of contrails was provided after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, when commercial aircraft were grounded for three days. Contributors to the science journal Nature reported that in the absence of contrails there was a 1-2deg C increase in the day-night temperature difference across the country. Aircraft, and cars, are heavy polluters compared


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with other forms of transport. Typical output of CO2 from a passenger plane is 170g per passenger per kilometre (g/pkm). Plenty of cars produce the same although this is per vehicle: the figure is correspondingly reduced with more than one occupant. A diesel express train is 60g/pkm and a long-distance coach is 20g/pkm. Thus a passenger flying from London to Florida generates as much CO2 as the average motorist in a year. Short flights are particularly heavy polluters since most fuel is used on takeoffs and landings. Persuading travellers to take the train over shorter distances therefore is a priority. Heathrow airport contributes a third of the UK’s aviation emissions, say Friends of the Earth. Flights to and from Heathrow already (2007) pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as five million cars every year, according to the campaigning group. And that’s before most of the near-trebling of passenger numbers greenlighted by the government has taken effect! The Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, headed by the respected economist Brendon Sewill, has calculated that each passenger on a return flight from Gatwick puts an average 765kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s enough from each passenger to fill 47,000 party balloons! Another way of expressing the pollution is that this average Gatwick passenger accounts for 200kg of carbon – in everyday terms equal to each passenger carrying on board 200 1kg bags of soot and scattering them out of the window, as the GACC vividly puts it.* The contrary view was vigorously argued by a previously unknown campaigning group, Spurt, in full page advertisements in national newspapers. * Gatwick – Wrecking Climate Change Targets (2007)


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Spurt, it was said, “wholeheartedly endorses the White Paper on Aviation that will ensure British skies become Europe’s foremost flightpath”; welcomes the second runway at Stansted, the third runway at Heathrow, the second runway at Gatwick and the designated developments at Luton, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Bristol, Manchester and East Midlands “and that’s just the beginning”; supports the government’s “refusal to be cowed into any kind of environmental tax on aviation”, and “rejects out of hand the MORI poll from June 2006 reporting that 73% of people would support a green tax on aviation”. Readers were urged to send a cut-out coupon to the Department for Transport calling on the government to stop listening to scientists about climate change, to build more planes, more runways and more airports, and to protect shareholders not the environment. The president of Spurt, Sir Montgomery Cecil, voiced the essence of these hard-line views when he said in the vernacular: “I’m taking my cheap holiday and telling the climate whingers to get stuffed.” Anyone for whom the penny had not dropped might have visited the website www.unlimited-spurt.org and discovered that behind these creative and effective advertisements were the environmental groups Greenpeace, AirportWatch and enoughsenough.org/ Military flying has disproportionate climatic effects. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), in its 2002 report The Environmental Effect of Civil Aircraft in Flight, noted that 18% of the world’s military/commercial aircraft fleet were military in 1992 but military aircraft used about one-third of the fuel of the combined fleet. The number of military planes was predicted to fall to 7% of the total by 2015, although this estimate was made before the West’s heightened terror awareness from September 2001 onwards. The commission


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pointed out that military planes produce more pollutants than civil aircraft, particularly oxides of nitrogen. Aircraft flying supersonically – a favourite speed for military jets – have an even greater radiative forcing effect than their subsonic equivalents. The RCEP, a British government-sponsored body that somehow has managed to stay happily off-message, said the impact of aircraft on climate change is even greater than was supposed when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first headlined the issue in 1992. Between that year and 2000, the royal commission noted, aviation distances travelled increased by 43% and fuel used by 33% – respectively, about 5% and 4% annually. These were at the high end of the IPCC’s expectations. The years since have seen a further explosion of cheap flights so the numbers continue to climb. Air freight, as we saw in Chapter 2, is increasing even more rapidly than passenger travel as consumers demand ever more exotic or out-of-season flowers, fruit and vegetables. In response, some customers think about food miles – an awareness of how far the produce has travelled to reach the point of sale. In smart circles, apparently, a dinner party is not thinkable without spring water from the other side of the world. Thus Fiji mineral water was brought 10,000 miles (although probably not by air) for fashionistas to savour. The disconnection between different parts of the environmental forest is well illustrated by this product: without doubt many of the buyers consider themselves green consumers, from careful recycling to a Prius hybrid car. The government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) backed a report that unhelpfully described food miles as “too simple a concept” to capture the true environmental costs of pro-


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duction. The report, by AEA Technology, pointed out that tomatoes imported from Spain and grown naturally in fields there used less energy overall than British-produced tomatoes grown out of season in heated greenhouses. It is true that food miles are not the whole story, but they are an excellent way of tackling the urgent need to raise consumer awareness. The report, using data from 2002, showed that air was responsible for 10% of CO2 emissions associated with the UK food industry – a figure that has risen sharply since. Car journeys to shop for food represented 13% of emissions, an astonishing figure pointing to the true cost of the loss of local shops. Delivery by road and sea accounted for the rest, with rail – the most environmentally friendly form of land travel – not even featuring on the chart. Air transit of organic food was increasing rapidly, especially for soft fruit, the Soil Association said*. It threatened to deny organic certification to airfreighted food or to require additional labelling. Year-round fresh flowers, many of them flown in, are seen on every UK high street. Avoiding these luxuries might seem a no-brainer for anyone concerned about the produce’s carbon footprint. The Fairtrade Foundation, which promotes ethical treatment of growers and producers in the Majority World, insisted the opposite can be true. It claimed that a flower grown in Kenya and flown to Britain produces five times less carbon than one hot-housed in Europe. Here is another dilemma for the conscientious consumer: air freight v. intensive cultivation. How we yearn for the days when flowers were available only in season, plucked from local fields, and no-one expected otherwise! * It is the trend, not the current quantity, that should concern us: in 2007 less than 1% of organic food in Britain was flown in


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Technology will fix it? GLOBAL warming does not hit our “threat buttons” hard enough, Professor Dan Gilbert of Harvard University remarked. He told an environmental conference: “If climate change had the velocity of a baseball heading for our face or was caused by something that affected our moral sensibilities, like eating puppies, we would be massing in the streets against it.” We’re not, and we’re eager to believe the aviation industry’s line that technology and changing practices will fix the problem. Yet this approach is undermined by the soaring number of people flying, which airlines do everything to encourage and the British government does nothing serious to discourage. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, for example, did not believe that changes in engine design and other technical improvements would provide a solution to environmental problems because their effect was likely to be outstripped by the rise in air traffic. In any case, it commented strikingly, “two thirds of all the aircraft that will be flying in 2030 are already in use”. The great rivals, Boeing and Airbus, vied with each other to produce aeroplanes that are cleaner as well as quieter than those that went before. The result was the Boeing 747-8 Dreamliner and Airbus 780. Both claim CO2 output of 75g/pkm or less – around half the commercial aviation average – with up to 20% improved fuel efficiency*. Impressive, but the royal commission’s insight puts into context the industry target of a 50% improvement in fuel efficiency in new aircraft by 2020 (against 2000). * The 747-8 claims to use 20% less fuel than other medium-sized aircraft. The 780 claims to use 17% less fuel per seat than the largest current airliners, although it is a much larger aircraft


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These two aircraft represent opposite views of the future aircraft market. The Boeing 747-8 is configured for 210-250 passengers while the Airbus 780 – the largest airliner ever put into commercial production – seats 525 compared with around 400 for the Boeing 747 (and could be configured for 800). The outcome of the commercial battle is pregnant with meaning for the environment. While we may wish for the European Airbus to prevent the US Boeing regaining a stranglehold in commercial large jets, the environmental arguments favour the Dreamliner. In typical configurations, its 400 seats are more than 20% fewer than its rival’s. And with the A380 bigger aircraft are unlikely to mean fewer aircraft. The pressure is always on to put bums on seats so the super-jumbo adds to the upward pressure of passenger numbers. Those who remember how gigantic the Boeing 747 seemed when it was launched also know how those same planes now fly to capacity. For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, improved fuel efficiency leading to lower CO2 output can come from technological and operational improvements and better air traffic management – “however, such improvements are expected to only partially offset the growth of aviation emissions”. Non-official commentators were more direct. Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson in their guide to Fantasy Island, in their book of that name (2007), show that the government’s state of denial over ever-more flying (and motoring) is not an isolated blind spot. Self-evidently, aviation growth as approved and encouraged cannot be squared with the imperative for drastic greenhouse gas reductions across society as a whole. The fantasy that it can, however, is of a piece with fantasies over various key areas of national life. Welcome to the UK as Fantasy Island, say these two Guardianistas in a searing analysis of the New Labour


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years. Sounding more like Telegraphers, the authors say that the government attempted a series of conjuring tricks seeming to reconcile irreconcilable opposites – eg reduced military spending and expensive wars, constantly improved labour conditions and international competitiveness, a world-class knowledge economy and reduced per capita spending on universities. On the environment, the “super-sized” fantasy is that carbon emissions can be reduced while maintaining our present way of life. If everyone in the world lived as we do, it would require the resources of 3.1 Earths. If everyone in the world consumed like an American, it would take five planets. The World Development Movement has highlighted the absurdity of government policy that envisages a huge increase in flying and also drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. The WDM, in Dying on a Jet Plane (2007), noted that Britain would need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050 if a world stabilization target of 450 ppm CO2e is to be achieved. Yet at the predicted growth rate aviation will have used up all the country’s available energy resources by about 2043 (by 2027 if a radiative forcing factor of x3 is used)! The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, in a report commissioned by Friends of the Earth, reached a similar conclusion. FOE commented that there are no technological fixes on the horizon that would deliver the necessary reduction in aviation emissions. Nor will including aviation in the EU emissions trading scheme* be likely to prove effective. The only solution was to reduce the growth in flights, the campaigning body argued. It demanded the withdrawal of the 2003 white paper and its replacement with a policy that allowed aviation to play its part in reducing emissions. * See next section; also for a discussion of carbon offsetting


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Of course, the government and the aviation industry don’t see it this way. They expect to fly their way out of trouble with a mixture of changes within the industry, emissions trading – the “cap and trade” system that provides permits to pollute – and carbon offsetting. The last two are fashionable causes – or perhaps desperate attempts to square the circle of reducing aircraft pollution without the perceived political impossibility of making people fly less. Fuel efficiency, engine and airframe design and operational practices all promise developments to reduce pollution. But step-changes like hydrogen fuel or biofuels or blended wing designs are unlikely to be practicable within the foreseeable future. The continuous descent approach method requires less fuel. It involves starting a continuous steady descent from 6,000ft, or higher, rather than following a number of short descents to set altitudes cleared by air traffic control. Among demand management measures, restricting slots at airports would encourage airlines to concentrate on the more profitable and relatively less polluting longer distances. A more realistic taxation structure for aviation would restrain the budget airlines and restrict the availability of cheapie holidays. And if that seems a high price to pay to curb pollution, think of the alternative. “The availability of cheap air transport currently enjoyed by the public is a very recent phenomenon. It is not a traditional ‘right’ in any sense,” the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution commented. Frequent flyer Tony Blair announced that he had no intention of abandoning long-haul holiday flights, and thought it was “a bit impractical” to expect people to make sacrifices by taking holidays closer to home. It was wrong to impose “unrealistic targets” on travellers.


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“You know, I’m still waiting for the first politician who’s actually running for office who’s going to come out and say it – and they’re not,” declared the former leader of Fantasy Island.

Emissions trading. All bow! EMISSIONS trading is a system for pollution control that is attractive at least on paper. The attraction lies in the fact that a functioning system should deliver precisely the result intended – that is, the level of pollution overall that is sustainable. Permits to that level are allocated to polluters like industry and energy generators. These permits may be traded so that a company that reduces its emissions to less than its permits allow can sell its surplus to companies producing excess pollution. The scheme is pragmatic but weak on ethics. It allows rich firms or industries to buy their way out of trouble. Armed with extra permits, they can carry on polluting. The fear is that airlines will behave in just that way at the expense of other sectors of the economy. Well heeled airlines from Europe’s wealthiest nations may gobble up permits from smaller airlines from poorer countries, locking the latter out of many routes. The bigger airlines may devour the smaller for the sake of their permits. Such cartel-like practices boost airline profits and restrict choices for travellers. No-one knows whether emissions trading will work for aviation because it has not been tried. The European Union and the Kyoto climate process both operate trading schemes – but flying is excluded from both. This is because of the perceived difficulty of allocating permits to an industry operating internationally. The EU is to include aircraft operating between (and within) member countries from 2011. The scheme


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will cover carbon dioxide but not other greenhouse gases. A separate proposal has been promised for nitrous oxides. To the disappointment of green groups, aviation will join the existing system rather than forming a separate system. Alan Buchanan, British Airways’ head of environment, in an article that at least had the merit of honesty, admitted that airlines would buy their way out of trouble by buying permits from other sectors (although naturally he didn’t put it quite like that). “Technology is coming to our aid [he wrote]. But, in the short run, it is likely that these technical gains in the industry’s global carbon footprint will be outweighed by aviation’s growth. That is why carbon trading is so necessary. It allows the industry to grow while ensuring that rising aviation emissions are more than offset by emissions reductions in sectors – such as power generation – with far greater scope for cutting their CO2 output.” Whether aviation is included in an emission trading scheme with the other economic sectors, or has its own closed scheme, is far from academic. Both open and closed schemes, by definition, are capable of delivering the same overall level of pollution control. But any scheme that allows trade-offs between sectors, with some companies increasing pollution, makes it politically hard or impossible to reduce the overall level over the years. Buchanan was preaching to the converted, ie British Airways shareholders in their magazine Overview (June 2007), but the document was hardly secret. We must hope that he did not get into trouble with his principals for this public candour. Buchanan reported that replacement long-haul aircraft to be ordered later in 2007 would see reduced CO2 emissions per seat of 17-30%. Fuel, however, is another matter. Prospects had improved for a less pol-


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luting alternative to kerosene*, “though the day when aircraft all around the world could be flying on such fuels remains a long way off”. Under the EU trading scheme, the allowance for aircraft will be based on their emissions around 2005. Because of the growth in emissions from 2005 to 2011, the airlines will have to buy a substantial amount of the permits they need, estimated at 30% to 40%, with perhaps even more in later years. As an exercise in having your cake and eating it, the European Commission’s assessment of including flying in emissions trading is hard to beat. It expects the impact on the price of flights and the rate of aviation growth to be small but the reduction in carbon emissions to be considerable: 36% by 2015 and 46% by 2020. It is only when politicians and officials say the effect on flights will be considerable, and this is necessary because of climate change, that we may start to get somewhere. The Aviation Environment Federation commented: “Most of the reduction comes from other sectors who sell their permits to airlines because they are able to reduce their emissions more easily. However, there is much debate about whether this level of reduction will really come about, and it seems likely that aviation will continue to get a ‘free ride’. The AEF is distinctly unimpressed by the proposal. It has been watered from the Commission’s original proposal due to pressure from the aviation industry.” The federation’s concerns were matched by another green group, AirportWatch, which said airlines would be able to secure their growth by buying permits from other industries. The growth of air travel to 2020 would merely be trimmed, from 142% to 135%. AirportWatch described the EU’s draft proposals as * Referring to biofuels and possibly also hydrogen. See Chapter 1


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“toothless and meaningless”, “a fig leaf for the government and the aviation industry to hide behind so they can say they are doing something to tackle aviation”.

Offsetting. Too good to be true THE rule of life that, if something seems too good to be true it probably is, applies to carbon offsetting. This is the modish system that allows us to carry on flying with a clear conscience. For a very few pounds we can neutralise the pollution of our flight by supporting projects that absorb carbon. Or can we? The world of carbon offsets has been described as “like the Wild West, full of cowboys”. It is the timesharing of our day. The theory is that revenue from carbon offsets is spent on pollution-reducing projects from tree planting and wind farms to biofuels to energy-saving housing. Frequent flyers, and petrolheads, love the businessas-usual approach of offsetting. So do the businesses themselves. Some airlines tell us how much carbon our journey is producing (and the Range Rover TDV8 Vogue comes with all the carbon from the production process and the first 45,000 miles on the road having been offset). In practice difficulties abound. Most offset projects are in the Majority World where monitoring may be difficult. The same trees may be “sold” twice, or they may die and no-one knows, or existing trees may be counted for carbon offsets. In any case, the pollution from our flight is immediate; the absorption of carbon by our newly planted tree is in the future. The difficulty was memorably described by Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation (in an arti-


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cle in the Observer). “The logic of offsetting [he wrote] is equivalent to taking away a scuba diver’s air tank in the middle of the ocean and promising to replace it in 50 years’ time by dropping another oxygen tank in a different ocean on the other side of the world.” Biofuels may mean the forced clearance of people from their homes to create plantations of fuel crops, leading to food shortages and cultural displacement. The felling of forest for cropland – thus reducing carbon absorption – contradicts the whole purpose of the exercise. Nor can we be sure that some of these projects, including energy-saving homes, would not have happened anyway without a growing industry dedicated to relieving us of our cash. That means our offset has produced no extra value. Various firms selling carbon offsets provide sharply different figures for the same air journey. There is no agreed multiplier for radiative forcing effect of aircraft (explained at the start of this chapter). But in the end carbon offsetting is as much about feeling good as reducing pollution. Its supporters will say that the problems outlined above are teething troubles. It is to be expected that the market will be increasingly regulated to drive out the cowboys. For Adam Ma’anit in the New Internationalist the issue goes much deeper. Climate change is “ultimately a narrative of oil, coal and gas”, produced from fossil carbon. If we succeeded in extracting all the fossil carbon and set it free to circulate in the atmosphere, the earth would become uninhabitable. “Unless we want to live on Venus, our task therefore is to leave that fossil carbon in the ground [writes Ma’anit]. This basic requirement, however, is precisely what the carbon market (of which offsets are a part) has been set up to avoid.”


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The next best thing to removing carbon from the ground is to return it there. This is the aim of the emerging technology of carbon capture and sequestration. In industrial processes carbon dioxide is separated from other gases and piped into underground rock formations for permanent storage. So all is not what it seems in the wonderful world of carbon offsetting. To be sure, some projects – solar panels, for example, reduce energy needs – have lasting value as a mitigation strategy. Others bring temporary relief. Trees absorb carbon – but trees die and return carbon to the atmosphere. For Friends of the Earth, trees are emphatically not the answer. “Tree-planting schemes are particularly problematic and should be ruled out of any offset scheme,” it said. “Large scale plantations have decreased biodiversity, displaced people and caused social disruption. Doubts have recently been cast on the contribution of trees outside the tropics in reducing CO2 levels and the science is uncertain.” At least, carbon offsetting sensitises us to global warming. But it also allows us to think we have done enough. We haven’t. We can’t fly our way out of trouble.


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FOUR DECIBEL DIN

CLIMATE change is, or seems to be, long term; noise is here and now. Aircraft are among the greatest contributors to noise pollution, the more so because – unlike the car even today – we cannot get away from them. In the depths of the country, on the remotest moors, they are there. It is perhaps as well for our sanity that we discount the roar, drone, whine and buzz above us. As commercial flights continue to grow, and even more when mass-scale private flying gets underway, we shall wonder why such a build-up was allowed to happen, as it did before on the roads. Garsdale is an isolated station on the Settle-Carlisle railway, crossing the Pennine backbone of England. This is the line they wanted to close because for most of its 72-mile length from Settle to Carlisle it runs from nowhere to nowhere. Here in these remote uplands must be the place to get away from it all. And so it is if you ignore the aircraft. During a 45-minute observation period around Garsdale one Monday morning – chosen at random in the sense that the author was visiting nearby – seven commercial jets were counted. That is one every 6.4 minutes. Double that number to take a conservative account of the government’s planned expansion of flying and we shall have noise intrusion almost every three minutes in one of England’s most treasured wild places. Noise pollution is about more than irritation, annoyance and the loss of amenity. It is health-threatening


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and may prove fatal. A World Health Organisation working group estimated that the stress of long-term exposure to traffic accounts for 3% of the deaths from ischaemic heart disease in Europe. For many, the noise of aircraft is equally stressful. The WHO figures also suggested that 2% of Europeans suffer severe sleep disturbance because of noise, for all that extensive night flying continues to be allowed from British airports. Deepak Prasher, professor of audiology at University College London, who was involved with the working group, told the New Scientist magazine: “Until now, noise has been the Cinderella form of pollution and people have not been aware it has an impact on their health. New data provides a link showing there are earlier deaths because of noise.” Aircraft are moving up the scale of annoyances of modern life. In a 2001 noise study by the Building Research Establishment*, more than two-thirds of respondents had experienced aircraft noise and almost one-third admitted to being bothered by it. So far the upset has been at the low end: 20% were bothered to some extent, 7% were bothered moderately and 2% were very or extremely bothered. The numbers, although considerable, lagged behind both traffic noise and neighbour/neighbourhood noise. In a striking finding, and a probable hint of what is to come with aviation, no fewer than 70% of respondents were bothered by traffic to some degree; neighbour/neighbourhood noise was not far behind at 58%. A few snapshots will illustrate how pervasive is aircraft noise: The problem reaches into the deep rural areas. From Radnorshire, Peter Washington wrote: “Even * Quoted by the campaigning group AirportWatch


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here, in the heart of the Welsh Marches, the menace of aircraft noise is increasing by the day.” From Holbeton, Devon, Charlie Richardson lamented: “Ubiquitous light aircraft seem to take an eternity to struggle from one horizon to the next with their accompanying maddening drone, which, no sooner has it faded away, is immediately replaced by the next irritating blighter.” The two writers were sharing their woes with the Daily Telegraph, which also recorded the trouble afflicting Hever Castle in Kent. The castle rightly proclaims its “warm and welcoming atmosphere”, but fails to stress the jets that overfly it en route to Gatwick 10 miles away. A Hever village resident was said to regularly record noise events from aircraft well above the government’s recognised level for community annoyance. A Gatwick official said the average height of arriving aircraft at Hever was around 3,200ft. Robert Pullin, former managing director at Hever Castle, said the castle had lost business from filmmakers “with an aeroplane going over every two minutes”, while open-air concerts were punctuated with the sound of big jets. An open air concert by Jose Carreras at Hampton Court, west London, found itself scored for full orchestra and jet aircraft. As if on cue, a plane popped up to spoil the tenor’s efforts as a quiet song, Fenesta Che Lucive, was building. Nor was the combined sound of Carreras and the orchestra enough in the louder Cancion Hungara: this merely brought forth an even noisier plane. The possible widening of a flightpath for aircraft using both Southampton International and Bournemouth International airports alarmed residents of New Forest villages. The proposal threatened up to 30 jets a day flying as low as 5,500ft, ruining the tranquillity of the forest.


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More than 400 aircraft a day fly over Stockwell in south London. That’s a plane every three minutes over the 16-hour day. They are typically at less than 3,500ft. And remember, government plans call for a near-threefold expansion of flying by 2030, most of it in the South East. At her manor house near Basingstoke, Rosamund Wallinger proudly restored the gardens created in 1908 by the famous designer, Gertrude Jekyll. Contemplation of the flora was not easy, however, because of the noise of Chinook helicopters from RAF Odiham nearby. “Sometimes the helicopters fly below 200ft and the noise is absolutely terrible. The glass in the windows [of the house] rattles and shakes. The cracks are horrendous.” Tennis stars at the Wimbledon championships must learn to ignore noisy and frequent planes. The evocative sounds of a summer evening are the plop-plop of ball on racket, and the racket of planes making for nearby Heathrow airport. The villagers of Menston, near Leeds/Bradford airport, are troubled by aircraft overflying the village on takeoff when they should be somewhere else. Concerned residents found that more than one plane in 10 was off-track during two July weeks: 10.9% (37 out of 340 departures) in 2007 and 12.2% (42 out of 343 departures) in 2006. Noisy aircraft are the modern equivalent of whipcracking carters in Arthur Schopenhauer’s day. The 19th century German philosopher hated noise and especially loathed whip-cracking: “The most inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the cracking of whips – a truly infernal thing when it is done in the narrow resounding streets of a town. I denounce it as making a peaceful life impossible.” He went on: “Hammering, the barking of dogs and


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the crying of children are horrible sounds; but your only genuine assassin of thought is the crack of a whip ... I really cannot see why a fellow who is taking away a waggon-load of gravel or dung should thereby obtain the right to kill in the bud the thoughts which may happen to be springing up in 10,000 heads – the number he will disturb one after the other in half an hour’s drive through the town” (from his essay On Noise, in Studies in Pessimism). Mechanisation and motorisation have spread noise nuisance ever wider. A noisy or ill timed plane can annoy hundreds of thousands in the time it took Schopenhauer’s carter to disturb 10,000. The aviation industry can afford to be relaxed about noise because (as in other areas) it enjoys favourable treatment under the law. This may be traced back to the Air Navigation Act of 1920, which exempted aviation from nuisance sanctions in order to stimulate the nascent industry*. The Civil Aviation Act 1982 reiterated this immunity. “No action shall lie [the act declared] in respect of trespass or in respect of nuisance, by reason only of the flight of an aircraft over any property at a height above the ground which, having regard to wind, weather and all the circumstances of the case, is reasonable, or the ordinary incidents of such flight, so long as the provisions of any Air Navigation Order ... have been duly complied with.” Section 76 allows for airports to be “designated” and to come under the control of the Secretary of State for Transport. London’s three main airports – Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted – have been designated. The rest of Britain’s airports fall under the control of local councils. The councils may seek voluntary agreements or invoke “Section 106 Obligations” (under the Town * Briefing by www.politics.co.uk


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and Country Planning Act 1990) to control aircraft movements, operating hours, types of aircraft and so on. There have been frequent arguments, for example, over types of permitted aircraft at London City airport, which was “sold” to local residents on the basis that it would be used only for short take-off and landing planes. Airlines’ exemption from the law of nuisance seems to put the industry athwart of the Human Rights Act 1998. As mentioned in Chapter 2, two residents affected by the 2003 Air Transport White Paper brought an action citing Article 8 (1) (respect for private life, home and correspondence) and Article 1 of the First Protocol (peaceful enjoyment of possessions). The action failed, but perhaps the next one won’t.

Lost world of silence THE decibel (dB)* is the general unit of measurement for noise, with aircraft noise typically expressed using the A-weighted scale (dBA). A sound level meter that measures A-weighted decibels has an electrical circuit allowing the meter to register the same sensitivity to sound at different frequencies as the average human ear. There are B-weighted and C-weighted scales, but the A-weighted scale is the one most commonly used for measuring loud noise.† dBA Leq is a way of expressing aircraft noise over time. Leq is an energy equivalent and time-averaged sound level in decibels. The European Environment Agency explains Leq as “a single-number value that * The capital B derives from the name of telecommunications pioneer Alexander Graham Bell. The unit was named in his honour † European Environment Agency definition


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expresses the time-varying sound level for the specified period as though it were a constant sound level with the same total sound energy as the time-varying level”. In other words, sounds – and silences – are averaged for the period being measured. Despite the EEA’s admirable stab at clarity, decibels and Leq are tough concepts to grasp! The main UK measure of aircraft noise is dBA Leq 16, meaning the average noise over a 16-hour period (excluding night-time). From the readings at various measuring points, noise contour maps are produced. These look rather like Ordnance Survey maps where contour lines join land at the same level. As a measure of community disturbance, 57dBA Leq is seen as low, 63 Leq as medium and 69 Leq as high. The maps help to inform planning decisions over new or extended runways, flightpath variations and new building locations. Residents whose homes fall within the contours may sometimes obtain compensation or have mitigation work like soundproofing paid for. Those outside the contours are officially considered not to be bothered by aircraft noise. Trouble is, that’s not the way tens of thousands of householders see it. Thus planes from Heathrow airport produced a distressingly high level of noise at Crystal Palace, 17 miles away, the Evening Standard found in an investigation. At least five planes between 4.30am and 6.00am produced readings of more than 60 decibels. At the Oval, 14 miles from Heathrow, two aircraft hit 70 decibels before 5am. The newspaper commented that noise problems from Heathrow covered a much wider area than the government and the aircraft industry acknowledged. Nor are the dead in a better position if they are interred in Brompton Cemetery, west London. It is under the Heathrow flightpath.


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The dBA Leq measure conceals as much as it reveals. As an average it cannot reveal in their true significance single noise events. A screeching hedgehopping warplane, Concorde in days past or simply a jumbo jet may cause anguish on the ground – but if their passage across the sky is followed by long periods of silence the Leq level will not reach 57dBA. A big jet taking off records 120dBA (at 200ft distance) and a diving warplane is up to 125dBA – levels defined by US consultants BRC Acoustics as “intolerable”. A pneumatic drill, for comparison, is 100dBA. This is why noise policy for aviation should take account of single noise events as well as average noise over time. Furthermore, in many peaceful locations like the Pennines referred to above the presence of aircraft in and of themselves is disturbing even if the sound as an individual event is far below 57dBA. The number of planes, not the noise they make, is the key factor here. A National Air Traffic Services specialist acknowledged that in tranquil areas aircraft can be heard up to 20,000ft. Alan Line of Kersey, near Hadleigh – more than 30 miles from Stansted airport in a direct line – knows well that the Leq measure does not tell the whole story. “BAA [the airport operator] have said that there is more disturbance to people from other sources like traffic and general industry, but anyone who lives under the flightpaths knows that is not the case,” he insisted. “You only have to sit in your home and listen to the planes.” That is exactly what his South Suffolk Air Traffic Action Group did on a scientific basis. Two sets of readings taken three years apart disclosed that around 200 planes a day overflew Cornard Tye, near Sudbury. The village was described as underneath a holding stack for both Stansted and Luton.


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The action group found that aircraft for Stansted over South Suffolk typically produced 55-59dBA as individual noise events – even though they were at 6,000 to 12,000ft. However, because Leq 16 also takes account of periods of silence Cornard Tye is far beyond the Stansted 57dBA noise contour, and the villagers don’t have a problem! Fewer than 8,000 people around Stansted suffer 57dBA Leq and above. Yet the Evening Star in Ipswich – 40 miles away – mounted a campaign against the expansion of Stansted because of noise and pollution issues affecting its readers. The difference between the Leq 16 average and individual noise events will be well known to BAA, which nevertheless produced the following misleading information in support of the projected second runway at Stansted. Its newsletter Plane Talk suggested that noise of 57dBA and above was not so different from what we all experience in everyday life. Normal conversation was said to be between 50 and 60dBA. A dishwasher runs at 60dBA. Normal office noise is 65dBA. But who runs a dishwashers or takes part in conversation for 16 hours – the basis of the noise contours – or stays in the office for that time? Plane Talk offered as its supposed clincher the information that traffic which “goes past millions of homes every day” is about 70dBA. Exactly so. Traffic on a busy road is more nearly continuous – and it is precisely the argument of this book that we need to avoid in the air the health-threatening and life-denying experiences of the roads. It suits the aviation industry and the Department for Transport to stress contours because we are tempted to think that outside these noise lozenges there is no problem. Even the Leq levels may be set too high. World


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Health Organisation experts are among those who have called for a lower threshold. They suggested a daytime average of 55dBA while an influential study of South East England that predated the government’s 2003 White Paper proposed 54dBA. If implemented, these levels would bring many thousands more homes within the limited protection of the official noise lozenges. According to a Civil Aviation Authority report (DORA report 9023), numerous studies have showed 5-10% of people are bothered by aircraft noise below 55dBA Leq – meaning more people will be bothered as flight numbers grow. We should not become hung up, however, on the numbers. Noise nuisance also depends on who we are, our mood, our line of work, our state of health and even the time of day. Benjamin Britten, co-founder of the Aldeburgh Festival, moved house to Horham because the noise from US fighters flying from RAF Bentwaters, near Aldeburgh, was disturbing his composing. It also depends on where we are. Aircraft heard in a city centre may be felt as just another source of noise; on the high moors where we seek silence they are a gross intrusion. The drone of aircraft high in the sky is profoundly disturbing if there are enough of them even if not a single aircraft registers 57dBA.

The lucky can sleep THE World Health Organisation experts urged that noise across an eight-hour night period should not exceed 45dBA (30dBA indoors), with no single noise event to exceed 60dBA (45dBA indoors) – proposals which if implemented would eliminate all commercial jet take-offs at night.


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Heathrow has been a battleground over night flights for years. The Department for Transport pressed for an increase until in 2006 the move was withdrawn in order to secure the passage of the Civil Aviation Bill through Parliament. An average of 16 flights are allowed between 11.30pm and 6am; this level is supposed to remain until 2011-12. For the Heathrow campaigning group HACAN Clear Skies, night flights are a battle it thought it had won back in 2001. Then the European Court of Human Rights ruled that people near the airport were entitled to sleep undisturbed between 11.30 and 6, which meant a ban on flying. The eight claimants, who were backed by several councils, were awarded £4,000 compensation each. One of the claimants – who moved to get away from the planes – later described the distress that he and his wife felt. John Cavalla said: “We used to lie in bed and be woken at 4.30am by the roar of the first flight. Then at 6am all hell would break loose and planes started landing every minute or so. It was an absolute nightmare and left us irritable for the rest of the day.” Philippa Edmunds, another of the eight, who had two young children, said: “Sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. That is what happens when these jumbo jets start arriving at 4am and keep on coming. It is a human rights issue, the right to a decent night’s sleep.” The European court ruled that night flights violated the residents’ right to “respect for private and family life”. It held that the British government had failed to strike a fair balance between business needs and the interests of local residents. HACAN’s jubilation did not last long. Soon afterwards the government appealed against the decision. The appeal was upheld. For the long-suffering residents it was business as usual.


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According to HACAN, households in a band stretching from beyond Windsor in the west and across much of central and south London experience noise levels above 57 decibels. This is an area that includes superwealthy Richmond-upon-Thames and the Queen’s weekend home, Windsor Castle, proving that aircraft noise is no respecter of money and rank. Curiously, while noisy aircraft are an aggravation 20 miles and more from the airport, residents of the leafy suburb of Ruislip to the north enjoy untroubled skies. Heathrow’s runways are aligned east-west, meaning that planes do not pass over Ruislip. Clearly the most tranquil spot is in the lee of a major airport. Residents near Stansted suffered an average 23 night flights through the year, while those around Gatwick experienced an average 36 between 11.30 and 6. The latter had the limited satisfaction of knowing that the quota was less than in 2004-5 and the government has chosen to keep it at its present level until 2011-12. There was also to be a 10% reduction in noise over the period, and a ban on the noisiest (QC4 level) aircraft at night. Sleep was an especially scarce commodity near East Midlands airport, one of the country’s main destinations for air freight, with an average 60 night flights. Night flights are by no means a particularly UK problem. Residents suffer throughout Europe: Average flights per night Charles de Gaulle, Paris Frankfurt Koln/Bonn Liege Schipol Munich Dusseldorf Geneva Barcelona Source: HACAN, 2004

162 127 107 70 43 40 24 16 14


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As aircraft become quieter, it looks inevitable that businesses and airlines will try to use the government’s Night Noise Quota System* to obtain more night flights. The system aims to maintain a steady noise climate at night. Quieter aircraft are given fewer quota points, hence more can be flown within the overall quota. The changes are dramatic: for every three decibels of effective perceived noise (3 EPN dBA), the quota count is halved. This means that twice as many planes rated 93 EPN dBA can be flown as those rated 96 EPN dBA. However, a difference of three decibels is barely perceptible to the human ear. Here are some examples of British Airways aircraft and their quota counts: Aircraft type BAe 146-100/200/300 Airbus Industrie A320-111/211 Airbus Industrie A320-232 Airbus Industrie A321-231 Boeing 737-400 Boeing 737-500 Boeing 757-200 Boeing 767-300 (short haul) Boeing 767-300 (long haul) Boeing 777-200ER Boeing 747-400*

QC Departure

QC Arrival

0.25* 1 0.5 1 0.5 0.25 0.5 1 2 2 4

0.25* 0.5 0.25 0.25 1 1 0.25 1 1 1 2

Source: British Airways * Not operated at night

* The system applies to the three designated airports of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, but has advisory influence at other airports.


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The flaw with the quota count system is that all aircraft movements at night disturb sleep. A limit on the number of aircraft movements is vital for all residents within range of air noise – and with the greater quietness at night sound affects many thousands more than during the day. The government has already bowed to political pressure on the issue. It retreated from its wish to increase night flights at Heathrow and (of its own volition) has left the Gatwick quota untouched. Few expect this to be the end of the story.

Noisiest of them all THE Royal Air Force has about 1,000 aircraft including around 315 Tornado GR4, Tornado F3, Typhoon F2 and Harrier GR9 strike and air defence planes*. Sometimes they all seem to be over our heads at once, with shrieking sorties clipping the top of hedgerows or swoops that seem to come out of nowhere. Military exercises need space, leading to the sad irony that many of the least populated and otherwise most tranquil parts of the country are the worst affected by obtrusive planes. North Wales, East Anglia, the Borders and Scotland’s Western Isles all suffer. The RAF has about 46,000 regular personnel. Meanwhile, the UK hosts a foreign force within its borders. America has scaled down its military presence in Britain since the end of the cold war, but as well as various intelligence-gathering sites it has the US Air Force 48th Fighter Wing at Lakenheath, Suffolk. The wing has nearly 5,700 active-duty military * www.wikipedia.org


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members, 2,000 British and US civilians and three combat-ready squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle and F15C Eagle fighter aircraft. Lakenheath is the USAF’s only F15 fighter wing in Europe. Jonny Beardsall of the Daily Telegraph wrote about a flight with Wing Commander Andy Sudlow of the RAF’s 16 Squadron, based at Lossiemouth. The wingco explained that low-level flying, vital in wartime if planes are to avoid enemy radar, missiles and guns, was a “perishable skill” that each Jaguar pilot* had to practise for 250 hours a year. An aircraft could normally fly no closer than 250ft to the ground, but in designated training areas this could drop to 100ft provided the noise on the ground did not exceed 125 decibels. (This is more than double the official threshold level for annoyance from noise.) Most low-flying took place over thinly populated areas. “You take tremendous trouble to avoid villages, but it’s impossible to miss every house.” Among places never to be overflown were a riding centre for the disabled, hospitals with psychiatric patients and those performing microsurgery, and nuclear power stations. Some areas were avoided on a seasonal basis, from a nest of ospreys to the Cairngorms ski slopes in winter. “There isn’t an RAF pilot that I know who would break the rules of our own accord,” said Wing Cdr Sudlow. “We are all conscious of bad publicity and of the difficulty of getting people to accept what we do.” It became even harder after mother-of-two Heather Bell died when her horse was spooked by a low-flying Chinook helicopter. The horse bolted and threw her off “like a rag doll”. An inquest jury at Middle Rasen, Lincolnshire, found the Ministry of Defence had not taken appropri* Jaguars have since been withdrawn from service


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ate precautions to protect the public from its low-flying aircraft. The public got a sense of just how much of the area was accessible for low flying when Stuart Fisher, the coroner, urged that access should be cut back to the pre-1979 level of 40%. Darby and Catherine Dennis were unable to accept the RAF’s activities above their mansion near Stamford. Over many years their lives were made “unbearable” by Harrier jets on training flights. The value of the house reportedly more than halved because of the noise. In April 2003, the couple were awarded £950,000 in damages from the Ministry of Defence. The court, however, made no order for the flights to stop. Mr Dennis said the effect of noise was “aggravated by its persistence and, to an extent, its unpredictability”. The magazine Aircraft Illustrated talked to an unnamed Strike Eagle pilot from Lakenheath. The US pilot said Britain “has the best low altitude and mountainous training airspace in most of the world”. In an apparent reference to public feelings about low flying, he commented: “I truly feel that the efforts of the United Kingdom governments will continue to aid in the preparation of its military aviators. I appreciate the sacrifices the people of the UK make so that its defenders of freedom can be their very best.” Which seemed another way of saying that a supine population was willing to put up with more than citizens elsewhere. Military aircraft are exempted from all civilian controls under Crown Immunity*. We must rely on the Ministry of Defence’s assurances that it will only invoke its immunity to protect “operational effectiveness” – and on its questionable ability to control the United States, its NATO ally.

* Briefing by www.politics.co.uk


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A spurious balance IN its White Paper progress report of 2006, the government evidently thought it had struck “a fair balance between the local and national benefits that can be obtained from airport expansion, and the local costs that might be imposed on the people who live near the airport”. The Civil Aviation Act 2006 gave airport operators statutory powers to control noise and to fine airlines, the report pointed out. Airports were being encouraged to adopt mitigation policies and would be required under European rules to produce noise management schemes. East Midlands airport was cited as an example of good practice. It had introduced an innovative internet tracking system that help residents to identify which plane had caused a disturbance over their homes. (The report did not say what the long-suffering residents were supposed to do with this information.) Well and good as far as it goes, except that the idea of a balance between local and national benefits and local costs (a dismissive little phrase) is spurious. Damage to health from sleep deprivation or impairment of children’s learning cannot meaningfully be tidied away in a cost-benefit analysis. Nor does the assumed growth of the country’s economy (a national benefit) seem very appealing when it is your house that has suffered a collapse in value (a local cost) because of a new runway or more flights A study in Austria suggested that typical urban noise levels affected children’s health. They were found to have raised blood pressure, heart rates and levels of stress hormones. “Non-auditory effects of noise appear to occur at levels far below those required to damage hearing,” said Peter Lercher of the University of Innsbruck.


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Note that the finding referred to urban noise levels. We can imagine the effect on children when noise spikes from the aircraft taking off are half as much again in decibels as street noise. In fact, we don’t have to imagine it. Scientists associated with Barts hospital in London studied more than 2,800 children aged nine and 10 at schools near Heathrow and in Holland and Spain. Their conclusion, published in the medical journal Lancet, was that the children fell two months behind the reading age of their peers for every five decibel increase in aircraft noise. Typically, airport flightpaths knock 15% of the value of a home, a Hometrack survey found. That puts aircraft noise up with “pungent takeaways” and latenight music venues as a nuisance. It is ahead of busy roads (12%), electricity pylons (9%), prisons (8%) and railway lines (6%). Noise from planes using Gatwick airport triggered a lawsuit decided by the House of Lords. In Farley v Skinner (October 2001) a house purchaser sued a surveying firm which allegedly failed to report that the property was affected by aircraft noise, although asked particularly to look into the matter. The claimant said he would not have bought the property if he had known how bad the noise was. The trial judge awarded him £10,000 damages. The verdict was reversed on appeal, but restored in the House of Lords. Innovatory “tranquil areas” maps first published in 1995* helped Essex anti-noise campaigners to a small but heartening victory. The small estuary town of Mal-

* By the Council for the Protection of Rural England (now Campaign to Protect Rural England) and the Countryside Commission. The maps confirmed that huge and growing swaths of the country were subjected to visual or noise intrusion including by aircraft. New tranquillity maps were issued in 2007


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don is not yet among the casualties of noise pollution in a planning inspector’s judgment. Refusing development permission for a microlight landing site at Great Totham nearby, the inspector referred to the maps and said: “I consider that this location is peaceful, open and generally quiet.” The historian Jasper Ridley observed that of 175 generations to have lived in Britain since civilisation was established, the most recent four are separated from the previous 171 by the loss of silence. The present period is the worst of all, with the country said to be three times noisier than it was 30 years ago. It is set to get worse still. As prisoners we are embracing our chains, immersing ourselves in non-stop music or chatter and failing to notice external nuisances like overdriven cars and noisy planes.

Stacks and flightpaths NOISE is a particular problem for those who live underneath holding stacks (where aircraft circle while awaiting their turn to land). To add insult to injury, the same aircraft may be heard several times as it spirals down through the stack. Heathrow, for example, has four stacks, holding up to eight planes at between 15,000ft and 7,000ft. The aircraft then begin their final approach to landing, which for most of the time is over central and south London by which time they are below 4,000ft. The four stacks are located over Epping (the busiest, used by around half of all flights), Biggin Hill, Epsom and Chesham. Hundreds of thousands more homes face noise problems from 2009 as airspace in the South East is reconfigured in response to growing traffic. More flightpaths and more stacks look inevitable.


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Some relief from noise nuisance is provided by the continuous descent approach, a landing procedure widely used at British airports. CDA was first developed to save fuel so it also has benefits in reducing emissions. Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said the noise benefits are felt by people between 25 miles and 10 miles from the airport. It put noise reduction at up to 5dBA – enough to be noticeable. About 85% of landings at Heathrow are made under CDA. The Air Transport Association of America said: “Benefits include significant reduction in noise, fuel burn and emissions, and shorter flights.” Under CDA an aircraft, after leaving a stack or otherwise from 6,000-7,000ft, approaches the landing site at a steady 3deg angle instead of coming down in a series of steps (also known as “dive and drive”). This reduces noise in two ways: Once descent has begun, the CDA flightpath is higher than that of the staircase approach, therefore engine noise is less obtrusive on the ground. Less engine power is needed under CDA. Planes descending in steps need extra thrust as they level off, and need more power in level flight, both of which increase noise. The 3deg glide path becomes the same for CDA and “dive and drive” at 2,500-3,000ft when the aircraft starts the final, instrument-guided stage before landing. Greens are mainly happy with CDA, although as usual with aviation somebody’s gain is somebody else’s loss: because aircraft join the landing centreline (the line of approach) earlier, traffic may be introduced over new areas.


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Stay-out-of-jail card THE aviation industry knows that less noisy aircraft are its stay-out-of-jail card, and commercial jets are getting quieter. This allowed the International Air Transport Association to proclaim that planes are 50% quieter than they were 10 years earlier while the number of people exposed to aircraft noise worldwide fell by 35% between 1998 and 2004. Meanwhile, noise contours around British airports have shrunk, reflecting progress in making aero engines quieter. This happy scenario is not what it seems, however. Firstly, only new planes are quieter than their counterparts 10 years earlier – and there are a lot of older planes flying. Secondly, the numbers affected by aircraft noise are understated by the Leq indicator, which, as we saw above, counts periods of silence towards the average noise level. The International Civil Aviation Organisation approved an unambitious new noise standard, Chapter 4, in force from January 2006. This means that new aircraft need be only marginally quieter than aircraft registered under Chapter 3, which was introduced as far back as 1977. Aircraft noise is measured at three points – on landing approach, on take-off and at a sideline point. Chapter 4 requires a cumulative reduction of 10dBA, or an average reduction at each of the three measurement points of just over 3 dBA. On the logarithmic decibel scale three is classed as “just perceptible”*. The standard is so unambitious that more than 95% of pre-2006 aircraft are believed to meet the new standard, and around three-quarters are capable of meeting an improvement of at least 14dBA. * BRC Acoustics


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This led the US group Citizens Against Aircraft Pollution to complain: “So most existing noisy aircraft, which are effectively ‘grandfathered’ in under the even weaker Chapter 3 standard, will be allowed to fly for the next 30 years.” The Aviation Environment Federation asked: “Is this really the best we can expect from an industry that prides itself on its rate of technological innovation?” We the public must hope that aircraft makers will voluntarily exceed the Chapter 4 standards. Thus Airbus said of its new super-jumbo: “Low-noise characteristics have been a major design driver for the A380. As a result the aircraft is significantly quieter than other large aircraft and offers substantial margins in relation to the latest (ICAO Stage [Chapter] 4) noise limits, producing half the noise energy at take-off and cutting the area exposed to equivalent noise levels around the airport runway by half.” The real improvements in aero engine technology are undermined by the vast expansion in the number of flights that the UK government is greenlighting. By filling in the periods of silence, this will push the Leq ever upwards. The respected aviation scholar John Whitelegg and his associate Howard Cambridge, both of York University, in Aviation and Sustainability (2004), are clear about the consequences: “A number of measures can be implemented to reduce the impact of aircraft noise, however, unless the overall number of flights is reduced through other demand management approaches, they will largely be negated.” This is the same note that was sounded by the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see Chapter 3), which argued that technological and operational fixes “are expected to only partially offset the growth of aviation emissions”. So we come back to the issue that threatens to undermine all amelioration efforts – the growing number of flights.


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FIVE CROWDED SKIES, VANISHED ACRES

IT is a safe bet that if travellers realised the extent of aerial near-misses, far fewer people would fly. In the trade a near-miss is known as an “airprox” (aircraft proximity event). National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which controls the airspace over the UK and the eastern North Atlantic, handles a growing number of flights – up 20% to 2.4 million in the past six years, according to its 2007 annual report. That is more than 220 million passengers and a daily average of more than 6,500 flight movements. At the same time, the number of airprox’s fell to 56 in the most recent year. That’s just 0.0025% of flights handled. The number looks a lot less cheering if we consider the potential scale of air disasters. A Virgin express train with more than 100 on board derailed at 95mph near Kendal, killing one passenger. That sort of death toll is impossible with Virgin Airways, or any other airline. It is all or nothing in a mid-air collision. A Russian airliner and a cargo plane collided over Germany in July 2002, killing 71 most of them children. The tragedy has echoed down the years as a warning over Europe’s increasingly crowded skies and the conditions in which air traffic controllers work. Nineteen months later, Peter Nielsen, the controller who directed the two planes from Zurich air traffic control, was stabbed to death at his home. It was a suspected revenge killing.


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In September 2007, four managers of the Zurich control centre run by Skyguide were convicted of negligent homicide. Three were given one-year suspended sentences and the fourth was fined 13,500 Swiss francs (about £6,000). Four other officials were acquitted. Prosecutors had argued that Nielsen, who was alone in the control room at the time, was not solely to blame for the tragedy. There was a culture of negligence and lack of risk awareness, they claimed. Francis Schubert, Skyguide interim chief executive, said the company had “learned the lessons from this tragic event”. It was attributable primarily to “the interplay between people, technology and procedures”. NATS insists that the great majority of the airproxes it records are technical infringements and that “risk-bearing” events are in low single figures year after year. Passengers involved in the 56 airproxes recorded in 2007 report wouldn’t see it that way, of course. It is true that officially recognised risk-bearing airprox’s have fallen and are currently very low, figures for the three most recent reported years being 2, 0 and 1. Prospect, the trade union representing air traffic controllers agreed that “the UK has an exemplary safety record in some of the busiest air space in the world”. The issue is to keep it that way as traffic grows and grows. Prospect warned in 2006 that profits from the partprivatised NATS need to be reinvested in the business if safety is to be maintained. Garry Graham, the union’s national secretary for aviation, said: “These achievements in safety, as well as sustaining an historic low in terms of flight delays, are testament to the hard work, commitment and professionalism of our members, working in a pressurised environment and in an industry which has seen an unparallelled growth in demand in recent years.


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Crowded skies, vanished acres 143

“It is because the UK has some of the busiest and most complex air space in the world that it is vitally important that investing in safety remains at the heart of everything we do.” NATS posted a pre-tax profit for 2006-07 of £94.4m. Most was retained within the company, with £2.4m paid as dividends to shareholders. The NATS shareholders are: the UK Government, 49%; the Airline Group comprising British Airways, British Midland, Thomsonfly, easyJet, Monarch, My Travel and Virgin Atlantic, 42%; airport operator BAA, 4%; and the NATS Employee Sharetrust, 5%. NATS’ principal control centre at Swanwick, Hampshire, opened in 2002 six years late. The service had been controversially part-privatised the previous year. The £623m Swanwick project was dogged by computer problems many of which translated into misery on the ground, with delays and cancellations. Air traffic control expert Philip Butterworth-Hayes criticised NATS’ decision to create its own software. “When you plan a new operation like this, you want it to be good for the next 20 to 25 years,” he explained. “But software is advancing at a tremendous pace, so it becomes obsolete every 18 months.” Off-the-shelf software can be replaced at manageable cost. NATS subsequently adopted off-the-shelf software, and operational performance looked up.

Squeezing in extra DESPITE NATS’s mantra that safety will never be compromised, that is the only construction that can be put on the decision by the pan-European air traffic control agency to fit in ever more flights. Common sense says that halving the vertical separation between planes increases the risk of an airprox or even


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a collision, but that is what Eurocontrol has allowed: above 29,000ft – the level at which typical cruising heights start – planes need only stay 1,000ft apart instead of 2,000ft as before. Two big jets with more than 400 passengers on board came within 100ft of each other in the skies over Wales with a combined closing speed of 1,000mph. The incident, in 2002, occurred when a Swanwick controller confused the positions of a Boeing 747 and a Boeing 767, instructing them to move together instead of drawing apart. A woman passenger broke her ankle when the 747 captain took emergency action. NATS responded to this close shave by promising to beef up its computer software so that visual displays would not be misread. A British Airways 747 with 310 on board was apparently put on the same flight level as an oncoming Argentinian jetliner over southern France. In the September 2007 incident, the 747’s automated collision avoidance system screamed “Climb! Climb! Climb!”. The pilot did so, and averted disaster. With the British government countenancing – extolling, in fact – a huge rise in passenger numbers, air traffic controllers are left trying to square the circle of safety and demand. The DfT’s 2002 consultation document on aviation growth said “the difficulties are not insuperable” in meeting increased demand safely. This less than ringing expression of confidence was based on a number of “capacity-enhancing tools” being in place by 2010. They include more precise tracking and separation of aircraft on departure routes, and multiple closely spaced departure and en-route procedures. In other words, continued safety is contingent on procedures that haven’t happened yet. The danger is obvious: we are being committed to ever more flights without the certainty that they can be safely handled.


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Military flying gives rise to safety concerns. For the villagers of Preston Capes, Northamptonshire, it was bad enough to be under an RAF low-fly corridor. Even worse was the prospect of a meteorological trial mast and eventual wind turbines 400ft high in open countryside that jets sweep across at anywhere from 250ft to 500ft. What, they wondered, are the aircraft to do. Execute a little jiggle to avoid these enormous structures? The RAF’s fleet of 75 large transport aircraft – Hercules, TriStars and VC10s – is up to 40 years old. Much of it must stagger on until 2011 when replacements are due. The Commons Defence Select Committee discovered that only 34 out the 75 planes were available, with the rest grounded for maintenance. Most of the Hercules fleet is not equipped against a fuel tank explosion, leaving the planes vulnerable to ground-to-air terror attacks. This is thought to be why a Hercules crashed in Iraq in 2005 after being hit by ground fire. Ten service personnel died. The safety of the RAF’s fleet of Nimrod surveillance aircraft was put in question when one exploded in midair over Kandahar, Afghanistan, killing all 14 on board. The tragedy was blamed on a fuel leak during mid-air refuelling. Fourteen months later, in November 2007, the incident was almost repeated. A Nimrod suffered a major fuel leak also while refuelling. This time the aircraft was able to make an emergency landing at Kandahar without any injuries. The increase of private flying adds safety issues for those in planes and those underneath them. Air traffic control does not direct every aircraft in the sky, and over much of the country commercial jets and private planes mix. Aviation writer Hal Stoen tells a story of the pioneer flyer, Charles Lindbergh.* One night while flying the * In www.stoenworks.com


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US Mail in the western United States, he decided to head into the clouds and practise his rudimentary instrument skills. The warm glow of the aircraft’s navigation lights gave him some small comfort. Shortly, another glow emerged from the air mass and passed close by him. It was another mail plane, whose pilot was doing the same exercise. The only two aircraft in US airspace west of the Mississippi River had come close to colliding head-on. Clearly, there would have to be rules for the sky just as there were rules for the roads. Nowadays much of the world’s airspace, including that of the UK, is parcelled up into internationally agreed classes. They make a complex mosaic in which commercial air transport and much general aviation fly under instrument flight rules (IFR), while other private aircraft follow visual flight rules (VFR). The UK’s airspace ranges from Class A, the most rigorously controlled, to Class G, which is uncontrolled. Aircraft operating under IFR can fly in places and under weather conditions that are barred to those under VFR. These as the term suggests must depend on visual observation, or eyesight, for safe navigation. Inside controlled airspace (Classes A to F), most aircraft generally receive a service of some sort from air traffic control. Principal airspace classes and areas: VFR aircraft cannot fly in Class A airspace, which is chiefly the London control zone surrounding Heathrow airport, the terminal control areas around Heathrow and Manchester airports and the main airways, or flight routes, across the nation. The airways are restricted space from the ground up to FL195. [FL195


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stands for Flight Level 19,500ft. This is a standardised pressure altitude. It is in the region of, but not necessarily the same as, an actual altitude of 19,500ft. All aircraft operating on the FL system calibrate altimeters to a standard setting regardless of the actual sea level pressure – a critical safety procedure*.] Class C (a new category in Britain) is controlled airspace between FL195 and FL660. A number of temporary reserved areas (TRAs) are planned within this class where private and military aircraft can operate with considerable freedom – for example, without a radar service and flying autonomously under VFR. Military pilots can manoeuvre with tactical freedom. Class D comprises control zones and areas around major airports while “advisory routes” – those regularly used by commercial aircraft but with less frequency than an established airway – fall into Class F. Class G, the uncontrolled airspace, is far larger than the typical non-flyer realises. It covers the whole country up to FL195 apart from airports and airways, as described above. Airspace over FL660 (66,000ft) is also Class G, although the extreme altitude means it has little relevance for commercial airliners or private aircraft. In Class G airspace, the role of air traffic control is limited or non-existent. It usually means a flight information service only. Traffic separation is not normally provided. In other words, over much of Britain’s crowded skies private flyers can operate how they please – not a particularly comforting thought as private flying increases. The precedents from the land are not encouraging. Motorists’ behaviour is marked by a casual approach to safety and an acceptance of risk. Safety first is not * www.wikipedia.org


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the watchword of most drivers. Added security in the vehicle and on the road are traded off for the same level of risk that we accepted before. The same approach is likely to prevail in the air. Tailgating at 10,000ft … why not? All over the country, on thousands of private tracks, driveways and abandoned airstrips, children learn to drive cars years before they are old enough to drive on public roads – and even more years before they know the meaning of risk. Ten-year-old Laurence Hughes went one better and took flying lessons. He died in a mid-air collision when his Cessna 152 and a Russian-built Yak replica warplane hit each other over Essex. The two others aboard the two planes were also killed. Although it was not clear whether Laurence or his instructor was at the controls at the time, it was not disputed that the boy was having a flying lesson. Indeed, the boy’s father seemed proud of the fact. Robin Hughes, the Daily Telegraph reported, said: “Laurence was only 10 but he lived for flying. He spent all his spare time building and flying planes.” Mr Hughes went on: “Andy Duffill [the instructor] was our best friend. He taught me to fly and taught our sons, Laurence, and his brother Elliott [even younger than Laurence].” As reported by the newspaper, Mr Hughes’s statement did not address the question of the appropriateness of a 10-year-old learning to fly. To the adult it may be amusing or a source of macho pride, but such precociousness can have tragic results, as Laurence’s case shows.

The great land grab BRITAIN’S crowded skies, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) explained, is a legacy of


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empire, by which the country “accommodates a disproportionate amount of the world’s international travel and as such carries a disproportionate environmental burden”. That includes gobbling up green acres. Crowded skies mean crowded land. Even more than motorways, airport expansion brings problems of “land take”. As well as by the airport itself, land is consumed by roads and railways for access, car parks, offices, warehouses, spin-off businesses and staff housing. The CPRE has headed up opposition to the loss of countryside to aviation growth. As far back as 1995, it aired its concerns to the House of Commons Transport Committee. It is worth revisiting that evidence to see how little has been done since in the direction of integrated transport. The campaign complained that planning for air capacity “is conducted in a vacuum which does not consider the wider implications or alternatives in terms of other transport modes”. For domestic and short-haul European flights, it was pointed out, high-speed rail links could provide a competitive alternative. Twelve years later, the highspeed rail link from London to Paris and Brussels via the Channel Tunnel was finally opened. Ferocious fares and erratic service levels by rail between London and Glasgow or Edinburgh forced serious business people onto air shuttles. The Aviation Environment Federation, an umbrella body whose backers include the CPRE, Campaign for Better Transport and Friends of the Earth, put the matter plainly. “Meeting predicted demand will require the equivalent of a new airport the current size of Stansted every year for the next 30 years. This scale of growth is simply unsustainable; to promote it is hugely irresponsible,” it declared in Flying Into Trouble. Stansted is 2,350 acres (9.5km2) in size. To picture


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this, think of the better part of two miles in each direction. With the second runway called for in the Air Transport White Paper, the airport would have to be more than half as big again at 4,090 acres (16.5km2). That would make it much bigger than Heathrow at 2,960 acres (12.0km2)*. It would, however, still be smaller than land-hungry Charles de Gaulle (CDG) in France at 7,910 acres (32km2) and Schipol in land-challenged Holland at 6,890 acres (27.9km2). Stansted owner BAA, whose figures these are, said the airport needs to be that large because the local Uttlesford council requires all buildings to be within the airport perimeter. Airports like Heathrow have a huge amount of related development beyond the boundary. Uttlesford also requires buildings to be kept low. These restrictions are because Stansted is sited in an otherwise unspoilt part of rural Essex – and campaign group Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE), and its predecessor, have been fighting for 40 years against the spread of the former small flying field. The airport has been the subject of repeated planning inquiries from 1966 onwards. It is a good example of how the planning bureaucracy never gives up until it has the result it wants. Much has been lost already. Planes fly low over ancient Hatfield Forest,shattering the peace of this rare example of medieval woodland. Stansted has the unenviable distinction of what is said to be the largest surface airport car park in the world. The second runway is not expected until 2015. Meanwhile, Uttlesford council turned down a proposal from the airport operator to vastly expand the use of the present runway – a decision that BAA appealed in 2007.

* Heathrow, CDG and Schipol are current sizes


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The operator wanted to raise the flight volume from around 22 million passengers per annum to 35mppa (more than half the present volume of Heathrow) by 2014. SSE claimed this would mean an extra 80,000 flights a year over the Essex countryside. With all these alarums and excursions it seems incredible that the airport makes a loss of around £1 a passenger on aeronautics. This was the figure given by Brian Ross, SSE’s economic adviser, in 2005. Yet the airport is comfortably in profit. Unlike conventional businesses (and there is nothing conventional about the aviation industry), BAA cannot drop a loss-making line: if you drop the passengers there is no-one to park their cars and no-one to go shopping – which is where the money lies. These activities more than make up for the loss on handling passengers. It raises the question What is Stansted for? Why is it there, and why is it being expanded? If we want shopping we can go to Oxford Street, Bluewater or Meadowhall. We have the bizarre but also tragic situation that open land is destroyed and lives blighted not so that people can fly but so they can go shopping deep in the countryside.

LAND AREA OF AIRPORTS: EXAMPLES Heathrow Stansted Gatwick Manchester Newcastle Edinburgh Glasgow Leeds/Bradford

Km2 12.00 9.50 6.70 6.25 4.94 3.75 3.29 1.58

Acres 2963 2349 658 1542 1222 928 813 390

[Sources: Commission for Integrated Transport; BAA (Stansted only)] NB: Related developments including offices and warehouses mean extensive land take follows beyond airport perimeters


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Lydd, the unlikeliest airport LYDD in Kent is a case study of the effect of aviation expansion on the land environment. On the face of it, an airport next to a nuclear power station, unspoilt marshland and a nature reserve of international importance, with an identifiable safety hazard of birds fouling aero engines and a location half a hundred miles from its main market, is not best placed to expand. None of this deterred the Department for Transport in its Air Transport White Paper from seeing development possibilities at Lydd, and the airport owners from picking up that baton and running with it. The modest flying field with an all-but-invisible 3,000 passengers per annum wants to expand to 300,000ppa by 2009 and ultimately to 2mppa. A runway extension to accommodate largish jets like the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, and a terminal with a capacity for 500,000ppa, are planned. Lydd, which is on the coast, was built in 1954 for cross-channel car ferry services. It enjoyed strong levels of traffic in the Fifties and Sixties, but competition from roll-on roll-off sea ferries saw it decline in the early Seventies. Long before Ryanair and easyJet, budget travellers could fly from Lydd to Le Touquet, as they still can – destinations equally inconvenient for their respective national capitals, but at least the flights were cheap. The stated reasons for expansion are: a viable solution to increasing UK demand for air transport; providing a local airport for business and domestic flights; providing local jobs for local people; regeneration of Romney Marsh and a boost for tourism in Kent and East Sussex. The aims may be valid from the aviation industry’s perspective; what is in question is the ability of Lydd to meet them.


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The airport is surrounded by protected habitats. One in four jobs in Romney Marsh is based on tourists, particularly bird-watchers. It is hard to see that jobs can be maintained, much less increased, if the tourism environment is degraded, if birds are driven away and tranquillity ruined by overflying jets. In the cosseted aviation industry, which is not subject to normal commercial rigours, no-one says a facility has outlived its purpose, let’s close it. A new use must be found. Lydd has reinvented itself as LyddLondon Ashford airport (although London is 53 miles away). That’s 53 miles and no railway. The nearest rail station is Appledore, 7 1/2 miles away. That would leave 70% of passengers getting to and from the enlarged airport by car by country roads, according to consultants retained by airport opponents. The consultants projected that just 10% of passengers would use the bus and another 20% taxis. Infrastructure demands would soon follow if the airport expansion goes as planned, with upgraded roads and perhaps a railway link. This amid the isolation of Romney Marsh, described by Louise Barton of the opposition Lydd Airport Action Group as “one of the last remaining tranquil areas of the South-east”. Lydd is less than three miles from the Dungeness nuclear power complex, raising fears of an air accident or a terror strike. It is also just down the road from a major reserve operated by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Dungeness conservation area – more than 7,400 acres including what is described as the most diverse and extensive examples of vegetated shingle in Europe, with special forms of broom and blackthorn, together with a large population of great crested newts. The airport’s managing director, Zaher Deir, insisted that there were no safety concerns. “We have


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a fully upgraded and licensed air traffic control system and we are confident there is no danger posed by our proximity to the plant or the military firing ranges [at Lydd and Hythe],” he told the Daily Telegraph. “There are nuclear facilities all over the UK close to aircraft movements. If there is a danger it exists everywhere, not just at Lydd.” He has a point there. Or maybe not. The Lydd Airport Action Group said it is unaware of any civil airport of regional scale within three miles of a nuclear power station anywhere in the world. As for birdstrikes posing a danger to aircraft in flight, Deir added: “We have a bird management scheme and we have efficient methods of keeping birds and the aircraft apart.” That sounds like curtains for the birds. Kent Wildlife Trust said control measures at the expanded airport might include degrading the birds’ habitat over a radius of up to 10 miles. This would take in almost all of the Dungeness to Pett Level Special Protection Area and all of the RSPB’s Dungeness nature reserve. The internationally important Dungeness to Pett Level Special Protection Area has important populations of breeding terns and gulls. In winter it is home to large populations of Bewick’s swans and shoveller ducks. The wildlife trust said the added pollution of aircraft taking off and landing at Lydd, and of cars bringing passengers to the airport, would further damage the shingle habitats at Dungeness and the site’s rare insects. Existing air pollution is thought to be already affecting the area’s important vegetation. It is hard to think of an airport less suitable for expansion than Lydd from a land use perspective. In human terms, London City is probably the worst because of the density of population surrounding it,


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with the safety issues that this brings. That is another airport that started small and, inevitably, wants to grow. A case surely of neither, nor. But the Lydd airport protesters have a job of work ahead.

Going for growth IN children they treat it, in airports they applaud it. What can it be? It is the condition where you can’t stop growing. London City is a classic case. The airport is in the capital’s Docklands area, on top of Canary Wharf and just 6.0 miles from the City business district (Heathrow is 19.4 miles). It is thus ideally placed to serve the business community both with scheduled flights and corporate jets. What it does for the surrounding, densely populated residential area is another matter. At the planning stage, London City had barely scraped a mandate from the local community as a modest STOLport (short take-off and landing) with the 54-seat De Havilland DHC 7 Dash. On the back of that it has grown into a substantial facility with planes twice the size. It is planning for eight million passengers a year by 2030. The story begins in 1982 when the idea of an innercity airport was sold to sceptical residents in the Silvertown community. Two-thirds of respondents in a survey voiced concerns about noise, despite the acknowledged quietness of the Dash, an aeroplane 80ft 8in long with a wingspan of 93ft. Pollsters MORI found that 53% were in favour of the airport, 22% were against and the rest were undecided. Results were similar with an NOP poll – 50% of respondents living near the site approved, 21% disapproved. Greater support for the airport in its immediate


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area than in the borough at large, and the large number of undecideds, was probably explained by the hope of getting jobs. It illustrates the familiar dilemma between the environment and jobs. Commercial flights began from London City in 1987, using the De Havilland Dash. The very next year a Bae 146 turned up on a demonstration flight. This was a bigger aircraft, 93ft 10in long with wingspan of 86ft, seating upwards of 70 passengers. In the first full year of operation, the airport handled 133,000 passengers. By 1989 – just two years after the airport opened – the owners wanted a longer runway, allowing the regular use of bigger aircraft. The business-minded Thatcher administration approved the move. In 1992 the airport was relaunched with its extended runway. Services using the Bae 146 began. More than half a million passengers a year were handled for the first time in 1995. The million followed two years later. In 1998 London City won approval to increase the number of flights, leading the following year to 44,195 flights and 1,388,481 passengers. In 2000 the business-minded Blair administration committed £30m of public money to the airport to connect it to the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). In 2006 the Airbus 318 arrived on proving trials. This 100-seater is almost twice as large in seating capacity, almost a third longer and a fifth wider in wingspan* than the Dash that was to serve the original STOLport. The airport posted 79,616 flights and 2,377,318 passengers – the first year it has passed two million. In 2007 the airport asked to raise the flight cap again – this time by 50%, from 80,000 to 120,000. This * A318 103ft 2 in long, wingspan 111ft 10in


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would allow it to handle 3.9mppa by 2010, on the way to that goal of 8mppa by 2030. The 2012 Olympic Games will give another boost to London City’s fortunes. Stratford, the main games site, is just down the road. It is handily connected, thanks to public money, to Stratford via the DLR. And because of the railway to the airport an exceptionally high number of passengers, around four in every five, use public transport. London City prides itself on being a good neighbour. It is a significant source of local employment. It does not operate night flights and it shuts down for 24 hours at weekends. A sound insulation programme covers homes within the 57dBA Leq16 noise contour. It said it has no plans for night flights despite the massive expansion plans. Residents hope it will keep that promise, and will not seek another upgrade. In its first 20 years of life London City airport changed hands twice. Owners move on but residents must stay, and with them the noise and the pollution.


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SIX THE SCOURGE TO COME

WHILE airline travel is expected to keep on growing, the expansion of personal air travel is set to affect our lives even more in the long run. With this sector we are where motoring was decades ago. This book argues that unless we act we shall see the same consequences in the air as we see on the roads. With all the benefits of cars, few but double-dyed petrolheads would argue that present arrangements for motoring are the best that can be imagined. Too late we encourage more use of public transport; too late we urge car sharing to the office and factory; too late we argue for fuel economy and carbon efficiency to be preferred to power and speed; too late we try to resolve the dilemma of building more roads or not building them; too late we ponder matching demand to finite capacity with road pricing; too late we even dream about a lifetime mileage allowance for everyone (without capacity trading) so no-one is disadvantaged by the regressive* nature of road pricing. Whether some or even all of these things are considered desirable, I believe it is substantially too late for the roads. Even holding the line with traffic growth is not currently in sight. It is not too late with the developing traffic of the skies. When the first edition of this book appeared in 2003, I suggested that flying was where motoring was in 1910. Since then there has been a continuing explosion * A charge that bears more heavily on the poor than on the rich


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of cheap flights and, even more importantly, a huge increase in Britons owning second homes abroad. Will any government dare to leave these people stranded by clamping down on aviation? So already we have moved forwards to, say, 1935 in motoring terms. See Chapter 1 for what happened to the car after that. We still have time, but less than we had, to ensure that aviation ceases to threaten us through climate change, noise and intrusion. The growth of personal air travel can be seen in two stages. In stage one an increasing section of the wellto-do will enjoy unparallelled personal mobility with some downside to themselves (small planes and helicopters crash) and much disturbance to the rest of us. Often these flyers will be taking to the air solely to beat the congestion on the ground. In stage two almost everyone will enjoy that mobility, but with such a downside to ourselves and society that belatedly the price will seem too high. Stage one is already well under way. The UK register of civil aircraft, maintained by the Civil Aviation Authority, almost doubled between 1985 and 2004 (93%), to 17,012 registrations, most of them non-public aircraft. Helicopters (together with hot air balloons) saw one of the sharpest increases – up 122% to 1,159. Allowing for the population difference, registrations in Britain are less than half those of the United States, so there is plenty more growth to come. That we haven’t seen anything yet is suggested by the finding (2007) that only 13% of multi-millionaires owned a private jet (compared with half who owned a yacht). The other 87% haven’t decided against a plane: it seems they just haven’t got round to buying one. Events organiser Paul Naden, compiler of the survey of 200 UK-based multi-millionaires, told the Daily Mail: “Even multi-millionaires are still chasing the


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The scourge to come 161

dream. A lifestyle of luxury is not enough. They want extreme luxury… “They want private jets and then helicopters to take them out to their boats. They want the ultimate experiences and they are not prepared to compromise.” Much private flying consists of ego trips, not related to business or work. The total of 17,000 aircraft in the UK is the same as motor vehicles in 1905 – and look what happened then!

America today, Europe tomorrow TO see tomorrow we must, as always, look at America now. In Medina, the billionaires’ haven near Seattle favoured by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, at least one seaplane was to be seen tied up at the pier of each mega-home edging Lake Washington. The Medina authorities planned to ban helicopter pads but to allow seaplanes. (They also wanted to crack down on private tramways between the big houses and the lakeshore.) Residents living around Van Nuys airfield in Hollywood were angered by the noise of private jets used by film stars including John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But they failed to persuade Los Angeles City Council, which allowed operations at least until 2010. The residents of exclusive Aspen in the Rocky Mountains are well aware of how aircraft noise can destroy the mountain idyll. The magazine Aircraft Illustrated on a visit to the town reported that Aspen Pitkin County airport had some of the strictest noise regulations of any airport in North America. Restrictions included a flights curfew and a required “high approach” to Runway 33 (one of two runways) without overflying the town. The airport authority also urged


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pilots to use minimum reverse thrust when landing, “in response to the local community and environmental concerns”. Nevertheless, the skies around Aspen sounded to considerably more than birdsong. In latest figures available to the magazine (in 2000), there were 43,320 movements at Aspen Pitkin County airport in 1998 – an average of 119 movements a day. Almost two-thirds of these movements (over 27,500) were by business aircraft, many no doubt being used by rich residents who balked at the tough 160-mile road journey to Denver. The residents were directly contributing to the nuisance that through airport regulations they sought to reduce – a typical paradox of aviation. If anyone is “entitled” to a private jet, it must surely be plane-maker Boeing. In the mid-Nineties, the Mail on Sunday reported approvingly, Boeing “ran only three small corporate jets”. Among the “excesses” of Phil Condit, the chief executive who resigned suddenly in late 2003, was “a fleet of jets, including a 737 fitted out for Condit in the style of an English library”. As far back as 2001, the US National Business Aviation Association found that three hundred of the companies appearing in the Fortune 500 list owned a corporate jet. Also that year, Susan Carpenter and Martha L. Willman of the Los Angeles Times discovered that America had 450 air parks – housing developments built around a runway, from which the well-to-do fly to work in the way that much of the world hops into a car. An enthusiast described air parks as the “ultimate in gated community living”. The Carlsons of Rosamond, California, told the LA Times reporters how happy they were at their air park: “Al and Teri Carlson wake up at 5am each weekday to the sound of their neighbor flying to work. That’s followed an hour and half later by the sound of


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their friend across the street firing up his Cessna and taking off for Los Angeles. ‘We can pretty much tell who’s flying just by the sound,’ says Al Carlson, who lives just 120ft from the runway.” The couple, it was explained, use their white and yellow Cessna the way most people use a car – for vacationing, going shopping, even going to church on Sundays. “Planes are an extension of anybody’s ability to drive,” said Al Carlson. “We just go long distances faster.” Carpenter and Willman said air parks have been around for decades – the first was opened in 1941 – but now the number has begun to climb as commuters and business travellers look for ways to bypass overcrowded highways and commercial flights. “The trend mirrors a surge in interest in private aircraft generally and efforts to develop affordable planes as easy to fly as cars are to drive,” they added. California at that time had 28 air parks; Florida had 78, the most famous of which is Jumbolair, near Ocala. Actor John Travolta, a man so besotted with flying that he named his son Jett, has a home there with a runway at the bottom of the garden. The 7,400ft runway, supposedly the longest private strip in the world, comes in handy for the Grease star’s Boeing 707. Britain may not have the space for hundreds of air parks but, not to be outdone, we have Lower Mill, near Cirencester in super-fashionable Gloucestershire. It was described by the Mail on Sunday as Britain’s first “fly-in village”. Residents are wafted by air to a strip near the 600-property estate, and then transferred by car or helicopter to their homes. Jeremy Paxton, who founded Lower Mill, explained: “People from all sorts of professions live here. What they have in common is a desire for peace and a passion for flying.” Peacefulness may not be the first word chosen by


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the inhabitants of the surrounding area as the superrich chase their dream of tranquillity in super-quick time. The development is built around the former RAF Kemble base, and demonstrates how difficult it is to get land back for agriculture once it has been used for aviation, whatever promises may have been made originally.

Cocoons in the sky EUROPE has been slower than America to take up corporate jets, traditionally seeing them as a mark of extravagance. But with the internationalisation of business and the homogenisation of Western society, we are learning. US investor Warren Buffett, who was in Britain to promote his corporate jet company NetJet, said in 2001: “I can’t conceive of a Europe without thousands of owners [with some sharing planes] 10 years from now.” At that time there were about 2,000 corporate jets in operation across Europe. Legendary business mogul Sir Fred Goodwin of Royal Bank of Scotland is known as Fred the Shred for his willingness to take an axe to the livelihoods of others. However, his cost-cutting enthusiasm did not extend to the bank’s £18m private jet, whose running costs in 2004 were thought to be around £7,700 an hour. Yorkshire’s Jim Beresford, known as Britain’s richest solicitor (takes some doing), sealed his success with a mansion near Wetherby, two Aston Martins and a Ferrari, several racehorses, membership of the exclusive Wetherby Golf Club – and a Super King Air plane. The world must look good through the polarized windows of the seven-seat turbo-prop as passengers relax


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in leather chairs refreshed with their choice from the flying bar. This is a feeling known to Philip Green, boss of the Arcadia fashion group which owns many British household name brands. He took Kate Rankine of the Daily Telegraph for a ride in his six-seater Lear jet. At 30,000ft over the French Alps, Rankine reported, the entrepreneur relaxed with his stockinged feet on the mushroom-coloured seat and commented: “It’s very civilised up here, isn’t it?” And so it is for those in the plane. Less so for those on the ground. Far less so as corporate jets become increasingly common. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in a special report directed at the British government’s consultation on airport expansion, reserved some of its strongest words for the prospect of supersonic business jets typically carrying eight to 10 passengers. Aircraft in the stratosphere are a threat to ozone levels, which protect the earth from excessive solar radiation. “The contribution to global climate change of this kind of aircraft [supersonic corporate jets] would be so disproportionate that their development and promotion must be regarded as grossly irresponsible,” the commission said.

The helicopter menace PRIVATE helicopters are the most anti-social of all flying machines. The same technology that saves lives with rescue helicopters and air ambulances in another setting makes life miserable as noise is sprayed over thousands for the benefit of one or two occupants. Pity the poor citizens of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s overgrown business capital with a population of 17 million. The pilots’ association claimed that more private helicopter flights were made there than anywhere in the


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world. The number of helicopters was said to have quadrupled to 450 in the six years to 2000. Choppers made 2,000 landings for a Formula One race event that year while landings on Avenida Paulista, the city’s main business street, averaged about 80 a day. Fabrice Cagnat, commercial director for a helicopter firm, said sweepingly if understandably, disregarding about 99.8% of city residents: “Having a helicopter is not only accepted here but it is considered a necessary tool for existing.” We don’t need to cross the Atlantic to discover the nuisance of helicopters. We can ask Cotswold villagers who suffer weekend torment as the choppers take the rich and famous to their Gloucestershire retreats. Writer Sir John Mortimer lamented the spoiling of Sunday afternoons at his country retreat when “every spare-time pilot criss-crosses the sky, practising looping the loop, being careful only to avoid the helicopters which are buzzing furiously, transporting weekend guests to the stately homes of various television personalities”. Hopping across the country by helicopter to watch a football match is for the super-rich like catching a bus to the local stadium. Sometimes, however, the price of the ride is unbearably high. Businessman Phillip Carter, an honorary vice-president of Chelsea, was looking forward to a pleasant evening out when he left his country estate near Peterborough to see his team play Liverpool in that city. But the return trip ended in tragedy when the twin-engine Squirrel chopper crashed only three miles from home, killing the 44year-old, his teenage son and the two other occupants. A short trip by helicopter – the aerial equivalent of nipping in the car to the corner shop – claimed the lives of former world rally driving champion Colin McRae, aged 39, his son and two family friends. McRae’s Squirrel helicopter exploded in a fireball close


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to his Lanarkshire home after an outing to Quarter, less than seven miles away. Making the helicopter more affordable, and therefore more numerous, is the aim of the Robinson R22. Timandra Harkness of the Daily Telegraph put it to the test: she found the R22 flew for less than 32p per mile compared with 29.9p per mile for the MINI car. The Campaign to Protect Rural England complained to the British government about “the extreme disturbance caused by helicopters in both private and commercial service flying from small airfields and between larger airports”. It pointed out that leisure flying (unlike commercial flying) is not restricted for noise and its impact on rural tranquillity. Oxford airport is popular with learner pilots, who can often be seen – and heard – doing circuits and bumps above the surrounding countryside. In a letter to the (London) Independent, Robin Alden of Oxford took up the cudgels on behalf of residents living near smaller airports like Oxford and Redhill, used by light aircraft, helicopters and business jets. “Why is it that neither our UK nor EU legislators have so far paid any attention to the noise nuisance created by so-called non-designated airports which service general aviation... ?” he asked. “Will Alistair Darling [the then-transport secretary] and his junior ministers please answer this question, instead of persistently ignoring it?” If private flying is troubling residents around Britain’s smaller airports, it’s nothing to what they can expect in future.

Enter the flying Ford BRITAIN is dotted with small airfields, around 250 of them. They would be just the ticket for a national net-


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work of air taxis. “In Britain you’re never further than 20 minutes away from an airfield,” enthused Richard Noble in words to chill lovers of peace and quiet in the countryside. Noble is the man behind Thrust, the car which broke the sound barrier in the Nevada desert in 1997 and had to be driven carefully to prevent it taking off. His vision was for a six-seat single-engined turboprop, Farnborough F1, which would be able to land on 2,600ft runways – barely half the length of runway used by the bigger commercial flights. The aircraft, with an all-composite airframe, was intended for volume production, and was described as suitable for charter operators, air taxi work and business flying. The prototype, by then known as the Kestrel, flew in 2006, and certification by the US Federal Aviation Administration was expected. The manufacturers said its maximum cruising speed was about 400mph, with direct operating costs of less than $1 (around 50p) a mile. This is similar to the running costs of an executive car, in line with Noble’s vision. The prospect of air taxis came closer with the announcement of Jetpod, a five-seat plane needing a take-off and landing strip of only 400ft, less than a tenth of a conventional runway. The twin-engine turbojet would fly at no more than 750ft – practically hedge-clipping. Mike Dacre, managing director of the promoters Avcen, told the Daily Mirror: “The whole point about this aircraft is that it will scoot you from the countryside to the centre of London in two or three minutes. “We see it as a park-and-fly concept. You drive to a pick-up site and get on the aircraft. “People shouldn’t think that these things are going to be whizzing around crashing into each other. They’ll be following set routes.” Air taxis will bring a new level of mobility in the


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skies – and intrusion on the ground. However, stage two in the growth of personal flying will be fully underway when operations are liberated from runways and airstrips. A person, a power pack and not much else truly allows human beings to look birds in the eye. Millennium Jet of California announced its SoloTrek XFV (for eXoskeletor Flying Vehicle). Disbelief at the practicalities of the device was tempered by the information that Nasa was taking an interest for its possible military applications. US military interest in personal flying vehicles goes back at least to the Vietnam war. With the SoloTrek the operator will travel standing up, secured to a framework and with two counterrotating ducted fans for propulsion above the head. This position was said to be as comfortable as being wrapped in a friendly bear hug – that is, very comfortable. The machine was planned to reach up to 80mph with a range of about 150 miles on a tank of ordinary pump petrol. The operator would simply walk in, strap up and lift off – up to 9,000ft, although reassuringly a parachute was to be included among the SoloTrek’s array of hi-tech safety features. The developers were keen to stress the safety of the machine. It will not become enabled until the operator has programmed in his or her correct weight. Sensors will detect any developing problems with life-critical systems or components, or with fuel supply. An overpowered engine with all appropriate backups will give the operator peace of mind while a global positioning system will help him to navigate and avoid collisions. The ingenious SoloTrek has obvious possibilities for sport flying and presumably for military use, but for general use would be restricted by wind and weather. In sci-fi films it is usually a clear, windless day but the real elements are not so welcoming.


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The vision of hundreds of flyers buzzing around the City of London and Wall Street business districts with the same gusto that they currently bring to driving their Porsches and Astons suggests a brisk trade in hospital casualty departments and morgues. Many victims of these collisions would be on the ground. The same limitations apply to microlights, which no doubt is why fewer than 4,000 are registered in Britain. The ebullient Timandra Harkness (she of the R22 helicopter, above) tried one. She enthused in the Daily Telegraph: “You can have the same freedom of the air as you do on the ground – arguably more since nobody will do you for speeding at 3,000ft and you are unlikely to meet a taxi doing a U-turn.” Not yet you aren’t … For years inventors have tried to produce the flying Ford, an aerial vehicle suitable for volume production and as easy to use as a motor car. So far none has succeeded, but the argument of this book is that some day someone will. We need to be readier to deal with the social implications than we were with the car. US inventor Robert Fulton produced his Airphibian, a two-seat vehicle with detachable wings. In 1950 this was certified for road and air use. Although some were sold, the venture soon folded. A recent example of an amphibian is the Transition, designed by graduates of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When not needed the wings tuck in alongside the cockpit. The 100-hp engine turns either the road wheels or a rear-mounted propeller. The Transition, which does not justify its £75,000 cost on its looks, needs a substantial runway to get airborne. A British expert dismissed the project. “If you have enough money to buy a Transition you could probably afford a light plane as well as a car. I can’t see it taking off, so to speak,” Steve Fowler told the Mail on Sunday.


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The flying car, to be worth the name, has to be as easy to drive away from our houses as the family Ford. Otherwise we already have flying cars: we call them helicopters. The true flying car will be as convenient as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, although it will look nothing like that aerodynamic impossibility. At Sussex University’s mechanical engineering department they saw the future, and it was a Frisbee. A large Frisbee-like disc would be mounted on the car to act like a wing in flight and for use in takeoffs and landings. For takeoff the Frisbee would give lift and for landing it would provide drag, with the vehicle “feathering down like a sycamore seed”, according to Dr Alan Turner from Sussex. The quietness of the flying car as foreseen by Dr Turner would be a boon compared to the noisiness of a helicopter. Appearance, however, would take getting used to: a massive disc of 13-13 3/4ft would be needed for a lightweight car. Dutch designers came out with the Autocopter, which flies like a helicopter and on the ground becomes a car by folding away its rotor blades. This must-have item for the suburban commuter was projected with a price tag around £50,000. Nasa’s Morphing Project, looking at aerospace technology around 2020, foresaw a personal air car. This would carry four passengers at up to 400mph, and take off and land vertically. The Jetsons cartoon series inspired a flying saucer invented by Canadian Dr Paul Moller. Hovering between a hovercraft and a plane, the 9ft diameter vehicle, the M200G, takes off and lands vertically. It was said to fly up to 10ft above the ground at up to 100mph. It is powered by eight thrust-producing fans running on ethanol and water. The makers announced production of 40 vehicles in 2008 and 250 in 2009. A Moller spokesman described


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the £45,000 M200G as “the ultimate off-road vehicle”. Skycar is claimed to be the world’s first road-legal flying car, with a trip from London to Timbuktu across the Sahara Desert scheduled for 2009. It is in essence a motorised parachute – a giant inflatable wing with the vehicle suspended from it. The expedition leader, ex-Special Air Service soldier Neil Laughton, said: “When the terrain becomes impractical, you unfold the parachute, press a few buttons and Skycar flies over the stuff. It seems perfectly sensible to me.” A few refinements and it should have the 7.40 to town licked. Hollywood’s favourite way of announcing the future is a realistic prospect for Sir Clive Sinclair, the pioneer of personal computers and a visionary inventor whose testimony should not be disregarded. He told the BBCTV programme Tomorrow’s World in 1999 that the technology of flying cars would be available in 10 years, although the “infrastructure” would take longer. Sinclair hoped to be one of the pioneers. He unveiled his plans to the Sunday Times, saying: “I’ve been thinking about this for years, but it’s just recently that new technology has made it economically possible. Once these things are being built they will become as cheap to buy as a family car.” The Sinclair flying car would have fins but no wings, relying on a curved roof and flat underbody to sustain flight. The vertical takeoff craft would be powered by hydrogen fuel cells and have a range of 500 miles and a top speed of 200mph. It would be no longer than the typical family car and about half the length of an average light aircraft. Sinclair remarked: “Clearly, you would not want people like me flying them so it will have to be controlled by a [satellite] navigation system.” The system


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would fly the car automatically to its destination, although the driver would take control in an emergency. We can picture air corridors – motorways of the sky – where drivers (no longer to be called pilots) would lock onto an electronically controlled “conveyor belt” and sit back while the car flies itself. This is no more than a version of the road train idea for the ground; both look feasible sooner or later. The orderly arrangement of air corridors seems more likely than the freedom of individually operated cars to buzz anarchically here and there, Hollywoodstyle. Safety considerations would see to that. There is no aerial equivalent of the slight knock that allows two cars to pull up safely, while the literal fallout for people on the ground would be unacceptably high. Or so it seems today. We may, however, come to accept a certain number of deaths from vehicles falling out of the sky as the price to pay for the convenience of personal flying. That is what we have done on the roads, where society has a tacit acceptance of a certain level of deaths. Of course, public rhetoric is to the contrary, but deaths in the typical car crash are all but ignored in the news media while the same number of deaths in a train smash leads the paper or heads the broadcast bulletin. Penalties for causing road deaths are often slaps on the wrist as over-sympathetic courts take account of “extenuating circumstances”.

Ostrich stance won’t do it TO say that flying cars will never happen is tempting but profoundly wrong. In particular, it is tempting to stress that the idea of personal flying vehicles has been around the decades and it never happened. Digital technology, however, creates a new reality, opening


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up vistas that had been dreamed of before but could not be actualised. Those who don’t fancy the madhouse of the roads being duplicated in the air should pin their hopes not in technology falling short but in that most unglamorous of activities, insurance. Even for a sports car, insurance may be unaffordable; it is not hard to see what underwriters would do with a flying Ford. Premiums for public liability insurance have soared in recent years: this is the category that would cover people on the ground against the effects of a mid-air collision. Funding may also be a limiting factor. Investment to create the infrastructure for flying cars would be wildly speculative. Unless a future government is unrecognisable from the one that balked at paying to rehabilitate the London Tube, it is hard to see the public sector becoming involved ahead of demonstrated demand, while private capital would shy from unknowable prospects. The difference between the motor car in its early years and the flying Fords of the future is that the car could operate with limited infrastructure. Tarred roads and a huge network of filling stations were not essential for motoring to get started. Flying cars, however, in the only feasible form – air corridors – need completed infrastructure before they can operate. Few if any will buy the cars without the certainty of being able to use them, but without the certainty of a user base who will invest in the infrastructure? That may be the hope, but long-sighted investors know that demand can be created. We may not need flying cars but if they are there we shall want them. The technology drives the demand, not the other way round. The all but total adoption of mobile phones is a clear example. Many of the users who now find they can’t live with-


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out their mobiles were in middle age or more before these phones came on the scene. Somehow they had managed to live their lives until then without a desperate sense of deprivation. In any case, the use of corporate jets and helicopters clearly will spread, and this will create a momentum for private flying to be democratised. In modern society, a perceived benefit can’t be restricted to an elite when the opportunity exists to spread it. That was what happened with the car as the Edwardian luxury unstoppably turned into the necessity for all. How much more so then under 21st century conditions. The erotic appeal of private planes will outstrip even that of Porsche and Aston-Martin cars, continuing and expanding the damaging association of power and sex. Hence: “When you’re on a pedestrian crossing and you see a Ferrari, somehow there’s a quiet corner of your brain that just can’t help thinking ‘w****r’. But the Aston [V8 Vantage] introduces itself so subtly, like a beautiful woman whom no-one notices when she first walks into the room. No false tat, just a simple black dress.” Especially dispiriting is the fact that the remark was made by a woman, Rowan Pelling, then editor of the Erotic Review. We must wonder whether she believed this tosh, or was just speaking in the line of work. So for opponents of air madness, wishing and hoping – or praying that insurance or funding problems will be the knockout blow for flying cars – is not an option. The argument of this book is to do exactly the opposite: that we shall repeat the mistakes of road history unless we act, and act now. Loss of privacy will be the great added environmental downside of personal flying. If we aren’t careful, we shall find we didn’t value it properly until we had lost it. Corporate jets, helicopters, air taxis, flying Fords


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and aircraft types yet unknown will be far more of an invasion of privacy than big commercial jets (and motor cars). They fly lower, and they will be everywhere. From dukes to dustcart drivers, all will be equal in loss of seclusion. The biggest estates and city parks will be as overlooked as the back garden of a London terrace house. Lovers will draw apart, naturists will give up their sun worship, tea parties on the lawn will be burdened by uninvited onlookers. We shall reverse the science fiction visions of mega-cities surrounded by an unvisited and sometimes prohibited great outdoors. We shall flee to the great indoors to get away from it all.


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SEVEN THE WAY AHEAD

THE saddest part of research for this book was to find that it was still necessary to write it. The following passage is taken from a Daily Telegraph article of October 14, 1971: “The boardroom tycoon is quite capable of spending his working day devising a way of flooding the roads with thousands more four-wheeled sex symbols, yet fights like a wounded animal if the privacy and rural isolation of his country home is threatened by a new motorway. “How many of those who fought to protect the peace of rural Buckinghamshire against the screaming jet ever considered whether their own (in many cases considerable) air travel was really (original emphasis) necessary? Very few, I suspect.” (Article by John Chisholm) And here we are arguing about these matters more than 30 years on. Meanwhile, the degradation of the country, and of the planet, has not stood still. This chapter reviews the material presented in the book, while the final chapter outlines some possible solutions.

Mortgaging the future THE sustainability message has not got through to the unreformed Department for Transport, whose plans for the future of aviation were spelled out in its 2002


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consultation document, its 2003 white paper and its 2006 “progress report”. They are greenlighting a nearthreefold increase in air travel by 2030. Even ordinary people with no special knowledge of the subject and an attachment to their holidays in the sun began to wonder. With clear evidence of climate change and aviation’s role in it, such a massive increase in flying seemed profoundly questionable. For the hundreds of thousands, or millions, who are troubled by aircraft noise the last news they needed was to expect even more of the same. Those not already afflicted asked themselves whether it would be their turn next. There were common-sense fears, despite official denials, that you cannot put more and more planes into crowded skies without compromising safety. The likely growth of air freight was even more striking, although it failed to grab the headlines. It was expected to grow more than sixfold, and because of the need for next-day deliveries – much of the raison d’etre for air freight – many more night flights will be required. Cleaner aircraft and quieter aircraft will take the edge off the raw numbers – points the aviation industry is keen to stress. But analysts queue up to observe that the effect of technological and operational fixes will be outstripped by growth of traffic. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of scientists of impeccable credentials, remarked that “such improvements are expected to only partially offset the growth of aviation emissions”. John Whitelegg and Howard Cambridge, under the auspices of the Stockholm Environmental Institute, said about noise reduction measures: “Unless the overall number of flights is reduced through other demand


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management approaches, they will largely be negated.” The British government’s own Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution chillingly observed that two-thirds of the aircraft that will be flying in 2030 are already in use (and, therefore, most of the world’s stock has limited scope to benefit from technological improvements). Although it balks at the term, the Department for Transport (DfT) is engaged in a classic “predict and provide” operation at a time when predict and provide is discredited. It took the high scenario of airport usage and looked for ways to meet it with a capacity of 470 million passengers per annum. It also continued to heap air capacity into the South East, leaving huge numbers of passengers with long road journeys to reach their airports. Since the publication of the white paper, The Future of Air Transport, in 2003, evidence of climate change caused by greenhouse gases has poured out to the point where it is “unequivocal”, in the IPCC’s word. The response of the DfT was to soldier on with its plans. It trimmed just five million passengers a year from its projection of passenger numbers in 2030, to 465mppa. If it happens it’s bad news; if it doesn’t happen it’s bad news. The numbers are in no way guaranteed. They include an assumption of a year-by-year fall in seat prices in real terms, which in turn depends on the price of oil. With the world’s oil supplies becoming scarcer, and replacement sources conjectural, no one can say what the price of oil will be next year, never mind in 2020 or 2030. We face the prospect that massive capital projects – new runways, new terminals, new runway extensions – will be built for an expansion that never happens. Economist Brendon Sewill humorously showed the


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uncertainties of future demand with “the Sewill Rule”. This holds that a new form of mass transport emerges about every 50 years: 1750 canals; 1800 turnpike roads and the stagecoach; 1850 railways; 1900 the motor car; 1950 civil aviation. “So perhaps we can forecast a new form of transport coming into general use any time now?” he wrote in The Hidden Cost of Flying (2003). “Not a totally reliable forecast, you may think, because it is based solely on past trends. That is the point.” For Sewill, who is a leading figure in the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, the weakness of the DfT’s demand projection is the assumptions it makes about falling seat prices. The 2006 white paper update made all the right environmental noises, but continued to view aviation’s benefits to the economy as paramount. Yet these benefits are by no means as clearcut as industry boosters would have us believe. We need only think of the huge and growing deficit on Britain’s tourism account because the money flies away with the holidaymakers, or the jobs lost here because manufacturing and agriculture have migrated. The air industry is said to support directly 200,000 jobs and indirectly up to three times as many more. Yet against a background where good jobs go unfilled all over the country, and immigrants are needed to fill vacancies, we can certainly challenge the idea that aviation’s job-producing capacity is a reason for expanding the sector. The alternative to the heedless growth of flying is the management of demand, described in the final chapter. We need not be apologetic about this. The task is not to stop people flying, but to persuade frequent flyers to fly less. It is hard to argue that we don’t have enough flying opportunities already. Most air trips are for social and leisure purposes. A midpoint is


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needed between the interests of these travellers and the interests of the residents on the ground. Who are these residents? They are all of us. Green groups are keen to nail the idea that airport expansion and cheap flights empower the poorest to fly. What they mainly do is allow the well-to-do to fly more often. Stop Stansted Expansion reported that 83% of Stansted airport passengers in 2005 were from the ABC1 occupational groups – the most affluent in society. The Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign provided a similar picture: the average household income of Gatwick leisure passengers in 2004 was £49,000. When the first edition of this book appeared in 2003, it argued that flying is where motoring was in 1910. Since then the continuing growth in cheap flights and the boom in Britons buying homes abroad (which entrenches the air services needed to get there and back) has moved the situation on to, say 1935. Harder than it was in 1910, in 1935 there remained a chance to arrange the growth of motor transport in socially benign ways. That opportunity was lost, and the expansion of motoring continued unconstrained. When the downsides of traffic at existing levels became apparent, it was politically far too late to do anything about it. Recent attempts by governments of both political hues have been feeble, and have been like trying to hold the tide back with a saucepan. As a nation we have set out on the same course in the air, with less good reason than our forebears had with motoring. The upsides and downsides of aviation are there for all to see. One of the lessons we can draw from the motor car is perpetual motion. It is a mystery why, after so many years of cheap motoring and easy access to the whole country by motorways, average journey length still


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increases. Much of it seems to be movement for its own sake. Certainly the car tempts us to fit in too much – a cathedral in an hour, a town in a morning, a country in a day. It is the “if it’s Tuesday this must be Belgium” approach to travel. This compulsive movement, translated into the air to an even greater extent than now, does not bode well for our turbulent skies. This book is about more than the growth of public air transport, just as the story of motoring is about more than buses and trucks. Private flying is not huge in Britain at the moment – there were just over 17,000 civil aircraft of all sorts registered in 2004 (the latest available year) – but the number has almost doubled since 1985. Helicopters have multiplied at a faster rate than aircraft generally – with their special peace-busting qualities an outcome that is deeply unwelcome to many on the ground. Over small towns and rural areas, as well as cities, there has been an observable increase in police helicopters. The country’s heightened security fears is the reason, although these machines are the ultimate toys for the boys. Further ahead, flying cars offering mobility for Mr and Mrs Ordinary are taken seriously by some scientists including Sir Clive Sinclair, the innovatory entrepreneur whose opinions should not be dismissed. Sir Clive said in 1999 that the technology for the flying car would exist in 10 years’ time although the infrastructure would take longer. Who knows what prototypes are hidden away, but examples regularly break out of the scientific undergrowth (see Chapter 6). The idea of a flying car has been around for a century so why should we give any special thought to it? For most of that time it was simply a fantasy; now it is a technology waiting to be born. The emerging technology may unite with the affluence of Western societies to make the product feasible. After that the flying car will await its Henry Ford.


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The inspiration of the original Henry Ford and his followers means there is scarcely a lane in the deepest countryside of Britain that cannot expect its regular daily motor traffic. Away from the roads we can enjoy visual privacy even though the noise may continue. Moving in three dimensions, the flying car will strip away the last of our privacy. It will become a monster unless it is controlled in very determined ways, by, for example, restricting it entirely to skyways (motorways in the sky). We don’t know when but we can see it coming. Visitors from 1910 might be less impressed than we are by our ability to drive from London to Liverpool and back in a day. They would notice instead the shocking price at which this has been bought: sprawling towns, polluted air, deaths at high speed, a culture of isolation, noise everywhere. This is the “1910 effect”. If we could go back to their time, when there were 53,000 cars registered in Britain (there are now more than 30 million), would we say carry on regardless? And what does this tell us about aviation policy today?


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EIGHT BEYOND BALANCE

THE British government’s plans for the future of aviation are permeated with the idea of balance – balancing the economic growth produced by aviation with the environmental and social downsides; balancing the local disturbance of night flights with the economic benefits of night flights. Perhaps balance is too easy, the politicians’ and the bureaucrats’ way of splitting the difference between implacable opponents where each side is convinced it is right. Yet even if we accept the validity of the idea, our situation is beyond balance if climate science is right. There is every reason to think that climate science is right. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose scary projections about global warming were described in Chapter 3, does not carry out primary research. It synthesises the studies of hundreds of others. These overwhelmingly point in one direction. To think otherwise is to fall victim to a determined campaign of disinformation by the business-as-usual camp. James Hoggan is a Canadian public relations professional who saw the light. He wrote in his DeSmogBlog: “Few PR offenses have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change. This is a triumph of disinformation. It is a living proof of the success of one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy


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industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world. As a public relations practitioner, it is a marvel – and a deep humiliation – and I want to see it stop.” And for aviation the issues don’t end with climate change. Noise pollution is health-threatening and lifedenying. Britain’s ever more congested airspace, crowded with commercial planes and private flying, must sooner or later over-stretch air traffic control. Land for aircraft and their infrastructure and spin-offs consumes the green spaces that are essential for our needs ranging from food production to spiritual wellbeing. Always there is the spectacle of the chaos on Britain’s (and the world’s) roads – a reminder of what happens when travel is unconstrained in the interests of the wider community. However, as promised at the start of the book these final pages are not about crying “We’re all doomed!” or that selfish variant, “It’ll see us out”. This chapter seeks to identify solutions to aviation growth. The three possible approaches are: taxation constraints; capacity constraints including regulation and rationing; voluntarism. The most immediate need is for the Department for Transport, with the whole UK government behind it, to come out of denial about the problems of aviation growth. It is facing both ways at once. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and others have demonstrated that the growth in air travel the government has signalled is incompatible with its own commitments on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. On present trends, aviation will use up all allowable emissions by 2050 if not before – an obvious nonsense. Ah, they say, that’s the rub! Present trends will not continue. The government’s policy, as described in the 2003 white paper and the 2006 “progress report”, is


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best described as whistling and hoping. It hopes that the European Union emissions trading scheme will save the day. Yet aviation must buy its permits from somewhere, so its growth will likely be secured at the expense of other sectors of the economy, like manufacturing and agriculture, that matter for our wellbeing. It is entirely an article of faith that pollution in other sectors will fall to the extent that they can sell quota without harming their own operations. Articles of faith may be good religion, but they are bad economics. Then comes the next big hope, that aero technology will solve the problem with big enough reductions in emissions. The facts suggest otherwise. Cleaner, alternative fuels like hydrogen or bio are not practically within sight. Improvements in engine design will continue to reduce pollution, but they won’t be enough. The IPCC found, in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007), that improved fuel efficiency leading to lower CO2 output is expected from technological and operational improvements and better air traffic management – but such improvements “are expected to only partially offset the growth of aviation emissions”. The beginning of a solution will be to withdraw the 2003 air transport white paper, and start again on a sustainable basis. The new white paper and its implementation should be taken out of the hands of the Department for Transport. The obsessional culture of this department is not new: in the 1930s it was effectively the ministry for trunk roads while railways, also its responsibility, remained the Cinderella of transport. We can almost (but not quite) sympathise with the politicians, who don’t want and don’t dare to “stop people flying”. We need, however, to unpack this proposition.


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No mainstream green organisation is telling people not to fly; they are urging people to fly less, or not to fly more. If everyone did nothing more than fly at the same rate as now Britain would not need new runways and runway extensions. We should then start to get a handle on the environmental problems of flying. With airline tickets almost given away by Ryanair, easyJet and their peers, there are no good grounds for saying that constraining aviation growth stops anyone flying. What it may stop are the same people from making more trips – the six mini-breaks in a year syndrome. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has remarked: “The availability of cheap air transport currently enjoyed by the public is a very recent phenomenon. It is not a traditional ‘right’ in any sense.” True, and we may ask why right-to-fly proponents don’t spend the same energy demanding the right to travel on railways and buses at prices ordinary people can afford. Few suggest that fares there should be unrelated to the costs of providing the service. Why then the squawks at the suggestion that aviation should bear its true costs? What is driving this lobby: the interests of the industry or those of the customers?

Taxation constraints THE aviation industry’s costs to the nation are both economic and environmental. Tax concessions are considered to be worth around £9 bn a year. The industry pays no fuel tax and no value added tax on any aspect of its operations. Fuel is exempted from tax under a 50-year-old convention, and it would need global agreement to change the arrangement on international flights. Tax could be charged on domestic and intra-EU flights. There is nothing to stop VAT being


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charged on airline tickets, while duty-free sales have become an anomaly in the age of European integration. Aviation’s substantial tax exemptions should be removed, wherever legally possible, in the interests of aligning travel prices with the real costs of the service. Removing the aviation industry’s tax benefits would encourage traffic to shift from air to rail. Currently rail can compete with air on journey time for shorter journeys, say London to Paris or London to Edinburgh, but tends to be more expensive. Railways are expensive operations. Their heavy infrastructure needs, including track and signals, leave them at a competitive disadvantage with air and roads. Economists like Sir Nicholas Stern and airline cheerleaders like Sir Rod Eddington wheel out the mantra that flying must pay its environmental costs, but the only way to do this is to fly less. You can’t keep flying and buy your way out of the problem because you can’t put a price on many of the environmental costs. They are intangible, subjective – like tranquillity or the beauty of a landscape saved from development. Government action through investment and tax advantages is needed to promote the switch of traffic from air to rail because of the environmental benefits. Associated with this would be the rooting out of any public subsidies for infrastructure related to airport development, like access roads and motorway links. It would mean no more local government funding for regional airports. At any level the politicians dare to impose – the media’s knee-jerk reaction is to brand every air tax as a move that “will hit hard-working families” (Daily Mirror) – air passenger duty has a limited effect on


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travel demand. A per-flight charge, however, has the potential to encourage more aircraft to fly full, promote the end of marginal routes and, if graded according to the ‘greenness’ of aircraft, speed up the replacement of older, dirtier planes. A tax on flights is better than a tax on passengers (ie the present air passenger duty). But it all depends on whether the per-flight charge has teeth. Poaching from the opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling (whom we met earlier as transport secretary) announced such a charge. It was to come into effect from November 2009. So far, so environmental. But unless the charge is watered down to meaninglessness, it will lead to fewer flights, consolidated flights (where bookings from more than one flight are rolled into one), cancelled flights and invisible flights where routes have been dropped. This is because airlines, faced with a charge per flight, will want to fly only the most profitable trips. It may be necessary medicine, but the negative public reaction will be a test of politicians’ green commitment – never something to bet your shirt on. Another per-flight concept, an emissions charge on aircraft, would be a start at meeting the cost of environmental externalities. The charge would be increased by a factor of two or three on carbon dioxide alone to account for the radiative forcing effect of aircraft. This issue is bedevilled by the international nature of aviation. It may be, at least until opinion in the United States and other countries catches up, that the emissions charge would be limited to intra-European Union flights. These and other taxation measures would force up the price of tickets, although the effect on reducing


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travel demand is uncertain. Businesses would tend to absorb the costs while leisure travel is dominated by the well-to-do ABC1 social groups. Experience on the ground – with the London congestion charge and the continuing growth of motoring despite petrol price rises – shows that travel demand is quite inelastic. People complain and keep on travelling. Price rises are helpful in moderating demand, but are rarely the whole answer. Dearer air tickets would bear hard on one group, who demand our sympathy: the young. The gap year depends on cheap flights. It is a worthwhile activity that exposes young people, often for the first time, to life outside the advanced, Western world. No-one can fully understand the planet and its problems until he or she has been in the Majority World. It is a maturing process, which helps those in poorer countries by sensitising young Westerners to developmental issues. It would be more than a pity if the gap year became unaffordable because of air fares. One of the toughest issues is the entitlement of the older generation to tell the young they shouldn’t fly. Even if we don’t fly much now, almost all of us (including the present author) have a history of enjoying fast, cheap flights to wherever we wished to go on the planet. We want to deny the young what we have already had. ‘Hypocrisy’ may be the rejoinder. The benefits for the young of seeing the world could be recognised by government-funded vouchers to be used to offset the cost of dearer air fares. The young are ahead of most of their elders in environmental awareness. It may be that they will embrace limitations on their air travel if that is what it takes to return Earth to health. A suggestion that the British public in general are ahead of the politicians over air travel emerged from a


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YouGov poll in late-2006. Respondents were more ready to accept restrictions on flying than on motoring. An increase in petrol duty was opposed by 72% of all voters, with even more Conservatives against. Yet 51% of voters supported the taxing of short-haul flights, and 52% backed the taxing of long-haul flights. This time, Conservative voters were slightly more in favour of taxation, by one and two percentage points respectively. Surveys tell us what people feel but not why they feel it. A less optimistic reading of the result is that dearer petrol is an immediate and everyday issue, therefore people oppose it; dearer flights are a less immediate and occasional issue, therefore we can indulge ourselves in the luxury of a green stance. If substantially dearer flights became a reality, support for taxation might melt away.

Capacity constraints CARBON trading is the government’s favoured way of controlling pollution from aircraft. The next phase of the European Union trading scheme, from 2011, will include aviation. There will be no separate market in aviation permits. This is a recipe for disaster – disaster in the sense that airlines will be free to buy their way to continued growth by purchasing spare capacity from more efficient firms and industries. A dedicated carbon trading scheme for aviation, not currently planned by the European Union, is essential if growth is not to continue out of hand. The first phase of the Kyoto carbon trading scheme expires in 2012. Aviation is not part of the present scheme, but we must hope that this omission is put right in the next phase.


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The air transport white paper proposes 11 new runways or runway extensions (including three possibles). These are not directed at improving the geographical availability of air services – witness the concentration on London airports – but on expanding capacity. A better solution is to build none of them. Building no more runways is an effective way of managing demand. Restricted in capacity, airlines would concentrate on their most profitable routes. Railways would pick up much of the traffic over the domestic and shorter Continental routes – a key green demand. Airlines would have limited opportunity to switch to other airports because the same runway restrictions would be in place there. A restrictive policy on airport development would set Britain apart from much, or even all, of the world. So what? The London Chamber of Commerce discovered, clearly to its own surprise, that most businesses were not bothered about the expansion of Heathrow or other London airports. Meanwhile, the UK leads the world, despite current pressures on the green belt, in protecting its landscapes. Those who have seen the sprawling suburbs of North America, or houses dotted here, there and everywhere over much of Europe, and the never-ending shanties of the Majority World will testify to that. If that is the “Sark effect”*, let’s extend it to airports. Landing rights at major airports are commercially valuable. Putting airport landing slots up for auction would focus airlines’ attention on their profitable routes, stripping out the marginal services and thereby reducing the number of flights.

* Sark is the Channel Island where motor cars are not allowed


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One of the weakest aspects of current air policy is its concentration on London and the South East. This is not where most of the British population live, but the government has bowed to British Airways’ desire for Heathrow to be its sole hub airport. Thousands of travellers are obliged to travel from all over the country to use Heathrow because the destinations they need are not served by their local airports. Manchester, an ambitious airport, would be an excellent location for a second hub airport. The overloaded South East would obtain environmental relief with some of the traffic taken away. The white paper’s plan for a new runway at Birmingham, midway between Manchester and London, damages Manchester’s development prospects, and should be dropped. Professor David Begg, former chairman of the government’s Commission for Integrated Transport*, told the Times in an interview that he favours personal carbon allowances for everyone – a form of rationing. “The public are like junkies when it comes to mobility. They just can’t get enough of it. We must stop feeding the habit by building more roads and runways,” he said. As recorded by the newspaper, Begg would like to see energy-efficient individuals, or those prepared to travel less, able to sell their surpluses to people who want to pop off to New Zealand two or three times a year. He added: “If the system were introduced internationally it would address global warming and poverty in the Third World, where people could sell their allowances.” I part company with the professor over the transferable aspect of the scheme. This is an individual ver* No fault of Professor Begg, but commentators ask “What integrated transport?”, considering the near-total lack of interface between road, rail and air


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sion of the European Union and Kyoto emissions trading schemes, and is open to exactly the same moral objections – it allows the rich to buy more than their fair share and entrenches deprivation among the less well-to-do. It is as if the British government had set up a trading scheme for food rations in the Second World War. Travel, after all, is a good. We can imagine the anguish of poor families with young children trying to decide between selling some of their carbon permits and being able to take that promised trip to Disneyland. For the Majority World the effect is even direr. Poverty would force most individuals to sell their permits, trapping all but the elites in their own countries where the rest of us can go to stare at them. Some form of personal carbon allowances will have to emerge globally. Everyone in the world would eventually have the same carbon allowance. Contraction (by the West) and convergence (by the Majority World) is the only basis on which poorer countries might possibly be persuaded to moderate their greenhouse gas emissions. This book supports individual but non-transferable carbon allowances. The difficulties are formidable. The difference in people’s needs for carbon-producing activities, for a start. To take just one example: because they live in a colder climate, Westerners need to heat their homes more than those in the tropics. This means that more energy must be expended purely for survival. The typical American uses 20 times as much electricity as the typical Indian. In terms of the planet’s capacity, the carbon allowance would have to be set nearer the Indian’s end of the scale. The American therefore would have to sacrifice a big chunk of his or


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her lifestyle, including most flying, a seemingly insuperable political proposition. The Majority World would need to get its population growth under control. With a soaring global population, each individual’s carbon allowance would become smaller and smaller – an obvious inequity for citizens of countries with stable or slowly growing populations. Non-tradeable carbon allowances would help mitigate climate change but theoretically at least need not affect air travel. Individuals might make all their carbon savings in other areas of their lives (fewer car trips, turning the central heating down a degree, fewer purchases of household goods) and continue to fly. A personal air miles allowance would address the air issue directly. This is an idea flirted with by David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2007. The political difficulties in making it happen are formidable, however. When we buy a house, we are aware of the traffic environment and base the buying decision on whether the level of traffic is acceptable. We do not have that opportunity with aircraft noise, leading many people to move to an area and find they are troubled by the level of flying. Maps of the airways over the United Kingdom need to be as available as road atlases. These would identify the main overflown areas and alert us to where we suffer most from noise pollution – an issue that will become increasingly urgent if commercial aviation expands as presently planned. We may then decide whether we are willing to live in the overflown areas, just as some people have no objection to living close to main roads and motorways. To be underneath a flightpath would depress house prices in the same way that a main road does. This would inject realism into the situation, and reflect an important external cost of flying.


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Private flying PRIVATE flying is the little noticed area of the aviation debate. It may creep up on us unnoticed until, too late, we have problems. Most of the lower airspace in the UK is uncontrolled and private aircraft are able to use it as they please. As private flying increases, this will pose issues of noise and invasion of privacy, far beyond the disturbances of today, great though they may seem to some. There needs to be less uncontrolled airspace, with private planes required to use established airways. In that way at least the terrifying ubiquity of the motor car would not be replayed with aeroplanes. Just as motor cars eventually outnumbered commercial vehicles on British roads (although it took more than three decades to reach that point), we may expect private aircraft sooner or later to outnumber commercial aircraft*. Then we shall see the full range of problems that have bedevilled road use: the congestion, the noise, the pollution, the danger. Some of these problems will be magnified: a helicopter spreads its misery more widely than a car, or even a motorcycle with the exhaust silencer removed; a crashed plane is more of a danger to others than a crashed car. Clearly the time to act is now, not when the problems have become insoluble. We should take care not to miss our ‘1910 moment’†, as the policymakers of those days did with cars.

* In terms of the number of people flown. There are already more private aircraft than public airliners † Or perhaps we have already. Now we face our ‘1935 moment’ (see p159–160)


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Safety is a special concern, given that as human beings we engage in risk compensation – that is, we maintain the level of risk in an activity at a level we are comfortable with, irrespective of external safety improvements. We see dangerous behaviour every day on the roads; risk compensation tells us this will be transferred to the air. The way to restrict private flying to an acceptable level of risk is not by price but by qualification. The standards to operate a private aircraft need to be raised to commercial airline pilot level. This searching qualification would be backed by extensive safety education and serious penalties for flying offences. None of these conditions is met with road users. The driving test, although it has been toughened in recent years, still does not test many real-life situations. Elderly drivers (from age 70) have to renew their licences periodically but are not subject to re-testing. Penalties for motoring offences are often lenient to a fault. The area of safety education is where the authorities have failed most. Drivers convicted of speeding are give the choice of attending a course on the dangers of speeding or seeing penalty points on their licence. This is the wrong way round: the time to persuade people of the dangers of speeding is before their crash. With motoring, it is probably politically too late to change this damaging pattern. It is not too late with private flying.

Just doing it TAXATION of aviation activities is not an attractive way of constraining growth because it hits the poor


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harder than the rich. Rationing schemes like carbon allowances and green air miles are hard to administer, are inequitable if transfers are permitted and invariably produce a black market. Nor is telling people what they can’t do appealing in a democracy. Voluntarism is the best solution if we can be persuaded to buy it. Aviation growth, and its attendant environmental downsides, would disappear if we all chose to fly less. Mostly, though, we take our cue from the cost-conscious shopper who said the ethical sourcing of clothes was important “but it doesn’t come before dressing one’s teenage daughter on a budget”. We can, however, be more considered about our flying. We can choose not to fly on some occasions, and fly with a clear conscience on others. The opportunities for substitution are considerable, as they are with motoring (Chapter 1) – the holiday within the UK, the minibreak eschewed, the business video-conference, a rail journey not a flight. Journey substitutions are valuable for holding back the growth of air travel. If global problems are the sum of individual actions, the same must be true of solutions. Few public figures have rushed to tell us we should fly less, even those who don’t depend on our votes. The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, made headlines when he described flying on holiday as “a symptom of sin”. Humanity, he said, needed to “walk more lightly upon the earth”. The bishop – the Church of England’s third most senior prelate – reiterated his argument on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Obviously it’s not my business to issue fatwas just like that against flying. But it is very important that people should be helped to take responsibility for the decisions they make,” he explained.


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“I think the language of sin has sometimes been shrunk too small. The language of sin is absolutely right as we look at our responsibility as people living in what we believe to be a creation, the responsibility to their neighbours, especially the poor of the world, and our responsibility to our wellbeing. So I think it is very proper to put these questions in the context of our moral responsibility. And that’s what a Christian understands sin to be – sin is living a life that is turned in upon itself, a life that is unaware of responsibility and connections.” In our celebrity-conscious age, we need examples from film stars and singers that go beyond gestures: not simply running a Toyota Prius, but changing a lifestyle. But jet-setting is so convenient and a hard habit to beat. There but for lack of opportunity go most of us. Here are three examples from what could be a very long list: For Welsh-born Hollywood A-lister Catherine ZetaJones, home in Bermuda with husband Michael Douglas was just the ticket. The island is only 775 miles, or less than two hours’ flying time, from New York. Filming there was ideal. “Doing No Reservations in New York was great because I could get home to Bermuda, even just for the day,” she told the Daily Express. Actress-dancer Jennifer Ellison found New York ideal as a base. The former Brookside babe was filming in Virginia, an easy commute by air, and was also keen to keep in touch with her family in the UK. “Virginia is just a short flight from New York, a city which Jen loves, so she has been house-hunting over there,” an unnamed source disclosed in London Lite. “She is very close to her family, but she keeps reminding them that home is only a few hours on a plane away.”


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Beyond balance 201

Venturesome BBC wildlife presenter Kate Humble headed to the other side of the world for Pacific Abyss, a programme exploring part of the Pacific deep enough to submerge Mount Everest. She spends “an awful lot of time flying”, she told the Daily Mail. Fair enough, work’s work. But what about Humble’s private life? More of the same, it seems. Speaking of her husband Ludo Graham. she said: “We have ‘our’ time when we’re not available for anyone except each other, and we travel to far-flung corners of the world together ... I’m incredible lucky to have a life that suits me extremely well.” We need the sort of paradigm shift towards flying that has occurred with drink driving and wearing fur. Slowly but clearly the public mood is changing. We may still be a long way, most of us, from walking the walk but at least we are talking the talk. Campaign groups alone can’t do it, but when opposition to aviation expansion becomes a mass mood the government will listen. We can be optimistic that this tipping point will be reached. Politicians, after all, need to survive the next general election. The government was quick to back-pedal on road pricing in 2007. Reason? Hardly disconnected from the 1.8 million signatories – that’s more or less 1.8 million voters – on the Telegraph website. Professor Chris Rapley, director of London’s Science Museum, emerged as one of the few voices outside the world of the eco-warriors prepared to say that global warming means changes in how we behave. And that means flying in particular. Technology alone cannot avert climate change, he said. “A postcard from Bora Bora may one day be as repugnant as a row of animal heads on the wall,” he predicted. A deprivation or a liberation? The way to give Bora


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Bora the miss and not regret it is to follow the Dorothy Principle and enjoy being local. “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again,” said Dorothy Gale in the film, The Wizard of Oz, “I won’t look any further than my own backyard.”


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Twelve points for campaigners 203

TWELVE POINTS FOR CAMPAIGNERS Myth no 1: It’s not about stopping people flying. It’s about persuading the same people not to fly more Myth no 2: Tourism is not an economic plus for the UK. British tourists spend twice as much abroad as foreigners spend in Britain Myth no 3: Airport growth is not needed to create jobs. The country suffers from too few workers, not too few jobs – hence mass immigration Myth no 4: Heathrow is not losing ground to its continental rivals, nor is it threatened in the future. It is growing faster than Paris Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt Aviation growth as currently planned is impossible to reconcile with the UK’s commitments to reduce CO2 emissions Noise pollution from aircraft is more widespread than airport noise maps suggest. These are based on averages, which don’t take full account of individual, noisy planes Most people who are troubled by aircraft noise can expect to be troubled at least twice as often in the future More than doubling the number of UK flights has likely consequences for air safety Private flying is a long-term threat to privacy and safety. It is poised to re-create in the air the chaos on the roads


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Carbon offsetting is not a licence for binge flying. Newly planted trees will absorb carbon in years to come, but the damage is done now Barring miracles, new aviation technologies won’t be enough to offset more pollution from aircraft People are increasingly aware of the downsides of aviation expansion – but the British government is trailing behind public opinion even when it isn’t ignoring it

TWELVE QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION GROUPS How can we reconcile people’s desire to travel with the need to save energy? Is saving energy by a small country like the UK any use ahead of agreement by countries like the United States, China and India? Is there any point in an individual cutting down flying when the problem of global warming is so huge? For people on the ground, is there an “acceptable” level of air noise as the price of progress? How meaningful are official levels of noise nuisance when people’s sensitivity to noise varies? How much confidence should we have in official assurances that more crowded skies don’t jeopardise air safety?


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Twelve questions for discussion groups 205

Is the continuing concentration of air travel facilities in the South East, including Heathrow as the UK’s only major hub airport, a good thing? How much of a nuisance, if any, is the growing use of small aircraft, helicopters and microlights? Should small aircraft, helicopters and microlights be restricted to airways or enjoy the freedom of the skies? Should a corporate jet be envied or despised? Should aviation continue to enjoy tax advantages? What “external” environmental costs, if any, should aviation pay?


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INDEX

Aberdeen airport 68 106 Accidents 8 16-18 19 21-23 25 36 42 78 141 144-146 148 153 160 166 168-170 173-174 197-198 Airbus 86 109-110 131 140 152 156 Aircraft proximity event – see Airprox Air freight 31 59 65 107-108 130 178 Air Navigation Act 1920 123 Air miles allowance 51 196 199 Air parks 162-163 Air passenger duty 55 61 93 189-190 Air passengers (per annum) 59 62-65 67-69 75 81-82 87 141 151-152 155-157 179 Air policy 59 61 76-77 90 111 126 183 186 193-194 Air taxis 168 175 AirportWatch 87 106 115 120 Airprox 141-143 Airspace 134 137 141 146147 186 197 Airspace classes 146-147 Air traffic control 112 141147 154 186 Alconbury airport 93 American Airlines 82 Aspen 161-162 Aviation Environment Federation 75 115 140 149

BAA, airport operator 63 7779 81-82 86-90 126-127 143 150-151 Barker Review 58 Begg, Prof David 194 Belfast City airport 68 Belfast International airport 68 Benz, Karl 56 Benzene 27 Biofuel/biodiesel 29-30 47 103 112 115-117 187 Birmingham airport 60 64 66 68 93 106 194 Boeing 78 109-110 131 144 152 162-163 Bournemouth airport 68 121 Bristol airport 66 68 93 106 British Airways 70 77 82-85 114 131 143-144 194 Brundtland Commission 100 Buchanan Report 14 Budget flights See Cheapflights Building Research Establishment 120 Campaign for Better Transport/Transport 2000 76 79-80 88-89 149 Campaign to Protect Rural England 15 30 44 80 136 148-149 167 Canary Wharf 155 Cap and trade 112 Capacity auctions 74-75 193 Capacity constraints 64 74 76 186 192-196


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Car ownership – see Vehicle ownership Carbon allowance 101 115 194-196 199 Carbon capture and sequestration 118 Carbon dioxide 27-28 30 37 42 79 95-99 101-105 108111 114 118 186-187 190 203 Carbon footprint 27 64 108 114 Carbon monoxide 27 Carbon offsetting – see Offsetting Cardiff airport 68 Chapter 3 noise standard 139-140 Chapter 4 noise standard 139-140 Charles de Gaulle (Paris) airport 84-85 130 150 203 Chartres, Richard (Bishop of London) 199 Cheap flights 57 66-67 72 76-77 83 106-107 112 152 160 181 188 191 China 95 97 204 Children 16 22 26 36 73 123 135-136 141 148 155 195 Church Lawford (Rugby) proposed airport 57 62 64 93 Civil Aviation Act 1982 123 Civil Aviation Act 2006 135 Civil Aviation Authority 66 69 128 138 160 Cliffe proposed airport 90-91 93 Climate change 3 26-27 48 55 62 74 80 92 95-118 (chapter) 119 140 160 165 178-179 185-187 196 201 Climate Change Bill 2007 101 Clouds 104 146 Collisions – see Accidents Commission for Integrated Transport 34 151 194

Commuters 11 13-14 34 41 49 163 171 200 Condensation trails – see Contrails Congestion 5 34-37 43-46 48-49 160 186 191 197 Congestion charging 5 36-37 43-46 48 191 Continuous descent approach 112 138 Contraction and convergence 100-101 195 Contrails 104 Corporate jets 3 57 155 162 164-165 175 205 Council for the Protection of Rural England – see Campaign to Protect Rural England Cranford 78 81 Cranford Agreement 78 Crashes – see Accidents Daimler, Gottlieb 56 Darling, Alistair 34 69 76 79 167 190 dBA – see decibels Decibels 63 119-140 (chapter) Defra (government department) 107 Demand management 75-76 80 112 140 178-80 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – see Defra Department for Transport 15 31 39 41 56-60 62-65 67 69 79 81-82 85 89 91 106 127 129 144 152 177 179-180 186-187 Diesel fuel 27 29-30 49 105 Diesel, Rudolph 29-30 Docklands 155-156 Dorothy Principle 202 Driving test 49 198 Dungeness 154-154 Duty free allowance 55 76 189


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Index 209

East Midlands airport 68 106 130 135 EasyJet 67 143 152 188 Economic growth 60 69-70 74 93 97 99-100 135 185 Economy/economics 26 41-42 56-57 60 62 69-76 78 93 95-97 99-100 111 113-114 135 180 185 187-188 203 Eddington, Sir Rod 70 77-78 189 Eddington Study 70-71 189 Edinburgh airport 60 65 68 93 106 151 Emissions charging 55 190 Emissions trading 61 67 80 93 111-113 115 187 195 Employment – see Jobs Environment 3 10 30-31 51 55 60-61 66-67 70 76 7980 86-87 92-93 100-101 106-111 149 152-153 156 162 175 180 185 188-191 194 196 199 205 Essex County Council 90-91 Ethics 61 108 113 199 Eurocontrol 143-144 European Commission 28 42 87 115 European Court of Human Rights 129 European Environment Agency 62 124 European Union 34 61 82 113 187-188 190 192 195 Exeter airport 68 External costs 60 190 196 205 4x4s/SUVs 24-25 37 39 42 Fairtrade Foundation 108 Flightpaths 45 106 121 125126 136-138 196 Flight tax 61 190 Flying cars 3 11 167 170176 182-183 Food miles 107-108 Ford, Henry 9 50 182-183 Frankfurt airport 85 130 203

Freedom-to-fly campaign 72 88 Friends of the Earth 33 79 105 111 118 149 Fuel cells 29 172 Fuel tax 55 188 Future of Air Transport, The (white paper 2003) 56 5969 76-81 87-88 91 93 106 111 124 128 135 150 152 178-179 186-187 193194 Future Development of Air Transport in the United Kingdom, The (consultation document 2002) 57-60 62 69 79 81 88 90-91 144 177-178 Gaia Hypothesis 3 102 Gatwick airport 59 63-64 68 77 84 89-91 93 105-106 121 123 130-132 136 151 181 Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign 105 180-181 General aviation 146 167 GEO-4 100 Glasgow airport 63 65 68 93 151 Globalisation/global policy 71 100-101 114 188 195-196 199 Global warming 3 26 95 9798 100 103-104 109 118 185 194 201 204 Greenhouse gases 26-27 37 79 95 97 99-104 110-111 114 179 195 Green movement 7 10 37 46-47 55-57 60 62 65 67 70 74-75 79 89 102-103 114 138 181 188 193 HACAN Clear Skies 83 85 129-130 Harmondsworth 80 85-86 Hatfield Forest 150


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Health 5-6 11 27 40 48 51 63 91 119-120 127-128 135 186 191 Heathrow airport 57 59-60 62-64 68-69 74 77-87 91 93 105-106 122-123 125 129-132 136-138 146 150151 155 193-194 203-205 Helicopters 7 11 21 122 133 160-161 163 165-167 170-171 175 182 197 205 Highways Agency 35 Holding stacks – see Stacks Holidays/vacations 3 57 67 71-73 89 106 112 163 178 180 199 Hub airports 64 77 84-85 194 205 Human Rights Act 1998 91 124 Hybrid engines 28 107 Hydrocarbons 27 Hydrogen 29 112 115 172 187 Immigration/immigrants 58 71 180 203 India 95 97 100-101 195 204 Infrastructure 35 70 75 153 172 174 182 186 189 Institute for Public Policy Research 74 Instrument flight rules 146 Insurance 12 19 50 174-175 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 95-98 100-102 107 110 140 178179 185 187 International Air Transport Association 139 International Civil Aviation Organisation 139-140 Jobs – 11 15 50 69 71-72 75 152-153 156-157 180 203

Journey substitution 47 70 76 199 Kyoto Protocol 61-62 96 113 192 195 Kent Council 90 Kerosene 115 Laissez faire paradigm 40 43 Land take 11 55 148-151 Landing charges 55 74 Landing slots 74-75 82 193 Leeds/Bradford airport 93 122 151 Leisure 7 12 49 71-73 83 167 180-181 191 Leq (equivalent sound level) 124-128 139-140 157 Liverpool John Lennon airport 68 93 London City airport 68 90 124 154-157 Lovelock, James 3 102-103 Luton airport 59 67-68 106 126 Lydd airport 68-69 152-155 Lydd Airport Action Group 153-154 M25 motorway 63 77 Manchester airport 64-66 68 93 106 146 151 194 Mead, Norman 87 90-91 Medway Council 90 Methane 95 97 Microlights 137 170 205 Military flying 106-107 132134 145 147 169 Mini-breaks 3 72 104 188 Ministry of Transport – see Department for Transport Mixed mode 78 81-83 Mobile phones 17-20 22 25 174-175 Model T 9 56 Motorways 19 30-32 34-35 39-41 44-45 63 77 86 149 173 177 181 183 189 196


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Index 211

National Air Traffic Services 126 141-144 National Trust 10 87 Newbury bypass 44 Newcastle airport 68 93 151 Night flights 59-60 64 120 128-132 157 178 185 Nitrogen oxides 27 62 96 107 Noise 3 5 8 31-32 48 55 60 62-64 76 78 82 91 93 119-140 (chapter) 155 157 160-161 165 167 178 180 183 186 196-197 203-204 Noise contours 63-64 125 127 139 157 Norwich airport 68 Offsetting 27 47 67 111-112 116-118 204 Open skies agreement 82-83 Oxford airport 167 Oxleas Wood 44 Ozone level 165 Package holidays 72 Paradigm shift 201 Particulates 27 62 Plane Stupid 87 Peak oil 58-59 Personal rapid transit 38 Pollution 26 28-31 42 48 55 61-63 67 76 79 82 91 93 96 105 112-114 116117 119-120 127 137 154 157 186-188 192 196-197 203-204 Predict and provide 57-58 60 75 179 Prius hybrid car – see Toyota Prius Privacy 4 10-12 31 38-39 45 48 55 175-177 183 191 203 Private flying 3 26 42 51 55 119 145-147 159-176 (chapter) 182 186 197-198 203

Productivity 74 Progress Report 2006 (Air Transport White Paper) 59 65-67 81 93 135 178 186 Quota count (noise) 130-132 Radiative forcing 95-96 107 111 117 190 Railways 5-7 11 15-16 18 20 30-31 34-35 39-41 4950 66 70 76-77 89 108 119 136 141 149 153 156-157 180 187-189 193194 199 Rapley, Prof Chris 201 Redhill airport 167 Risk compensation/risk homeostasis 23-26 198 Road Fund 8 Road pricing 5 37-38 43-46 48 159 201 Romney Marsh 152-153 Royal Air Force 132-134 145 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 43 96 106-107 109 112 165 179 188 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds 87 153-154 Rugby – see Church Lawford Runway alternation 78 83 Runways 57 59-60 62-65 67 71 74 77-78 80-91 93 106 125 127 130 135 140 150 152 156 161-163 168-170 179 188 193-194 Ryanair 67 152 188 Safety 3 17-18 21-26 39 42 55 141-148 152-153 155 169 173 178 198 203-204 Sao Paulo 165-166 Schipol airport (Amsterdam) 84-85 130 150 Second homes 13 73-74 160 Section 106 powers 123-124 Sewill, Brendon 105 179-180 Shell oil company 10


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Sinclair, Sir Clive 172 182 Sipson 81 86 Social benefit paradigm 40-41 Social impacts 4 20 31 3941 47-48 51 60 71 76 78 80 93 165 170 180-181 185 Soil Association 108 SoloTrek flying vehicle 169 Southampton airport 68-69 121 Speed cameras 21 Sport utility vehicles – see 4x4s Stacks 126 137-138 Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA) 75 Stansted airport 57 59-60 62 68 73 77-78 82 84 87-88 90-91 93 106 123 126-127 130-131 149-151 181 Stern Review 26 97-102 189 Stewart, John 83-84 87 Stockholm Environmental Institute 178 Stop Stansted Expansion 8788 150-151 181 Supersonic aircraft 73 107 165 Sustainability 76 113 149 177 187 Swanwick 143-144 Taxation 8 39-40 42 45 49 55-56 61 66 76 80 84 106 112 186 188-190 192 198-199 Technology 22 28-29 33 4547 57 63 70 103 109-111 114 118 140 142 165 171-174 178-179 182 187 201 204 Teesside airport 93 Terminal 4, Heathrow 77 81 Terminal 5, Heathrow 77 81

Terminal 6, Heathrow 77 8182 93 Terminals 60 64-67 77-78 81-82 93 146 152 179 Tourism 65 69 72-73 78 152-153 180 203 Town and Country Planning Act 1947 57-58 Toyota Prius -29 107 200 Tranquillity/tranquil areas 10 80 121 126 130 132 136 153 164 167 189 Transport 2000 – see Campaign for Better Transport Transport Research Laboratory 19 Trunk Roads Act 1936 15 Twyford Down 44 Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research 111 186 United Airlines 82 United Nations 30 62 97 100 178 United States 35 50 83 88 104 134 146 160 190 204 US Air Force 132-134 Uttlesford Council 150 Value added tax 55 61 80 188 Vehicle ownership 8 10 14 35 47 50 161 183 197 Virgin Airways 82 141 143 Visual flight rules 146-147 Voluntarism 186 199 Water vapour 29 96 104 White paper 2003 – see Future of Air Transport, The World Development Movement 111 World Health Organisation 120 127-128 Wright Brothers 4 56 59


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You can order these books from bookshops or direct from www.pulfordmedia.co.uk/ituri General titles SIREN SOCIETY America v the world Cedric Pulford 2005 • paperback • 114 pages • £7.50 A polemical analysis of the power-march of the USA. Cedric Pulford, a former journalist in America, explores – and explodes – the country’s cherished foundation myths ISBN 9780953643066 THE ADVENTURES OF SIR SAMUEL TUKE Paul M S Hopkins 2003 • paperback • 148 pages • £9.99 Paul Hopkins supplies an authoritative introduction to this acting edition of Restoration theatre’s first smash hit, The Adventures of Five Hours by Samuel Tuke ISBN 9780953643042 JournoLISTS 201 ways to improve your journalism Cedric Pulford 2001 • paperback • 128 pages • £9.99 Keith Waterhouse wrote of this book: ‘I wish I had had something like this to help me along the way … I can think of no better aid than Cedric Pulford’s pithy guide.’ ISBN 9780953643011


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You can order these books from bookshops or direct from www.pulfordmedia.co.uk/ituri Africa series CASUALTY OF EMPIRE Cedric Pulford Britain’s unpaid debt to an African kingdom 2007 • paperback • 146 pages • £11.99 Resistance and retribution at the birth of Uganda ISBN 9780953643073 JOURNEY THROUGH A VANISHED WORLD Robert Steel Sierra Leone 1938 Edited by Colin Johnson 2001 • soft cover spiral-bound • 93 pages • £16.00 A perceptive memoir of empire, including one of the last old-style safaris before the Land Rover took over ISBN 9780953643028 IMPERIAL ECHOES Arthur Staniforth The Sudan – People, History and Agriculture 2000 • paperback • 160 pages • £14.95 From tea with the Mahdi to soup and custard in a mud hut – a vivid picture of what empire really could be like ISBN 9781872142609 EATING UGANDA From Christianity to Conquest Cedric Pulford 1999 • paperback • 216 pages • £9.99 The mixed consequences of Britain’s empire-building in Uganda, one of Africa’s most advanced kingdoms, are explored ISBN 9780953643004

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