LONDON - A protester lay on top of a plane
while another forced a jet to turn around on the runway as
climate change activists descended on London City Airport on
Thursday, causing some disruption but ultimately failing to
cancel flights.
Protest organisers Extinction Rebellion had vowed to occupy
the airport's terminal and shut down operations for three days
as part of its action in the British capital.
London City is the capital's fifth-biggest - and most
central - airport, popular with business travellers, bankers and
politicians for short-haul and regional routes.
A Reuters photographer saw one man, former paralympian
cyclist James Brown, lay himself across the top of the body of a
British Airways Embraer 190 jet.
"I managed to get on the roof," Brown said in a video he
posted online. "This is all about the climate and ecological
crisis. We're protesting against government inaction."
He was eventually removed. A spokeswoman for BA said "we are
investigating what happened as a matter of urgency".
The group said they were protesting plans to expand the
airport, which aims to have 6.5 million passengers a year by
2022 compared to the 4.8 million in 2018, and which has said
there could be demand for as many as 11 million by 2035.
On Thursday, 18 000 passengers were due to arrive or depart
from the airport, with 286 flights scheduled. While some
protesters got inside the terminal building, flights were
continuing, though some were delayed.
An Aer Lingus plane was forced to stop taxiing and return to
its gate when a passenger got up to give a speech about climate
change.
"I'm extremely sorry to disturb everybody here. We have two
generations of human civilisation left if we carry on doing what
we're doing," the unnamed man said in a video of the incident,
as he politely declined efforts by staff and passengers to get
him to sit down.
Aer Lingus said that a passenger was removed from the flight
to Dublin due to "disruptive behaviour on board."
Extra security measures at the airport meant that most of
the protesting happened well away from the runway.
Protesters glued themselves to the terminal building,
occupied a nearby Docklands Light Railway (DLR) station and
blocked roads around the airport.
Police have made hundreds of arrests so far this week as the
protesters have sought to shut down London with two weeks of
civil disobedience.
"We continue to work closely with the Metropolitan Police to
ensure the safe operation of the airport, which remains fully
open and operational," a spokesman for London City Airport said.
Police said that they had arrested one person on a flight on
the runway with a number of people arrested outside the airport,
without specifying how many.
The airport said it is "committed to building a more
sustainable future for the airport and the aviation industry"
and has said it will achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
British Airways owner IAG also pledged on Thursday to meet that
emissions target.