We’re aviation workers that support airport protests

This week air trav­ellers at the UK’s two busiest air­ports try­ing to get away for the sum­mer were greet­ed by an unusu­al sight. On Mon­day, those mak­ing their way to the depar­ture gates at Gatwick were blocked by a group of pro­tes­tors who glued them­selves to the floor. On Tues­day, at Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5, pas­sen­ger infor­ma­tion screens were sprayed with orange paint. 

These actions are part of a wave of envi­ron­men­tal protests cur­rent­ly sweep­ing air­ports across the globe. Last Wednes­day, five pro­test­ers glued them­selves to the tar­mac at Cologne-Bonn Air­port, caus­ing the can­cel­la­tion of 31 flights. Barcelona, Boston (US), Frank­furt, Gene­va, Helsin­ki, Mon­tréal, Oslo and Zurich air­ports have also been targeted.

The protests take place against a stark back­drop, with NASA report­ing that July 2024 fea­tured the hottest days ever recorded.

Activists state that they’re part of a coor­di­nat­ed inter­na­tion­al upris­ing called ​“Oil Kills” which aims to end fos­sil fuels by 2030. They are tak­ing non­vi­o­lent col­lec­tive action at air­ports which they see as ​“a key pil­lar of the fos­sil fuel econ­o­my”.

They demand: ​“Our gov­ern­ments must work togeth­er to estab­lish a legal­ly bind­ing treaty to stop extract­ing and burn­ing oil, gas and coal by 2030 as well as sup­port­ing and financ­ing poor­er coun­tries to make a fast, fair, and just tran­si­tion. This can be accom­plished by endors­ing the Fos­sil Fuel Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty Initiative”

Hav­ing hol­i­day plans dis­rupt­ed is clear­ly like­ly to annoy many trav­ellers, and the tabloid press have report­ed some pas­sen­gers being furi­ous and irri­tat­ed by the actions. ​‘Click-bait’ head­lines have fur­ther enraged peo­ple, labelling pro­tes­tors enti­tled, unjus­ti­fied, ​“mob”-like idiots who have noth­ing bet­ter to do than ruin the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers: ad-hominem attacks which stoke the flames of anger-fuelled com­men­tary on social media. 

No doubt, if you were the air­port secu­ri­ty per­son­nel first respond­ing to any peace­ful protest, or an air trav­eller in the vicin­i­ty: your anx­i­ety would ini­tial­ly be height­ened. Fear would have swirled through your mind that these protests were some­thing more sin­is­ter, for exam­ple: a poten­tial ter­ror­ist attack.

For clean­ers wash­ing-off orange paint and the air­port logis­tics crew respond­ing to dis­rup­tion, it’s clear that these protests would have made the work­ing day far more stressful.

You might be sur­prised, how­ev­er, that there’s a grow­ing group of avi­a­tion work­ers who can under­stand the moti­va­tions behind these protests. A glob­al com­mu­ni­ty called ​“Safe Land­ing” is con­nect­ing pro­fes­sion­als from across the indus­try who are con­cerned about the future of air trav­el and want to empow­er each oth­er to influ­ence it.

We are two such work­ers: Todd Smith (a trained com­mer­cial air­line pilot) and Fin­lay Ash­er (an air­craft engine design­er) who co-found­ed the group. Both of us recent­ly quit our jobs due to cli­mate-con­cern, in order to com­mit full-time to grow­ing the movement.

We expect the cur­rent wave of protests will only be the tip of the ice­berg of cli­mate action focused on avi­a­tion. Our sec­tor is an obvi­ous tar­get for cli­mate protests due to the car­bon-inten­si­ty of fly­ing. Very few peo­ple fly glob­al­ly (only 1% of peo­ple emit half of aviation’s CO2), yet this small minor­i­ty are often very wealthy, high-emit­ting, fre­quent fly­ers.

Sim­ple maths tells us that busi­ness-as-usu­al air traf­fic growth is incom­pat­i­ble with hit­ting glob­al cli­mate tar­gets, so a new strat­e­gy is required.

We’ve encour­aged air­ports around the UK to pause any expan­sion and instead trans­form their facil­i­ties for the future of low­er-car­bon elec­tric air­craft. They’ve sim­ply ignored our pro­pos­als: more than 20 are cur­rent­ly plan­ning to expand. Avi­a­tion work­ers and con­cerned com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing near­by are not being lis­tened to.

Despite spend­ing vast amounts of time and ener­gy engag­ing with the indus­try, the real­i­ty is that using the ​“offi­cial” chan­nels and process­es often get us nowhere. Few are lis­ten­ing to the very real dan­gers that we attempt to alert our lead­ers, col­leagues, and politi­cians to. We aren’t sur­prised that pro­tes­tors resort to such vis­i­ble actions which are proven to attract more media attention.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists are often paint­ed as want­i­ng to ban every­body from fly­ing. Appar­ent­ly they won’t be hap­py until all planes are ground­ed. How­ev­er, we believe the real­i­ty is that this is exact­ly where the cur­rent avi­a­tion strat­e­gy will lead us. Just remem­ber the wild­fires across south­ern Europe last sum­mer and the flood­ing of Dubai Air­port this year. A world of run­away cli­mate break­down is a world where many tourist des­ti­na­tions become unvis­itable, envi­ron­men­tal costs stack-up, and fly­ing becomes unaf­ford­able to all but a wealthy elite.

With­out action, the indus­try will crash. This would leave avi­a­tion com­pa­nies with strand­ed assets, and cause the indus­try to implode. Many work­ers could lose their jobs. We are work­ing hard to avoid this by empow­er­ing avi­a­tion work­ers to act from with­in the sector.

As many in our com­mu­ni­ty work on the cut­ting-edge of tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, we’re aware that most alter­na­tive jet fuel and air­craft tech­nolo­gies being pro­mot­ed as cli­mate solu­tions for avi­a­tion are most­ly green­wash, and will nev­er be scaled in the time required. We there­fore under­stand the need to fly less in the short-term, in order to pro­tect our plan­et and our abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue to fly well into the future.

To meet these goals it’s vital for us to sup­port any cam­paign demands (as long as they use non-vio­lent tac­tics) that align with our prin­ci­ples and posi­tions on avi­a­tion decar­bon­i­sa­tion. We believe that any indi­vid­ual should do what­ev­er they can, how­ev­er they feel com­fort­able and wher­ev­er they think that their per­son­al strength and abil­i­ty to influ­ence lies.

Cre­at­ing change requires a wide vari­ety of approach­es in order to be suc­cess­ful. A ​“spec­trum of tac­tics”. We empow­er avi­a­tion work­ers to act from with­in the sec­tor to rapid­ly reduce the cli­mate impact of avi­a­tion. We advo­cate for delib­er­a­tive Avi­a­tion Work­ers’ Assem­blies to use our col­lec­tive exper­tise to nav­i­gate a sus­tain­able future for air trav­el. We also sup­port legal work, engage with pub­lic inquiries on air­port expan­sions and respond to gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tions on indus­tri­al strategy.

While air­port actions will be unpop­u­lar with many air trav­ellers, the mes­sage being deliv­ered by the pro­tes­tors is long over­due. We urgent­ly need to phase-out fos­sil fuel from avi­a­tion: or there will be lit­tle left to explore and enjoy.

The ulti­mate goal for every­body is a world that is safe, hab­it­able and free from cli­mate dis­as­ter. A world where we can go on hol­i­day, expe­ri­ence oth­er cul­tures and explore wild habi­tats, which haven’t been destroyed by extreme weath­er events. A soci­ety where fly­ing is still pos­si­ble. Where avi­a­tion employ­ment is pro­tect­ed, and may even increase.

Maybe such a world would also be free of cli­mate pro­test­ers at the depar­ture gates?

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