Meetings with government, UN aviation specialists, and teenage visitors to the Farnborough Air Show

27th July, 2010

Much of our work in the past fortnight has focused on UK airports policy. Tim attended the first meeting of the South East Airports Task Force (minutes of which will be uploaded shortly on the Department for Transport website), while Cait helped coordinate a more general NGO meeting with the Department. This confirmed that the forthcoming Airports Economic Regulation Bill is unlikely to include any provisions on environment, that the details of the Coalition’s promised per plane duty are now being considered, and that a Thames Estuary Airport is not currently on the cards.

AEF also attended the launch of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ final report on UK airports policy, which advocated capacity constraints, a carbon price with a floor, and government regulation of both CO2 and non-CO2 climate impacts from the sector. And we met with other NGO representatives to consider methodologies and the political context for including flight emissions in regional climate strategies.

Looking beyond the UK, our current intern, Ben, has been analysing some figures from the Federal Aviation Administration to give us a better understanding of the likely climate impact of US aviation in coming decades, and has been collating a set of useful facts and statistics for our website. Tim chaired a teleconference for members of a UN working group on the aviation carbon calculator (which estimates per flight emissions), and took part in a debate at the Farnborough Airshow, organised by the pro-aviation lobby group Flying Matters, where he introduced teenagers to arguments concerning the future of aviation in a carbon-conscious world.