Bristol Airport has announced it wants to have direct flights to America and the Middle East, a longer runway and more car parking, as part of its plans to expand again. The airport is also proposing to increase the number of aircraft stands from 38 to 48, which will mean no more buses to planes.
As part of the plans to increase the number of passengers the airport is allowed to handle from 12 million to 15 million a year, airport bosses say they will include a ‘reserved space’ for a future rail or mass rapid transit link to Bristol itself. It comes after reports its owners were putting the site up for sale.
The airport opened up a two-month consultation on its plans ahead of submitting a planning application early next year, and a new website has been launched giving further details on the expansion plans Bristol Live first reported earlier this month.
Bristol Airport was finally awarded planning permission last year to expand from a nine million passengers a year capacity to 12 million, following a lengthy four-year legal battle with a coalition of opponents – and is certain to face another fight for a second huge expansion.
Opposition came from local residents who live around the airport in North Somerset, who are concerned about a range of issues including night flights, noise and increased traffic congestion at an airport dubbed Britain’s ‘worst connected’ by travel guru Simon Calder a couple of months ago.
But there is a wider concern about the contribution to climate change from further airport expansion, with scientists and environmentalists warning that air travel is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions and global warming that an individual makes.
The airport launched its public consultation on its plans on the day much of the West Country’s transport infrastructure was shut down by severe flooding, with homes evacuated, roads and railway lines closed off, as the more extreme autumn storms scientists said would be a result of global warming hit the region.
Bristol Airport’s expansion – particularly lengthening the runway by 150m – would open the airport up to be able to take larger, transcontinental planes, and flights to the Middle East and the US and Canada could follow. There have been regular direct flights to the Caribbean, New York and Florida from Bristol in the past, but these have been troubled by economic pressures.
The airport’s consultation includes an interactive map which features an extended runway which would take the tarmac closer to the A38 and Felton Common. “We are proposing to lengthen the runway by 150 metres. A short extension of the runway will help improve the operational efficiency of existing aircraft types that fly from the airport and meet the needs of new aircraft types that would service longer-haul routes,” the airport said.
The ‘interactive map’ does not appear to suggest the A38 would have to be re-routed by the runway lengthening, but the airport does have plans for the A38 too. “Proposals for a bus lane northbound between the north and south airport access junctions are being advanced by North Somerset Council and are anticipated to be completed by 2026. As part of our development proposals we are assessing the need for an additional southbound bus lane to provide a fast and more resilient shuttle service between the southern car parks and the airport terminal,” the airport expansion website siad.
The airport was given permission to expand from nine to 12 million by the courts last year and work is already well underway on a new transport hub, which includes a huge new multi-storey car park and expanded capacity for buses and taxis. Already the number of flights and passengers has increased, and there are now more than ten million passengers going through Bristol Airport.
The new ‘masterplan’ unveiled by the airport bosses today will take the number of passengers up again to 15 million a year, and to do that will require a new expanded terminal building, with extensions at both ends. There will also be new aircraft stands at the north end, larger staff parking and massively expanded public car parking too. The airport said the expansion plans will take the airport to the year 2040. “There are now more than 10 million passengers a year using Bristol Airport, providing more than 5,000 local jobs and contributing £2 billion to the regional economy,” a spokesperson for the airport said. “Connecting the region to more than 115 destinations increases productivity, supports businesses and enables inbound tourism.
“The masterplan to 2040 will look at expected passenger growth beyond the current allowance of 12 million passengers per annum, so it can serve up to 15 million passengers per year by around 2036. This will set a clear development intent to be given due consideration in the local planning process, with a planning application likely to be going to North Somerset Council next year,” he added.
The airport’s chief executive, Dave Lees, said the airport was a huge employer in the area, particularly in South Bristol and Weston-super-Mare, and contributed hundreds of millions of pounds to the local economy each year. “We constantly look at trends in air travel and we’ve been pleasantly surprised that people want to continue to travel by air,” he said. “We’ve seen since the pandemic a real resurgence in terms of people wanting to connect with friends and family across Europe as well as across the world and that will inform our plans as we go forward over the coming years,” he added.
“The masterplan will look at what further development might be required to meet this growing demand for air travel and we’d welcome input from people to help shape our plans,” he said. “We’re continuously investing in improvements to meet current demand, with our new £64 million Public Transport Interchange currently under construction. Work is also ongoing to decarbonise operations at the Airport on projects removing gas from our site, to be replaced with heat pumps.
“We recognise there will be concerns about carbon emissions resulting from airport growth and the implications for climate change. So we are bringing forward proposals for what we consider to be responsible growth, growth that is both within the current UK carbon budgets required to meet net zero for all emissions by 2050, and with measures to achieve net zero airport operations by 2030. Meanwhile, we are also committed to working with partners in our region on aviation decarbonisation,” he added.
The Bristol Airport Action Network, a coalition of local and national groups which fought the current airport expansion but eventually lost in the High Court, said the new expansion plans were ‘bonkers’.
“Local residents don’t know what the impacts of the current planning permission to 12m will be on their lives yet they are being asked to accept another one,” said a BAAN spokesperson. “The extra noise, night flights, congestion on the surrounding roads an impact on the climate from the CO2 would be enormous. The only solution is to introduce measures to reduce demand for more flights because new tech solutions to reduce emissions will not be developed in time,” he added.