Leeds Bradford Airport to fly long haul ‘in next three years’
Flights to the Middle East and North America could be operating from Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) within three years as part of a new strategy backed by £200m of private equity.
LBA wants to further develop long haul flights as part of its newly-updated Vision 2030 strategy, and said passenger numbers are predicted to increase from just over four million a year in 2023 to seven million a year by 2030.
The airport said the masterplan would create 5,500 direct and indirect jobs and contribute a total of nearly £1bn to the regional economy.
The airport’s chief executive, Vincent Hodder, sdestold the BBC would New York, Boston and Chicago in the US and Jeddah, Oman and Dubai in the Middle East.
“We’re already having those conversations with airlines from North America and the Middle East about how we can collectively work together to make those things happen over the next two to three years,” he said.
“I would be disappointed if by 2027 we did not have flights to North America and the Middle East.”
However, climate campaigners said three million additional passengers a year would lead to a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
On Friday, the Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport condemned the airport’s strategy as “deeply irresponsible”.
Nick Hodgkinson, Chair of GALBA, said: “LBA’s expansion announcement comes less than a month after the expert Climate Change Committee restated its advice to the government to ‘stop airport expansion without a UK-wide capacity management framework’. The reason we need to manage capacity is simple: more flying means more greenhouse gas emissions but we know we must radically cut those emissions as fast as possible.”
“At present, the only reliable way to do that is to limit flying by limiting the capacity of airports. One day, there may be clean fuels, used at large scale for all flight distances, which are proven to reduce the greenhouse gases caused by flying. But currently, those fuels only exist at a small scale – some are barely off the drawing board. Right now, the only way to control greenhouse gases from flying is not to fly more planes.”
