PROTESTS AT PRIVATE JET TERMINALS ARE ON THE RISE

In a coordinated action on 11 November 2022, climate activists blockaded eleven private jet terminals worldwide.

The biggest was at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, where protestors from Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion staged a six-hour runway sit-in. There was also activity in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Norway, France, and the United States.

The inclusion of the United States in this day of action was noteworthy. The USA has largely been spared the kind of airport-related direct action seen in Europe.

But this time, activists turned up at airports such as Teterboro, New Jersey (a private jet centre for the New York City area) and the private jet terminal of Charlotte-Douglas international airport.

There, Peter Kalmus, a NASA scientist in the climate group “Scientist Rebellion,” was arrested after chaining himself to the terminal doors.

Source: Stay Grounded

That November day of action was followed up by a subsequent one on Valentine’s Day 2023 in many of the same countries, including the United States.

As well as turning up at airports, campaigners have taken things one step further and started disrupting business aviation industry events. In Brussels, activists walked on stage during the AIR OPS 2023 business aviation conference, unfurling a banner which read

“Make them Pay.” Meanwhile, London’s Corporate Jet Investor Conference saw disruption from protestors.

Answering questions about why they disrupted the conference, climate group Fossil Free London said that business aviation is:

“An obscene waste of carbon and it should not exist….there is absolutely no justification for private jet flights, in a world where ordinary people are struggling to afford enough heat and energy and food just to survive. It is completely unacceptable for anyone to produce the level of emissions that come from private jet flights.”

We’ve heard from one industry source that this has resulted some business aviation event organisers to consider hosting future events in secret, with no pre-publicity about the venue or attendees.

Source: Stay Grounded

WHY ARE CLIMATE GROUPS DOING THIS? IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT PRIVATE JETS

Why is all this happening? After all, the business aviation industry points to the sector being only responsible for 2% of aviation and 0.04% of total CO2 emissions. They use these two statistics to try and contextualise the issue and question why the sector comes in for so much criticism.

Climate groups are well aware of the fact that banning private jets wouldn’t move the needle much in terms of aviation’s share of emissions.

Instead, they have been focused on business aviation as it’s a way to highlight a range of other arguments about air travel and global warming:

Very few people take private jets. Not even most airline frequent flyers use private jets. It’s a sector that does not impact 99%+ of the travelling public.

A protest in front of a private jet terminal doesn’t inconvenience the family flying to Tenerife. They don’t feel attacked, as private jet users are a world away from their everyday reality.

As we showed earlier, the established narrative around private jets is often now about celebrities, billionaires like Musk and Bezos, excess, accusations of hypocrisy (e.g, Bill Gates), wasteful and unnecessary pollution.

Therefore, for climate change groups, business aviation sits at the apex of what they call “luxury emissions” – unlike “subsistence emissions”, these are seen to be inherently wasteful.

Similarly, frequent flyers – the most profitable segment of legacy airline customers – are also perceived symbols of luxury emissions.

This makes stopping private jets only one of three demands in (climate group) Stay Grounded’s “Make Them Pay” campaign – with the other two being a tax on frequent flyers and some kind of enhanced carbon pricing.

In the end, climate change activists don’t look at business aviation in isolation. It’s merely seen as the most carbon-intensive area of an already carbon-intensive industry.