A protester lay on top of a plane while another forced a jet to turn around on the runway as climate change activists descended on London City Airport on Oct 10, causing some flight disruption as the number of arrests this week topped 1,000.
Protest organizers ‘Extinction Rebellion’ had vowed to occupy the airport’s terminal and shut down operations for three days as part of its action in the British capital.
The airport said two flights were cancelled but it had run an almost complete schedule of flights.
London City is the capital’s fifth-biggest—and most central—airport, popular with business travellers, bankers and politicians for short-haul and regional routes.
A Reuters photographer saw one man, lay across the top of the body of a British Airways Embraer 190 jet for over 20 minutes as authorities attempted to help him down.
“I managed to get on the roof,” the man, identified as James Brown said in a video he posted online.
Paralympian James Brown, who is partially blind, climbed to the top of a British Airways plane as part of Extinction Rebellion protests in London https://t.co/trHRc6Fn8B pic.twitter.com/i36nGifv3y
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 11, 2019
The flight to Amsterdam had to be cancelled and a spokeswoman for BA said “we are investigating what happened as a matter of urgency”.
The group said they were protesting plans to expand the airport, which aims to have 6.5 million passengers a year by 2022 compared to 4.8 million in 2018, and which has said there could be demand for as many as 11 million by 2035.
On Thursday, 18,000 passengers were due to arrive or depart from the airport, with 286 flights scheduled. While some protesters got inside the terminal building, flights were continuing, though some were delayed.
Aer Lingus said that a passenger was removed from the flight to Dublin due to “disruptive behaviour on board”.
Extra security measures at the airport meant that most of the protesting happened well away from the runway.
“There are no longer any protesters outside the airport terminal but we continue to work with the Metropolitan Police to ensure that our passengers tonight and tomorrow have a safe and secure service,” airport chief executive Robert Sinclair said.
Cressida Dick, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, said in a video statement on Thursday that “if you want to protest, you can go to the middle of Trafalgar Square,” Dick said.
“If you are protesting in the other sites, you’re acting unlawfully, we will arrest you, I imagine you will go to court and you’re very likely to get a criminal record.”
Protesters glued themselves to the terminal building, occupied a nearby Docklands Light Railway (DLR) station and blocked roads around the airport.
The airport action came as protesters try to shut down London with two weeks of civil disobedience, leading to a large number of arrests.
“We have now arrested over a thousand people,” said Laurence Taylor, the officer in charge of the police operation.
“We have been policing City Airport today where activists have attempted to try and disrupt the operation of the airport, including people outside and some interesting attempts airside, where one man had glued himself to the top of an aircraft. He has of course now been removed.”
The CNN Wire and NTD staff contributed to this report.
