The environmental campaign against air travel moved towards a more confrontational phase and spread outside the climate-change camp at Heathrow yesterday as small groups of protesters launched simultaneous demonstrations against two airports in the South-east. Eleven people were arrested outside Biggin Hill in Kent, an airport popular with business figures and celebrities flying private jets, after protesters chained themselves to gates and lay down on the main access road to the airport yesterday morning.

Twenty protesters at Farnborough airport in Hampshire launched a similar protest, blockading the main gate for about two and a half hours. They dispersed peacefully without any arrests being made. The campaigners at Biggin Hill said they chose that particular airport because of its popularity with clients using private jets, which they said was one of the most inefficient and polluting ways to travel.

Richard George, speaking on behalf of the Kent protesters, said: "This is a protest against the super-rich with their own planes, who are putting two fingers up to attempts by the rest of us to try to cut our carbon emissions by saying they will not only continue to fly, but they will fly in the most carbon-inefficient way possible."

Although those taking part in yesterday's protest at Biggin Hill said they were not associated with the climate-change camp, organisers at the much larger Heathrow protest refused to rule out the possibility of resorting to similar action when the campaign reaches its climax this weekend. Leo Murray, a spokesman for Plane Stupid, which campaigns against the expansion of Heathrow airport and is one of many groups organising the climate-change camp, said he was pleased protests had spread outside Heathrow.

"While the rest of us are changing our lightbulbs and trying to cut down on car journeys, the super rich are making choices which are emitting 60 to 80 times the greenhouse gases that would be emitted if they made the same journey by train. It is obscene," he said.

Mr Murray is one of three people banned from going near Heathrow airport by a controversial injunction obtained by the airport's owners BAA in the weeks leading up to the protest. Speaking from inside the camp yesterday, Mr Murray said those under injunction would leave the camp before the weekend. Camp organisers said they had been victims of a smear campaign in the media and angrily denied claims made by police yesterday afternoon that a significant criminal element was hoping to use the cover of an environmental protest to confront the authorities.

Meanwhile, a leading charter jet company said yesterday the protest at Heathrow was causing more business and first-class travellers to turn to private jets. John Keeble, managing director of Twinjet, said that requests for private jets had gone up by 15 per cent this week, mainly due to flight disruption concerns.
(By Jerome Taylor, The Independent, 17/08/2007)