The UK’s eight greatest airports have plans to fly nearly 150mn extra passengers a 12 months, the equal of 300,000 additional jumbo jets, in a guess that local weather targets is not going to maintain again the trade.

A Monetary Instances evaluation of their growth initiatives discovered that mixed they might be capable to deal with 387mn passengers yearly, a greater than 60 per cent improve on the 240mn travellers who used the airports in 2019.

The figures spotlight how airports are planning for a interval of breakneck progress regardless of vital monetary losses throughout the pandemic. In addition they show how the trade believes that transformational progress remains to be attainable within the lead-up to the deadline in 2050 for the UK to achieve web zero greenhouse gasoline emissions.

Greater than a 3rd of the expansion would come from London Heathrow’s proposed megaproject to construct a 3rd runway. This is able to improve passenger capability on the UK’s greatest airport to 142mn a 12 months in contrast with the 81mn it dealt with in 2019 earlier than the coronavirus pandemic hit. The airport paused planning in 2020 as Covid-19 shut down the worldwide aviation sector however final month signalled it will resume quickly.

Its chief govt John Holland Kaye advised the FT in February that it was working “with the goal of restarting the planning course of . . . We’ll share what our plans are later this 12 months.” Any choice to proceed with the appliance is topic to an inner evaluate, which has but to be accomplished.

The opposite initiatives are extra modest in scale, and vary from Gatwick’s proposal to fly 30mn extra passengers a 12 months by bringing its emergency runway into common use, to Manchester’s deliberate growth of one in every of its terminals to deal with an additional 15mn passengers. Edinburgh accomplished the work to boost its capability to 20mn passengers in 2019.

Airport executives and buyers stated airports have been trying to push via progress plans as a result of many within the trade believed that it will solely get harder sooner or later as environmental pressures grew.

Aviation, which is seen as a key driver of financial progress, accounts for 8 per cent of UK emissions and is troublesome to decarbonise due to the challenges concerned to find a viable inexperienced propulsion know-how.

The UK’s most up-to-date coverage framework for airport growth was printed in 2018, and backed a brand new runway at Heathrow and different airports “making greatest use” of present infrastructure.

Trade executives argue that there isn’t a cause to dam growth provided that the trade has pledged to achieve web zero by 2050. In addition they level to fast advances in quieter plane to assist assuage native considerations about noise air pollution.

That is supported by a Division for Transport paper on decarbonising aviation printed final 12 months that stated airport growth was attainable inside the authorities’s local weather change commitments as a result of new applied sciences, akin to cleaner fuels, would assist the aviation trade hit web zero by 2050.

However the Committee on Local weather Change, the federal government’s unbiased local weather advisers, has warned that if annual passenger numbers elevated by greater than 25 per cent from 2018 ranges by 2050 then emissions financial savings would want to come back from different sectors to fulfill the legislated carbon targets.

Environmental teams query whether or not any progress in flying is appropriate with chopping carbon emissions, pointing to the numerous technological and monetary hurdles standing in the way in which of decarbonising the trade.

They argue that the federal government wants a brand new overarching technique to watch the general price of airport growth, and benchmark the mixture image towards local weather commitments.

Alex Chapman, senior researcher on the New Economics Basis, a think-tank that opposes growth, stated that at current authorities coverage “successfully sanctions limitless progress within the sector”.

The 2018 airport coverage framework, which guides planning selections, states that the rise in greenhouse gasoline emission brought on by any growth undertaking should not have “a cloth impression on the power of presidency to fulfill its carbon discount targets”.

However Alistair Watson, companion and head of planning and atmosphere at regulation agency Taylor Wessing, stated the planning system was “failing” due to a scarcity of nationwide oversight, which meant that every airport’s utility was thought-about in isolation and assessed on its native impression. “This planning system . . . shouldn’t be constructed for the debates we now should have,” he added.

Chapman referred to as on ministers to “take duty and put onerous, enforceable targets in place”.

The federal government stated the UK had “one of the vital bold methods on the planet to scale back aviation emissions with out impacting this very important sector, and we’re supportive of airport growth the place it may be delivered inside our environmental obligations”.

Bernard Lavelle, a guide and former senior govt at London Metropolis and Southend airports, stated airports have been “very critical” about chopping their emissions.

He stated continued progress was important for the sector, which had extraordinarily excessive mounted prices, starting from safety to air site visitors management. “You have got a whole lot of outgoing prices actually to open the entrance door, however [as passenger numbers rise] airports can then grow to be fairly worthwhile as a result of prices don’t improve on the identical price,” he added.

Some smaller airports have managed to push via growth plans just lately, together with Bristol which received permission to extend the cap on passengers from 10mn to 12mn final 12 months.

However not all have succeeded, the smaller Leeds Bradford airport scrapped plans for a brand new terminal in 2022 after the federal government intervened and overruled the native council’s choice to approve the appliance, citing considerations concerning the impact on the greenbelt and the broader impression on local weather change.

The problem is prone to transfer up the political agenda once more later this 12 months if, as anticipated, Heathrow submits its plans for the third runway. Holland-Kaye insisted that the pandemic had strengthened the case for rising the dimensions of the UK’s primary hub airport, after a patchwork of border restrictions minimize off UK passengers from different massive European hubs, akin to Paris and Frankfurt.

“Every part we stated about the way it was the precise factor to do has been validated,” he stated.

Further reporting by Camilla Hodgson