Air transport in the United Kingdom is the commercial carriage of passengers, freight and mail by aircraft, both within the United Kingdom (UK) and between the UK and the rest of the world. In the past 25 years the industry has seen continuous growth, and the demand for passenger air travel in particular is forecast to increase from the current level of 236 million passengers to 465 million in 2030. One airport; London Heathrow Airport

London Heathrow Airport

London Heathrow Airport or Heathrow , in the London Borough of Hillingdon, is the busiest airport in the United Kingdom and the third busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic, handling more international passengers than any other airport around the globe...

 is amongst the top ten busiest

World's busiest airports by passenger traffic

The world's busiest airports by passenger traffic are measured by number of total passengers . One passenger is described as someone who arrives in, departs from, or transfers through the airport on a given day...

 airports in the world. More than half of all passengers travelling by air in the UK currently travel via the five London area airports. Outside of London, Manchester Airport is by far the largest and busiest of the remaining airports, acting as a hub for the 20 million or so people who live within a two hour drive. Regional airports have experienced the most growth in recent years, due to the success of 'no-frills

Low-cost carrier

A low-cost carrier or low-cost airline is an airline that generally has lower fares and fewer comforts...

' airlines over the last decade.

Advent of no-frills airlines

The advent in the mid-1990s of ’no-frills’ carriers, such as easyJet, has had a significant impact on air travel in the UK. In 2005 these airlines carried 77.5 million passengers, up from just 4.3 million in 1996. They are responsible for the growth of regional airports, operating from 35 airports in 2006 compared to 10 in 1996, and increasing the choice of international destinations, serving 150 in 2006, compared to 12 a decade earlier. The annual rate of growth in the overall demand for air travel has remained stable since 1975, and current growth is being serviced by the no-frills airlines at the expense of traditional carriers which, since 2000, have experienced flat or declining traffic levels. In response, traditional carriers have lowered costs to compete more effectively on price, leading to lower prices on the short haul routes serviced by this sector, especially in business fares. They have also limited or reduced capacity and in some cases launched no-frills subsidiaries of their own.

Airports

Although the number of airports in the UK runs into hundreds, many are smaller aerodrome

Aerodrome

An aerodrome, airdrome or airfield is a term for any location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve cargo, passengers or neither...

s dealing with general aviation

General aviation

General aviation is one of the two categories of civil aviation. It refers to all flights other than military and scheduled airline and regular cargo flights, both private and commercial. General aviation flights range from gliders and powered parachutes to large, non-scheduled cargo jet flights...

 rather than air transport. In terms of the latter, statistics are collected from 59 main airports, and the largest concentration of services

Busiest airports in the United Kingdom by total passenger traffic

The tables below contain CAA data from 2006 to 2009, on the busiest airports in the United Kingdom by total passenger traffic, including information on international, domestic and transit counterparts...

 is located in the London and South East of England areas. Heathrow is the largest airport in the country, handling over 67 million terminal passengers in 2006, making it the third busiest airport in the world, and the busiest if measured by the number of international passengers. Nearly a third of all overseas residents visiting the UK enter the country via this airport, which also handles more than a fifth of all overseas visits by UK residents.
Heathrow is also a cargo gateway and usually has up to 20 dedicated cargo aircraft using its facilities every day. The largest of which is DHL who also lease cargo aircraft to British Airways for weekend operations.
Gatwick airport, with 34 million terminal passengers, is the second largest in the country, eighth busiest in the world and lays claim to the busiest single runway airport in the world. Between them the five London airports handle nearly 137 million terminal passengers, 59 per cent of the national total. As far as dedicated cargo services are concerned, Stansted

London Stansted Airport

-Cargo:-Statistics:-Infrastructure:-Terminal and satellite buildings:Stansted is the newest passenger airport of all the main London airports. The terminal is an oblong glass building, and is separated in to three areas: Check-in concourse, arrivals and departures...

 and East Midlands airports have both experienced large growth in freight handling over the past decade, and these two airports are the major hubs for express freight operations.
Outside of London and the South East, the use of regional airports has increased dramatically in recent years, with the amount of air traffic using these facilities doubling in the period 1995 to 2005. To illustrate this growth, in the five years from 2001 passenger numbers at the regional airports of Exeter International Airport

Exeter International Airport

Exeter International Airport is an airport located at Clyst Honiton in the District of East Devon close to the city of Exeter and within the county of Devon, South West England....

, Bristol International Airport

Bristol International Airport

Bristol Airport , located at Lulsgate Bottom in North Somerset, is the commercial airport serving the city of Bristol, England and the surrounding area. At first it was named Bristol Lulsgate Airport and from March 1997 to March 2010 it was known as Bristol International Airport...

, and Newcastle Airport

Newcastle Airport

Newcastle International Airport is located in Woolsington in the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, north-west of the city centre. In 2010 it was the 11th busiest airport in the United Kingdom....

 increased by 191 per cent, 113 per cent, and 60 per cent respectively. In the same period the largest airports experienced some of the slowest growth, with Heathrow passenger numbers increasing by 11 per cent, and those of Gatwick increasing by less than 10 per cent.

Airlines

The majority of all passengers travelling by air to or from the UK are carried by UK airline

Airline

An airline provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for mutual benefit...

s, of which there are around forty, and at the end of 2006 the UK air transport fleet numbered 963 aircraft, flying just under 1.2 million flights and averaging over eight hours of flying daily. Together the two largest airlines as measured by passenger numbers; British Airways

British Airways

British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...

 and easyJet

EasyJet

EasyJet Airline Company Limited is a British airline headquartered at London Luton Airport. It carries more passengers than any other United Kingdom-based airline, operating domestic and international scheduled services on 500 routes between 118 European, North African, and West Asian airports...

, account for nearly half of the 127 million passengers flown on UK airlines. In terms of capacity, both available and used, British Airways is again the largest airline, whilst easyJet is pushed into third place by Virgin Atlantic Airways

Virgin Atlantic Airways

Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited is a British airline owned by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Singapore Airlines...

. British Airways passenger flights also account for over 50 per cent of all cargo carried by UK airlines, and when combined with its cargo operations the airline carries over 60 per cent of all cargo carried by UK airlines.

Passenger travel

Just over a fifth of all terminal passengers are travelling on domestic routes only, whilst half are travelling between the UK and the rest of the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

 (EU). Of the latter, travel between the UK and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 account for around half, with Spain almost matching the other three combined in terms of passenger numbers. Outside of the EU, the USA, the Far East

Far East

The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 and the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 together account for just over half of all passengers flying between the UK and the rest of the world, with the USA exceeding the other three combined in terms of passenger numbers. Air travel is the most popular mode of transport for visitors both to and from the UK. In 2005 it was used for 80 per cent of all visits by UK residents travelling overseas and by 74 per cent of all inbound visits. Just over a quarter of all passengers are travelling on business. The advent of no-frills carriers has had significant a significant effect on passenger travel profiles, with strong growth in business travel from regional airports, and a significant increase in inbound traffic generated for the purposes of non-UK residents visiting friends and relatives based in the UK. Whilst these carriers have been perceived to democratise air travel, providing the opportunity for lower income groups to travel more often, the main result is actually that middle and higher income groups travel more often, and often for shorter trips.

Future of air transport

The current availability of airport capacity has been identified as an important constraint on the ability to meet the increasing demand for air travel. In many cases airport capacity is already fully used in meeting current demand. At Heathrow and Gatwick airports the runways are full for "… virtually the whole day". In 2003 the runway at Birmingham airport was expected to reach full capacity by 2009 at the latest, whilst terminal capacity at Edinburgh airport had reached its limit. Government forecasts that year suggested that by 2030 the number of passengers could rise to between 400mppa and 600mppa, representing a two- to threefold increase, and a figure of 500mppa by 2030 was regarded by the Government as "robust". In 2006 the Government reported that at 228mppa the demand for air travel the previous year was in line with the 2003 forecast, but also revised the forecast demand for 2030 downwards to 465mppa as a result of capacity constraints, even taking into account proposed airport developments.

Policy

In December 2003 the Government published The Future of Air Transport White Paper

White paper

A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to...

 which detailed the Government's approach to the future development of air transport. The White Paper does not in itself authorise or preclude any development, but seeks instead to define a "national strategic framework for the future development of airport capacity" over the next 30 years. The principal conclusion is that the two extremes of failing to provide additional airport capacity, and encouraging growth without regard for the wider impacts, are equally unacceptable options. Instead a "balanced and measured approach" to the future of air transport in the UK is adopted. The Government's approach is designed to cater for the forecast growth in demand, thus supporting economic prosperity nationally and enabling ordinary people to travel at reasonable cost, whilst at the same time managing and mitigating the environmental impacts of aviation and ensuring that the costs associated with them are reflected in the price of air travel (see detailed sections below). In December 2006 the Government published the Air Transport White Paper Progress Report 2006 to report on progress made in "… delivering a sustainable future for aviation." The report re-iterates the Government’s commitment to the strategy defined in the original White Paper, stating that it "… strikes the right balance between economic, social and environmental goals."

In 2010 the new Coalition Government

United Kingdom coalition government (2010–present)

The ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition is the present Government of the United Kingdom, formed after the 2010 general election. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats entered into discussions which culminated in the 2010 coalition agreement, setting out a programme for government...

 abandoned the approach taken in the White Paper and ruled out further airport expansion of London's three main airports (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted). However in a speech on 31st October 2011 to the Airport Operators Association to mark the close of submissions to the Government's public consultation on its aviation policy, the Secretary of State for Transport

Secretary of State for Transport

The Secretary of State for Transport is the member of the cabinet responsible for the British Department for Transport. The role has had a high turnover as new appointments are blamed for the failures of decades of their predecessors...

 Justine Greening

Justine Greening

Justine Greening is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. She has been the Member of Parliament for Putney since 2005. She was appointed Economic Secretary to the Treasury in May 2010, and became Secretary of State for Transport on 14 October 2011...

 said that expansion elsewhere in the South East has not been ruled out. At the same event, the Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

's Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle

Maria Eagle

Maria Eagle is a British solicitor and Labour Party politician. She is the Member of Parliament for Garston and Halewood, having been the MP for Liverpool Garston from 1997 to 2010....

 announced that the Party had abandoned its support for a third runway at Heathrow Airport but said that the Government must also drop its moratorium on new airport capacity in the South East.

On 2 November 2011 the Thames Hub

Thames Hub

The Thames Hub is a proposal for a new approach to integrated infrastructure development that combines rail, freight logistics, aviation, renewable energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities...

 proposal was launched by Lord Foster. This attempts to integrate several infrastructure components (flood barrier, hydroelectric generation, rail lines) and includes plans for one of the World's largest airports. It would be capable of handling 150 million passengers a year, have 4 runways and be built on a platform in the Hoo Peninsula

Hoo Peninsula

The Hoo Peninsula is a peninsula in England separating the estuaries of the rivers Thames and Medway. It is dominated by a line of sand and clay hills, surrounded by an extensive area of marshland composed of alluvial silt. The name Hoo is the Old English word for spur of land.-History:The Romans...

 in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

.

Environmental impact

Whilst carbon emissions from all UK activities other than aviation had declined by 9 per cent in the 10 years between 1990 and 2000, carbon emissions from aviation activities doubled in the same period. Air transport in the UK accounted for 6.3 per cent of all UK carbon emissions in 2006. When the radiative forcing

Radiative forcing

In climate science, radiative forcing is generally defined as the change in net irradiance between different layers of the atmosphere. Typically, radiative forcing is quantified at the tropopause in units of watts per square meter. A positive forcing tends to warm the system, while a negative...

 impact of other emissions are taken into account the total impact of emissions attributable to aviation is estimated to be twice that of its carbon emissions alone. Although the Government has committed to reducing total UK carbon emissions by 80 per cent from existing levels by 2050, its policy is based on the use of "… economic instruments to ensure that growing industries are catered for within a reducing total." Even if this reduction in total carbon emissions is achieved, research published in February 2006 concluded that aviation could account for between 24 per cent and 50 per cent of the UK's carbon budget by 2050. The strategy adopted in the White Paper seeks to mitigate the global impact of air transport primarily through emissions trading

Emissions trading

Emissions trading is a market-based approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants....

 schemes. Although the Kyoto Protocol

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , aimed at fighting global warming...

 implemented emissions trading as a means to reduce emissions at national levels, the global nature of air transport means that international (but not domestic) air travel is excluded from this mechanism. The Government is seeking to redress this through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), but progress is slow. In the meantime efforts are being made to include aviation in the EU Emission Trading Scheme

European Union Emission Trading Scheme

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme also known as the European Union Emissions Trading System, was the first large emissions trading scheme in the world. It was launched in 2005 to combat climate change and is a major pillar of EU climate policy...

 with an original target to implement this by 2008. In 2006 the Government re-affirmed this policy as the best approach for addressing the climate change impacts of aviation, and current proposals aim at accomplishing this for all flights within the EU by 2011, with the scheme being extended to include all flights to and from the EU the following year.

Critics of the Government's policy advocate addressing climate change impacts by constraining demand for air travel. The study Predict and Decide - Aviation, climate change and UK policy concludes that the Government should seek an alternative aviation policy based on managing demand rather than providing for it. This would be accomplished via a strategy that presumes "… against the expansion of UK airport capacity" and restrains demand by the use of economic instruments to price air travel less attractively. Other studies point to a significant contribution to aviation's climate change emissions by the social phenomenon hypermobility

Hypermobility (travel)

The term hypermobility in regard to travelers arose around 1980 and is a concept that has increased in useage since the early 1990s: Damette ; Hepworth and Ducatel ; Whitelegg ; Lowe ; van der Stoep ; Shields ; Cox ; Adams ; Khisty and Zeitler ; Gössling et al. ; and Mander & Randles...

, and the increasing prevalence of hypermobility among UK and global citizens. and Mander & Randles (2009). Key to the concerns expressed in these studies are: that that vast distances are easily travelled in a relatively short time, entailing substantial greenhouse gas emissions; that these emissions are made at-altitude where they have much greater climate consequences than emissions made at ground-level; and that social pressures and marketing programs such as frequent flyer miles programs that both encourage a growing amount of travel and means to go.

Climate scientist Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson (scientist)

Professor Kevin Anderson is the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research; holds a joint chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and School of Environmental Sciences at University of East...

 of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

Tyndall Centre

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is an organisation based in the United Kingdom that brings together scientists, economists, engineers and social scientists to 'research, assess and communicate from a distinct trans-disciplinary perspective, the options to mitigate, and the...

demonstrated in 2009 that continued annual growth in UK air travel at the usual seven percent until 2012 and at three percent thereafter will lead to such travel consuming 70 percent of the UK's total planned national carbon emissions by 2030. In that less-than-business-as-usual scenario, UK air travel emissions would increase from 11 MT in 2006, to 17 MT in 2012, and 28 MT in 2030. His contention is that the consequences of not promptly reducing the demand or supply for air travel in the UK and elsewhere will result in severe consequences for society and the ecosystems upon which humanity depends.