Airport News

Direct action group Plane Stupid says a dozen demonstrators cut through a fence and entered the runway at 3.30am

Climate change activists have chained themselves together on the northern runway at Heathrow, with the airport warning of some delays and cancellations for passengers.

A dozen demonstrators from direct action group Plane Stupid cut through a perimeter fence and entered the northern runway at 3.30am. Activists wore armlocks and lay on the runway.

A spokesman said the protesters – one dressed as a polar bear – were campaigning against runway expansion and would stay for as long as possible.

Heathrow has cancelled 13 flights so far on Monday, which a spokesman said was “mostly” due to protest action.

Other flights were experiencing delays but a spokesman said the demonstration was “having a very minimal effect on the operation” of the airport, which averages 1300 flights per day.

Heathrow said customers should check the status of their flights. Both runways are operational but the northern runway is shorter than normal and can only accept shorthaul flights, a spokesman said.

“We are working closely with the police who are dealing with the incident. The southern runway remains open,” a statement from the airport said. “Our priority remains to ensure the safety of the airport community, including passengers, employees and protesters.”

A Metropolitan police spokesman said: “At approximately 3.45am officers were alerted to a number of protesters who had made their way airside at Heathrow airport. A small number of these protesters are believed to have chained themselves to a ‘tripod’. Officers are in attendance.”

Four hours after the activists first arrived, police had managed to remove three of them from the arm locks.

A video posted online from earlier in the protest appeared to show several activists chained together and being spoken to by a police officer. The officer told them: “As a consequence of you being here, you are causing severe disruption and it will be in the millions of pounds because it will take us a while to remove you.

“The cost will be in the couple of millions. The airport will attempt to make a civil recovery.”

The officer told the group international flights were being diverted though an airport spokesman said none had been so far.

Sarah Shoraka of Plane Stupid said the group had re-formed since the publication this month of a long-awaited report that recommended a new runway should be built at Heathrow rather than Gatwick.

After three years of investigation, the Airports Commission said Heathrow was best placed to provide “urgently required” capacity.

“We thought we’d won this fight, because David Cameron said ‘no ifs, no buts’ there would be no runway at Heathrow,” Shoraka told the Guardian. “We thought it was off the table and then the report came through and we thought ‘we’re going to have to fight this all over again’.”

She insisted the activists had not endangered flights. “We picked the spot so we wouldn’t endanger flights trying to land. But we are not big corporations, we are not Boris Johnson, we don’t have resources at our disposal other than our bodies.

“We need to insert climate change into the narrative, it’s been absent from the whole debate ever since the report came out.”

Plane Stupid would stage more demonstrations on the issue, she added. “There is a huge coalition of groups against this and we have to stop this again.”