Mayor says airport needs to improve carbon footprint but backs growth plans after accusations of 'smoke and mirrors'

Kim McGuinness wants improvements in sustainability at the airport, while saying that we want to see growth in the North East tourist industry           see the Chronicle article here ...

29 Mar 2026

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Our response:

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"Kim McGuiness putting pressure on the Airport to minimise its environmental impact is welcome as is the work programme the Airport itself has in hand.  However, that's not remotely enough. By far the largest impact on the environment and global warming comes from flights and the emissions these release.  Worse still is the fact that any Net Zero improvements the Airport makes in its own performance will be more than wiped out by the increase in flights needed to almost double passenger numbers. So, thumbs up to the Airport for a local effort but nobody should be fooled by this, it's the flights that matter more than anything else.

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There's another problem. Newcastle Airport is a leisure facility with more than 80% of passengers going on holiday, on shopping trips, having city breaks or visiting family and friends. Across the UK, outbound tourism beats inbound tourism by almost three to one with most of it going out by air. Vast amounts of money are effectively being exported from the UK economy - a loss of around £46 billion at the last count. Newcastle Airport is part of this export, there is a powerful case to be made that this damages the local economy and results in job losses.  And bringing more tourists in won't help if you're planning to send more tourists out.

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So, the expansion of passenger and flight numbers is a serious two fold loss to us all: it will help speed up global warming just as it's getting a lot worse and it will extend the damage to the local economy in a world where the UK and global economies are increasingly on a knife edge. Kim McGuiness and Newcastle Airport need to have a serious rethink on this"

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