Environment, Social and Governance: the Airport's responsibilities. Do they really stack up?

This report (Environment, Social and Governance 2025) lays out how the Airport approaches its responsibilities under three headings: environment, social and governance. You can see it here

We think this report fails the credibility test in the following key areas (you can see our comments in detail here):

Leisure flights and the local economy: Newcastle Airport claims to be essential to the local economy. We think this is a false claim because it's mainly a leisure airport - the report doesn't tell you this.

Climate change emissions and Net Zero: The airport references its Net Zero Strategy. This is concerned with reducing the climate change impact of its own ground operations only but the report doesn't ell you that it's the flights that really matter.

Sustainability: We think that the Airport uses the term “sustainability” carelessly without defining exactly what it means.

Aircraft noise: Aircraft noise is a key impact from aviation, it’s the element that people notice most if they live near an airport. The report says the Airport cares about this, we are not so sure if judged by their actions.

Changing how noise complaints are made: The new complaints facility, WebTrak, is difficult and complex to access and use. We think this will suppress the numbers of complaints - the Airport will accept complaints by this route only. We think this is unacceptable and not responsible