Oil activists on holiday flight
Activist group Just Stop Oil (JSO) plans to target airports across the UK, including London Heathrow, Gatwick, Bristol and Manchester, in a summer campaign aimed at disrupting air travel.
The group pays volunteers for their efforts and plans to attach itself to airport infrastructure and aircraft to prevent people from boarding flights for holidaymakers and cause chaos in terminals and around the airport.
If the plan succeeds, airports and airlines could lose millions of dollars in revenue.
Association leaders are actively lobbying their members to join in plans to close runways and cause maximum disruption to travelers in order to prevent air travel, which they see as a major polluting mode of transportation.
But as images widely shared on Twitter show, the band members themselves are not averse to air travel, with Indigo Rumbelow, who is frequently used as the group's spokesperson, recently flying almost 9,000 miles to destinations including Nepal.
Another activist, repeat offender Phoebe Plummer, warned of “chaos on a scale never seen before”.
However, the randomness of JSO's methods could pose a major headache for airport security, and while airports and airlines will plan ahead for these activists, it will always be primarily reactive to protests.
But their actions could have more serious consequences than just blocking roads or barricading themselves in buildings.
Article 240 of the Aviation Act stipulates that “No act which is likely to endanger the aircraft or any person on board the aircraft must be committed recklessly or negligently,” and of course airports are restricted areas.
Endangering an aircraft can carry a prison sentence of up to five years, with longer prison terms possible if it results in injury or death.
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