Heathrow-funded group sending 'incredibly misleading' mail to homes across west London, campaigners allege

A campaign group for a third runway at Heathrow that gets funding from the airport has been distributing "incredibly misleading" information to households in west London, according to opponents of the expansion.

The group, called Back Heathrow, sent leaflets to people living near the airport, claiming expansion could be the route to a "greener" airport and suggesting it would mean only the "cleanest and quietest aircraft" fly there.

It comes as the airport prepares to submit its planning application for a third runway ahead of the 31 July deadline, following the government's statement of support for the expansion.

Back Heathrow calls itself a "local campaign group of over 100,000 residents" and does not mention the funding it receives from the airport in the newsletter.

Its website also does not mention the current financial support and says it "initially launched with funding from Heathrow Airport but we have since grown".

Back Heathrow also told Sky News it had "always been open" about the support it receives from the airport.

At the bottom of every web page, the organisation says: "Back Heathrow is a group of residents, businesses and community groups who have come together to defend the jobs that rely on Heathrow and to campaign for its secure future."

Heathrow Airport said it had always been clear about funding Back Heathrow, but would not disclose how much it provides.

Who's behind Back Heathrow?

The group's executive director is former Labour minister Parmjit Dhanda, who was MP for Gloucester from 2001 to 2010 and sits on the National Policy Forum - the body responsible for developing Labour policy.

Latest accounts for Back Heathrow show it had five employees, including its two directors, in the financial year ending 30 June 2024. The second director is John Braggins, a former campaign adviser to Tony Blair.

The business had £243,961 in cash, the accounts show.

What are the group saying?

In the newsletter, executive director Mr Dhanda said people ask if Heathrow is sustainable. In answering the question, he appeared to suggest the airport can dictate what types of planes use Heathrow.

"We can build a cleaner, greener and smarter airport - using more sustainable aviation fuel, ensuring only the cleanest and quietest aircraft fly here, reduce stacking in our skies and modernise our airspace to cut emissions in flight," he wrote.

When asked by Sky News what Back Heathrow meant and what the source for the claim was, the organisation pointed to the airport's traffic light system of noise and emission measurements for the 50 largest airlines serving Heathrow.

"The scheme helps to see what areas certain airlines are excelling in and where improvements can be made," a spokesperson said.

But those "cleaner and greener" claims were dismissed as "myths" by one campaigner.

Finlay Asher is an aerospace engineer and co-founder of Safe Landing, a group of aviation workers and enthusiasts seeking climate improvements in the industry.

He said the emissions savings from sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) were "highly debatable" - but added that even if they were taken at face value, use of these fuels is "relatively low" and so only provides small emissions reductions.

"Air traffic growth at Heathrow will wipe this out," he said.

Mr Asher also disputed the claim that only the cleanest and quietest aircraft will fly at Heathrow. "There is no policy in place which prevents older generation aircraft from being operated out of any airport," he said.

As for reducing "stacking" - where aircraft wait over an airport to land - Mr Asher said if that's the goal, "adding more aircraft to the sky won't make this easier".

Opposition to Back Heathrow's claims also came from Rob Barnstone, founder of the No Third Runway Coalition, which is funded by five local authorities surrounding Heathrow Airport.

He said that regardless of fuel efficiencies or new quieter engines, having the additional 260,000 flights Heathrow has said will be created with an extra runway - in addition to the airport's current cap of 480,000 - would create "an awful lot of noise".

"For all the best will in the world, Heathrow is a very, very, very noisy neighbour... When you're adding a quarter of a million additional flights, that's going to create an awful lot of emissions, even if they're using planes that are ever so slightly less environmentally damaging than previous planes," Mr Barnstone said.

Green claims

Under the heading of "UK sustainable fuel industry for Heathrow", Back Heathrow said "advances in electric and hydrogen powered aircraft can ensure we meet our environmental targets".

Elaborating on this, Back Heathrow told Sky News: "Zero-emission electric and hydrogen aircraft are very much the end goal for civil aviation and countries like Norway have set 2040 as the year that all of their short-haul flights will be by electric planes."

The statement was called "incredibly misleading" by Dr Alex Chapman, senior economist at the left-leaning think tank New Economics Foundation (NEF).

"There's just absolutely no confidence that those aircraft are going to have any meaningful impact on emissions and commercial aviation in any reasonable time frame. And, yeah, we can all speculate as to what may not happen in 50 years' time. But I think the people living around the airport should be given the information about what's actually realistic."

Even if the technology were available, the runway may not be ready for it, Dr Chapman said.

"Perhaps more importantly, there's been no indication so far that the proposed new runway is being built to cater for those types of aircraft, because a runway that caters to electrical, hydrogen powered aircraft would be very different to one that was for conventional fuel, particularly in terms of the fuelling infrastructure around it that would be required: pipes to pipe hydrogen, massive charging power facilities."

While work is under way to develop electric aircraft, there are currently no commercial electric flights taking place. The best-case scenario is battery-powered flights that may be suitable for short journeys.

But as a major international airport, more than 40% of Heathrow's flights are long-haul and medium-haul.

And while airlines such as easyJet have called for government funding to develop hydrogen flying suitable for short-haul flights, there are obstacles to making regular commercial flights a reality.

Providing enough hydrogen for the plane journeys from renewable sources will be challenging, as will transporting the fuel, and reworking airport infrastructure for hydrogen refuelling.

Plans for hydrogen aircraft are at least a decade away, with Airbus saying it wants to get a 100-seat hydrogen plane in the air by 2035 - although Back Heathrow's estimates for a third runway have flights taking off in 2034.

For now, rising emissions from flying are risking the UK's climate targets, according to the independent government advisers of the Climate Change Committee, who found flights contribute more greenhouse gas than the entire electricity supply sector.

Expanding at 'full capacity'

On the first page of the newsletter, Back Heathrow says "Heathrow is at full capacity", but the company told Sky News the airport has been "operating at 98% capacity since 2005".

Despite its 98% capacity, Heathrow Airport has broken passenger number records every year for the past 14 years - excluding the pandemic years of 2020 to 2023.

Dr Chapman said Heathrow is at capacity regarding the government-imposed flight cap, not at the capacity of the current runway infrastructure.

"So if the government were, for example, to lift that cap on the number of aircraft movements, it's pretty likely that they could actually fly 10% to 20% more flights out of the existing infrastructure," he said.

As aeroplanes have expanded to carry more passengers, the airport has welcomed more people, he added.

The airport earlier this month announced plans to increase its capacity by 10 million passengers a year, before a third runway is built, and to raise the charge paid by passengers to fund the investment.

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How have the group and the airport responded?

A Heathrow spokesperson said: "Back Heathrow represents tens of thousands of local people who want to make their views known on the importance of Heathrow to their communities and livelihoods today and into the future.

"We have always been clear that, alongside individual residents, local business groups and trade unions, we provide funding for Back Heathrow to provide a voice for local people who historically have not been heard in the debate about expanding Heathrow."

Speaking for the campaign group, Mr Dhanda said: "At Back Heathrow we are proud of our link to Heathrow Airport (the clue is in the name).

"We have always been open about the fact that we receive support from the airport and that they helped set the organisation up to balance the debate about expansion at a time when the voices of ordinary working people from the diverse communities around Heathrow were not being heard."

"Back Heathrow also receives support from trade unions, local businesses and residents from amongst the 100,000 registered supporters it now has," he added.

"We want an end to the dither and delay. Back Heathrow supporters want to see economic growth and the thousands of new jobs and apprenticeships a new runway will create."