LONDON – A protester lay on top of a plane while another forced a jet to turn around on the runway as climate change activists descended on London City Airport on Thursday, causing some disruption but ultimately failing to cancel flights.
Protest organisers Extinction Rebellion had vowed to occupy the airport’s terminal and shut down operations for three days as part of its action in the British capital.
London City is the capital’s fifth-biggest – and most central – airport, popular with business travellers, bankers and politicians for short-haul and regional routes.
A Reuters photographer saw one man, former paralympian cyclist James Brown, lay himself across the top of the body of a British Airways Embraer 190 jet.
“I managed to get on the roof,” Brown said in a video he posted online. “This is all about the climate and ecological crisis. We’re protesting against government inaction.”
