East Midlands tops the airport parking league
28.09.07
East Midlands Airport has the highest percentage of passengers arriving by car - and using airport parking - of any UK airport, new figures reveal. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) air passenger survey shows that almost 70 percent of travellers at the airport use their own cars rather than public transport.
The figures show that 69 percent of passengers travel to East Midlands by car. This compares with 48 percent at Gatwick, 47 percent at Stansted and 34 percent at Heathrow. In its defense, East Midlands is the only airport on the list without a direct rail link, although there are regular bus services to most of the major cities in the region.
A spokesman for Nottingham Greenpeace, Jane Burd, said: 'It's disgraceful that people are still continuing to fly - let alone making their carbon footprint worse by driving to the airport. People should be using public transport.'
However, East Midlands Airport's press officer, Amy Buckley, said: 'We are working really hard on encouraging passengers to use public transport. We have the Skylink buses which bring passengers and employees to the airport. And Stagecoach are issuing a timetable for the Parkway rail link in November.'
'In addition, we have made a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2012 and we are the first airport in the UK to do this. We plan to build four wind turbines by April of next year to provide energy. And a project to build an energy efficient extension to our building, the Western Pier, is under way.'
Last year passengers using the airport accounted for two percent of all UK air travel - increasing from 4.2 million in 2005 to 4.7 million in 2006.
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