UK: Climate protester lies on plane in disruption at London City airport

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 travelers, 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 BA 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.” He was eventually removed. A spokeswoman for BA said “we are investigating what happened as a matter of urgency”. The group said they were protesting plans to expand the airport, which aims to have 6.5m passengers a year by 2022 compared to the 4.8m in 2018, and which has said there could be demand for as many as 11m by 2035. On Thursday, 18,000 passengers were due to arrive or depart from the airport, with 286 flights scheduled. While some protesters got inside the terminal building, flights were continuing, though some were delayed. An Aer Lingus plane was forced to stop taxiing and return to its gate when a passenger got up to give a speech about climate change.<br/>