With the UK’s three busiest departure points getting major expansions, our climate is about to take a monumental hit. Flight shaming to ground each other is not the answer, but a new tax regime could be.
The future of UK aviation looks bright and gloomy. It really depends on where you are standing. In Departures of the gleaming new Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport, things seem rosy.
You’ve just passed through a huge security hall where there was no need to remove liquids or electronics from your bag, slashing processing time. Now the only dilemma is which of the new concessions to visit first, with a slew of local chains chosen to showcase the city region’s booming food and drink sector.
Some are at the top of a landmark beehive-style installation of video screens flanked by wooden fixtures and fittings. Others line a spacious lower level corridor leading to brand new boarding piers which — for the first time in almost half a century — resemble the level of airport you’re flying out of.
Even before the city regained confidence and began emerging from post-industrial ashes into one of Europe’s fastest growing economic centres, Manchester Airport was a big player. Britain’s third busiest airfield, and the busiest outside London by some measure, served more than 31million passengers in the year to May 2025, an increase of almost 8% year-on-year. But it has rarely dropped out of Europe’s top 20 in recent memory.
The £1billion expansion and redevelopment began 10 years ago, is scheduled to complete before Christmas, and already won a prestigious Prix Versailles architecture award. Making space for massive growth, a slew of high profile new routes mean people than ever are punting for a MAN flight.
Plans for the future are even bolder. Terminal 3, notoriously cramped with poor facilities, will be significantly redeveloped next, taking in part of the old Terminal 1. Meanwhile, there’s a big push to create an alternative hub for intercontinental transfers in the North West, building on Manchester’s status as one of Europe’s most-used facilities for travel to and from the US and North America.
Destinations in the Middle East, Southern and East Asia are increasingly well served, too, with long haul airlines viewing the airport as the focal point not just for the North of England overall, but swathes of the Midlands and Scotland. In total, the catchment area accounts for 22million people, and it is hoped around 60million will choose this as their preferred departure option by 2050.
There is, of course, a big problem here. By 2050, Britain aims to have reached net zero carbon emissions. In 2022 alone, aviation from domestic and international flights produced 29.6million tonnes of carbon equivalent gases, and this is projected to rise significantly. And that’s only partly due to what’s happening at Manchester.
Heathrow Airport’s green-lit third runway will contribute even more, with estimates suggesting it could add 4.4million tonnes of CO2e to the UK’s gross annual output — equivalent to around 101,862,382,000 miles driven in the average internal combustion car. And, this week, Labour approved a second runway at Gatwick, already the busiest single runway airport in the world.
Beyond these landmarks and headlines, there are more signs of sky high hopes and dreams for UK economic growth. In South Yorkshire, less than two hours from Manchester Airport, Doncaster Sheffield Airport could be about to reopen for the first time since 2022. The terminal closed after owner Peel Group deemed it no longer viable due to a lack of airlines willing to run routes.
£100million of public money will be spent on reversing the decision to mothball. The projected £1.5billion in benefits to the region sounds impressive, until you realise this would be realised over the course of 30 years. And then consider the financial challenges facing the wider area right now.
Even if campaigners have their way and block the proposal, though, it will do little to change the overall trajectory, which goes well beyond any single location and Britain as a whole. Europe and North America have seen demand for flights grow by 2.3% and 2.7% since early 2024. If that sounds like a buoyant comeback post-Covid, consider the Asia Pacific region, which is on course to realise 9% growth during the same period.
It’s not all blue sky thinking, of course. There’s the worrying trend of increasingly common cyber attacks, most recently impacting Heathrow, Brussels, and another of Europe’s 21st Century showpieces (albeit severely criticised due to poor planning, terrible delivery, rocketing budget and decade-spanning delays), Berlin Brandenburg. These digital crimes cause chaos, ground planes, and can cost millions.
There’s also the pressure to increase the percentage of Sustainable Aviation Fuel [SAF] used to power the planes themselves, which is hitting budgets. As of 2025, this resource costs around €2,000 per tonne, far more than the €700 per tonne price tag for kerosene — the ‘perfect’ stuff to get flights off the ground, but one of the most polluting fuel we have.
We already know there is an urgent need to invest more in developing and — perhaps most importantly — scaling up SAF production. And, sadly, it’s impossible to see this happening fast enough to bring emissions down at the rate needed. Not least given aviation on the whole seems cleared to continue its ascent, and is already the travel mode of choice for international journeys.
Earlier this week, Environment Journal published an industry-written piece on the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, which the author believes holds some promise. Enough to warrant the suggestion this scheme could actually offer other hard-to-decarbonise sectors some short term gains. And we’ve also written at length about the need to encourage alternative choices for trips that don’t necessarily need to take off. Business meetings can and should happen remotely if possible, and subsidising rail routes in the same way we do airlines, so they can compete, is vital.
Equity must go beyond this, though. According to a 2020 study by Sweden’s Linnaeus University, just 1% of the global population is responsible for half the emissions from flights. On the whole, only 11% of humans flew at all in 2018 and just 4% of those went overseas. This matters, given the further we travel the worse the footprint, and the more borders we cross the more complicated legislation around sustainability becomes.
Looking within countries casts the imbalance in even sharper relief. Canada, for example, sees 73% of its annual departures boarded by 22% of its residents. In the Netherlands, home to the gargantuan Amsterdam Schipol Airport, 8% of people take 42% of the total flights, while 5% of China’s inhabitants book 40% of the country’s airline seats. Things look worse still when you focus on private jets. Yet, at a time when people should be forsaking the convenience and luxury of this most environmentally irresponsible form of travel, bookings have been on the rise.
Relying on SAF simly isn’t an option — this is just one part of a multi-pronged solution. Increasing charges on flights with the heaviest emissions, not least private carriers and passengers, seems like a logical step in the right direction, with some suggesting a ‘frequent flyer tax’ rising incrementally each time you board a plane in a single year. Others claim this doesn’t account for other lifestyle choices, so someone who regularly flies but eats no meat, doesn’t drive and powers their home on renewables would be unfairly penalised. But this reveals an overall misunderstanding of how connected our lives now are.
Although the average red meat-eating, SUV-driving human will contribute more to our gross emissions than someone who uses a plane, say, twice a year, but has a vegan diet and only uses electric public transport for local trips, by looking at our predicament holistically it’s possible to see how new types of tax can work fairly. For example, by ensuring rail is far cheaper than jumping in the car, supporting environmentally friendly food production so people can eat greens and ‘be green’ for less money, and handing out full grants to install low and zero carbon domestic energy sources.
We have a duty to take every possible precaution to avoid ruining the planet for future generations, but this has to be done realistically. In the mid-21st Century, curtailing air travel is unlikely to work because it has been glamorised and slowly introduced into the everyday thinking of many. In contrast, understanding our mind-boggling capacity to analyse and utilise data, establish complex systems based on interconnectivity, and perceive cause and effect, means we do have the ability to think about these problems logically and as one issue, then make the kind of systemic changes that trigger, promote and facilitate others we may not consider to be linked, until it’s laid out in black and white.
Image: Suganth / Unsplash
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