We are pleased to be able to report that Bristol Airport has been given the go-ahead by the high court with its plan to expand from 10 million passengers per year to 12 million passengers per year. Following a lengthy legal process the legal challenge against Bristol Airport’s plan to expand was dismissed by the high court.
This means that the planning inspectorate has allowed Bristol Airport to increase its passenger cap from 10 million per annum to 12 million per annum, plans to expand the terminal, improve and expand parking, build new walkways to Eastern aircraft stands and improve public transport links as well as improvements to the A38 can go ahead.
The CEO of Bristol Airport, Dave Lees commented “Bristol Airport welcomes the High Court Judge’s decision to dismiss the claim and uphold the planning permission to increase Bristol Airport’s capacity from 10 million to 12 million passengers per annum.
The decision is excellent news for our region’s economy, allowing us to create up to 5,000 new jobs, deliver more international destinations for the South West and South Wales, and invest hundreds of millions of pounds improving the customer experience. We will do this while working towards our ambitious target of net zero carbon operations by 2030. We look forward to working with stakeholders and the community to deliver our vision to be everyone’s favourite airport.”
The extra capacity at the South West regional airport will add a further 800 job opportunities and in the region of 5000 job opportunities across the region through direct and indirect jobs.
Bristol Airport was one of the fastest regional airports to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, the airport is expecting a busy 2023 and hopefully back to pre-Covid levels. The expansion allows Bristol Airport to look into potential new routes across Europe and possibly further afield, flights to the US would always be very welcome and interesting.
Expanding the airport will help cut down the large amount of unnecessary car journeys to other airports like Manchester, Birmingham, Heathrow and Gatwick where flights can be operated from Bristol.
How the expanded airport could look:
Simon has been writing aviation articles for nearly 10 years and is the senior article writer at Fresh Aviation, with a background in aviation and a commercial pilot Simon knows his stuff in the aviation world. Simon has spoken on BBC Radio, contributed to Bristol Post and has various aviation articles on various websites.