Private jets protest disrupts flights at Geneva Airport

Activists demonstrating against Europe’s biggest private jets sales fair disrupted flights at Geneva Airport on Tuesday after chaining themselves to the planes on display.

Environmentalist groups said around 100 demonstrators from 17 countries were involved in the protest at the three-day European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE) being staged at a conference hall adjoining Switzerland’s second-biggest airport.

Geneva police spokeswoman Tiffany Cudre-Mauroux told AFP that around 80 people had been detained.

Images published on Twitter showed the activists camped out around the gleaming planes on show on the apron, brandishing colourful banners with the words “ban private jets” and “private jets burn our future”.

They also held up messages resembling warning labels on cigarette packages, saying “private jets drown our hope”.

In a statement, Geneva Airport said several dozen activists “broke and entered three different locations on the tarmac at 11:35 am (0935 GMT).

They managed to infiltrate the EBACE exhibition space “and handcuff or chain themselves to the aircraft on display”.

During the evacuation operation, air traffic was completely suspended from 11:40 am to 12:40 pm and seven inbound flights were diverted to Zurich and Lyon.

Firefighters treated four people, including activists and security staff, who were injured or unwell.

“Significant delays” are expected throughout the rest of the day, the airport said. The airport intends to file a legal complaint.

Departures to Rome, Amsterdam, Porto, Madrid, New York, Lisbon, Paris, Munich and Frankfurt were among those delayed, with some held up for more than two hours.

But there were no signs of panic amid the queuers inside the departures hall.

Multiple climate activist groups were involved in the joint protest. Speaking outside the airport perimeter, they insisted the intention had been to disrupt the sales fair and not regular commercial flights.

Joel Perret of Extinction Rebellion Geneva told AFP: “The goal was really to target private jets, which are the most polluting mode of transport there is – and are only accessible to an extreme minority of people, who will spend the carbon budget of all the other people who never fly.”

“Private aviation has become the symbol of climate inequality,” said Klara Maria Schenk of Greenpeace.

EBACE “has happened for more than 20 years, mostly behind closed doors, with very little attention from the public”, she said.

Mira Kapfinger of the Stay Grounded network added: “The world is now looking at this event and aware of this hypocrisy of promoting private jet sales… in a time of climate emergency, a cost of living crisis and an energy crisis.”

Cordula Markert, spokeswoman for Scientist Rebellion Germany told AFP: “I cannot believe that people with so much power and money are not using it for good.”

“They must know, especially in aviation, there is no green way of having private jets. Deep down, all of them know it.”

EBACE is hosted by the European Business Aviation Association and the US-based National Business Aviation Association.

“This is a completely unacceptable form of protest. We condemn the action,” EBAA chairman Juergen Wiese and NBAA president and chief executive Ed Bolen said in a joint statement.

“Business aviation is deeply committed to climate action. This is an industry that has cut its carbon emissions by 40 percent over the past 40 years, is continually reducing emissions today, and is collectively focused on achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Geneva Airport chief operating officer Giovanni Russo told the event that sustainability was “not just our licence to grow” as an air hub, “but our licence to survive”.

In 2022, more than 14 million passengers travelled through the airport, according to official figures.

Private jets are estimated to cause five to 14 times as much pollution as commercial planes per passenger, and 50 times as much as trains, according to a study published last year by Transport & Environment, a group campaigning for cleaner transportation.

Lenis Valens, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said that seven people were arrested on charges of trespassing, disorderly conduct and interference with public transportation at the protest at Teterboro, which included 15 to 20 people and blocked the main entrance to the airport. Ms. Valens said that the airport temporarily rerouted employees and customers.

She said that no one was injured in the arrests but that one person who had been glued to a tepee was taken to a hospital.

Activists said that at least 15 people were arrested during the protests at private airports in the United States on Thursday, though that number could not be confirmed. 

It was not immediately clear how many people were arrested overseas.

Organizers said the goal of the actions was to draw attention to how the “jet-setting life-styles of multi-millionaires and billionaires” are hurting the environment, all while governments are subsidizing the use of private jets.

“It is obscene that Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates can fly their private jets tax free, while global communities starve,” Gianluca Grimalda, a social science researcher and member of Scientist Rebellion, said in the news release. 

“It’s only fair that wealthy polluters pay the most into climate loss and damage funds to help the most vulnerable countries adapt.”