Anti-Birmingham Airport runway campaign aims to 'keep it up' with Flyagra website
11.01.08
A new campaign with a great spoof website has been launched today by campaigners fighting the expansion of Birmingham Airport. Environmental activists Birmingham Friends of the Earth and local residents Birmingham Airport anti-Noise Group (BANG) have teamed up to create a tongue-in-cheek website - www.flyagra.co.uk - satirising the proposal to extend the airport's runway.
A spoof spam e-mail campaign, advertising 'Flyagra, the revolutionary treatment that really keeps you up!' will direct web users to the site, which compares the runway extension plans to a dodgy 'male organ' enlargement treatment.
Despite the humour the campaign clearly contains, the campaigners say that the website also has a serious message to convey: that airport expansion is bad news for local residents and the environment, and time is running out in which to stop the development going ahead.
In November the airport published its new development 'master plan' setting out the latest expansion proposals, including a £120 million 400-metre extension to the south-east end of the main runway and a third passenger terminal. If the airport company receives planning permission from Solihull Council to begin construction, the longer runway could be operating by 2012. Additional work to develop the airfield will allow Birmingham Airport to handle 27.2 million passengers a year, three times as many as in 2006, by 2030.
The campaigners also point to evidence that extending the runway and increasing runway capacity will result in a doubling of the number of local people exposed to significant aircraft noise pollution and a trebling in aircraft carbon dioxide emissions from flights out of Birmingham.
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