The Battle of Newquay: Green lobby launches war to curb domestic flights

Next Tuesday, a British Airways 737 jet will begin taxi-ing on the runway at Gatwick airport in preparation for the short flight to Newquay in Cornwall. If BA bosses' ambitions are met, up to 140 passengers paying as little as £69 return could be kicking back in their seats ahead of the one-hour hop ahead of them.

The 260-mile flight will be the first of a daily service to the popular Cornish resort. But those on board will find themselves unwitting players in an acrimonious confrontation between "the world's favourite airline" and the increasingly powerful environmental lobby determined to bring the booming aviation sector back down to earth.

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For green campaigners, Newquay represents a dangerous escalation in Britain's love affair with air travel and could signal one of the most significant battlegrounds in the increasingly bitter war between environmentalists and the airline industry.

The pressure group Greenpeace has taken the extreme step of seeking to tempt passengers to change their habits with a unique deal that offers a free rail ticket if they don't take the flight.

Campaigners say the case for reducing our air miles is more urgent than ever, coming in the week of the publication of the draft of the Government's Climate Change Bill.

Opposition MPs called yesterday for greater investment in railways to counter the boom in domestic flights.

Environmentalists argue planes produce 10 times as much CO2 as trains. Aviation emissions are rising so fast that even if the rest of the UK economy was zero-carbon, Britain will fail in its bid to keep global warming within safe limits unless its growth is curbed, it is claimed.

On routes such as that between London and Newquay, the rail service compares positively on both price and convenience, they say. To ram home the point, a confrontational series of newspaper advertisements, timed to coincide with the inaugural flight, will provide a telephone number for travellers interested in taking advantage of the ticket swap.

According to Greenpeace's senior transport campaigner Emily Armistead, BA's determination to push ahead with the new route badly undermines its claims to being a good corporate citizen.

"This is absolutely unnecessary. There are already companies flying this route. It demonstrates BA does not give a damn about climate change no matter what they say," she said.

Whether or not anyone decides to swap their tickets could prove a litmus test on the public's willingness to seek alternative means of transport in the battle against climate change.

But reversing the explosion in air travel could prove problematic. New figures reveal UK airports handled 235 million passengers in 2006, an increase of nearly 3 per cent on the previous year. The Government expects that number to double over the next 25 years.

Driving last year's growth was the expansion at Britain's regional airports, the bases for many short-haul and domestic flights, which opponents say are disproportionately polluting. Last year, 98 million passengers flew from regional airports - double the number that did so 10 years ago. Traffic at London airports meanwhile has grown steadily from 88 million to 137 million over the same period.

Heathrow and Gatwick still account for nearly half of all passengers but many local airports achieved extraordinary growth. Southend airport in Essex saw a 489 per cent increase in passengers. City of Derry and Doncaster-Sheffield enjoyed growth of 70 and 50 per cent respectively.

Newquay, which dealt with 360,000 passengers last year is also hoping to join the bonanza. By 2030 - assuming only low to moderate growth - up to 1.3 million people will use the airport each year, Cornwall County Council predicts.

British Airways defended its Newquay route yesterday. "Our flights offer an opportunity for people to get between London and Cornwall as quickly as possible," a spokeswoman said. "From an environmental perspective, we have led the way for many years. We were the first airline to actively trade emissions and we have improved our fuel efficiency by 27 per cent since 1990."

BA found itself under attack earlier this week for announcing a 70 per cent expansion of short-haul and domestic flights from London City airport. Critics said many of the routes, such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and even Frankfurt were readily accessible by train.

Rail links between London and Cornwall are also improving, according to franchise operator First Great Western. A new high-speed link between London Paddington and Newquay will take just over four hours when it begins in July. Advance fares cost as little as £15.50 one way while walk-up tickets cost only marginally more than the plane at £73 return.

First Great Western is also fitting low-emission engines on to its high-speed trains.

A boom town of beaches, boats and burger bars

The beaches of Newquay, which boast some of the biggest waves in Britain, used to be the surfing community's little secret until around five years ago. Now, at the height of summer, the Cornish town's golden shores are jam-packed with "city surfers".

Its population of more than 20,000 swells to 250,000 during the high season, when a growing number of surf schools do a booming trade. In spite of shoreline congestion and the plethora of seafront guest houses, bars and takeaways, property prices have rocketed. Two hundred apartments are being built in the next 18 months.

The increase in flights to Newquay has led to an even bigger property price explosion in nearby towns. This in turn has been fuelled by the influx of celebrities buying second homes in the area, including Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan, near Polperro, and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in Port Isaac.

Jonathan Start, who owns Start and Co estate agents in Newquay, said property prices in nearby Padstow, across the Camel estuary, had profited from the "Rick Stein effect" after the chef opened a popular fish restaurant there, while the town of Rock, in which a four-bedroom home can command a £2.5m price tag, is increasingly attracting millionaires.

"In these towns, it's monopoly money for houses and the rise has been taking place in the past five or six years. But in the past two years, the whole of the Cornish coast has taken off and this includes Newquay," he said.

Arifa Akbar

The carbon comparison

* BY CAR According to the AA Routeplanner, the 257-mile journey can be driven in just five hours and 22 minutes although traffic bottlenecks, particularly on the A303 before Honiton in Devon, can add several hours. Most cars could complete the journey on a single tank of petrol, costing about £50. Carbon cost: 0.08 tons of CO2, one way

* BY RAIL First Great Western: From July, a high-speed train will take just over 4 hours between Paddington and Newquay. In the meantime, passengers are required to board a branch line, adding more than an hour to the journey time. One-way advance fare from £15.50. Walk-up fare is £73 return. Carbon cost: 0.02 tons of CO2, one way

* BY PLANE British Airways flight departs Gatwick every day, returning late in the afternoon. Flight time is one hour, although passengers must check in two hours in advance. Tickets cost as little as £69 return included taxes. Unlike Ryanair which flies from Stansted to Newquay, food and drinks are free. Carbon cost: 0.1 tons CO2, one way

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