Boris and air travel

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew back from Glasgow last week to London after appearing at the COP26 conference but still attacked the aviation section in a major speech.

Readers will recall that as Mayor of London he promoted at ratepayers’ expense the huge Thames Estuary project which literally never got off the ground.  It is true, as a local MP, he has actively campaigned against Heathrow’s third runway.

In typical fashion Johnson slated aviation’s sustainability ambitions as “pathetic” and called on the sector to do better.

Speaking at the global summit he said: “The current industry target is to get to 10% sustainable aviation fuel for the whole world by 2030. How pathetic is that? We can do better than that.

“It was 100 years ago that Alcock and Brown flew the Atlantic for the first time with about 865 imperial gallons of petrol. We have made virtually no progress technologically since then in our approach to sending a plane across the Atlantic. We should be far, far more ambitious.”

He said that he is shortly due to fly on an aircraft powered by 35% sustainable aviation fuel.  He continued: “I think we can crack these problems. The whole objective of this summit is to take the breakthroughs and get the finance and support to make sure that they are disseminated and spread around the whole world, so the whole world shares in the Glasgow breakthroughs and the agenda.”  He concluded that we should unite across the whole planet to address climate change.

www.gov.uk/government/news/world-leaders-join-uks-glasgow-breakthroughs-to-speed-up-affordable-clean-tech-worldwide

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David Starkie,

He should have tried a hot air balloon back to London