Leading the charge for zero-emissions airports: Bristol Airport

On a bitter, hazy morning in March, with the wind blasting in from the east, it’s not hard to believe that Bristol Airport sits on top of a hill, nearly 200m above sea level.

Chief Executive Dave Lees ushers me inside the warm terminal and, over a coffee upstairs, my face unfreezes. It’s pretty busy at the check-in desks downstairs and it looks like quite a few school groups are going away. Dave says the airport’s busiest time is usually afternoons in the summer.

Bristol Airport, an international gateway to Europe for Southwest England and South Wales, has big plans.

It wants to expand its capacity significantly while leading the charge to reduce waste, carbon dioxide emissions per passenger, and its own energy consumption.

In front of the terminal, work is under way on a public-transport interchange and multi-storey car park. That is just phase one of a major £400 million upgrade during the next five years to handle 12 million passengers annually (up from 7.8 million in 2022 and 10.5 million this year), be a net-zero airport by 2030, and add about £430m into the regional economy.

Bristol is England’s third largest regional airport and has flights to more than 120 destinations. The airport is the region’s biggest employer, with around 4100 full-time equivalent workers onsite in more than 50 organisations.

Bristol Airport was built on the site of an old Royal Air Force airfield and began commercial flights in 1957.

Perched high above the rolling countryside and the Bristol Channel, on a clear day you can just about see Cardiff in Wales, the site of its closest neighbouring airport, some 35km to the west.

Dave has been CEO since 2018. His enthusiasm pours out – for the airport, for the future of aviation, for sustainability and zero-emissions flight.

He’s a bundle of energy and talks for easily the best part of an hour, covering many aspects of the airport’s operation, its history, plans for expansion (physically and in passenger numbers), environmental considerations and especially its zero-emissions targets and what can be done to meet those.

Dave wants the airport to be the leader in the UK in zero-emissions flight.

Bristol Airport handles many of the low-cost carriers flying to mainland Europe, including EasyJet, Ryanair, jet2.com, Tui, but also some of the longer-established airlines, such as KLM, Swissair and Lufthansa.

It’s a 24/7 airport and most trips are outbound leisure, he says, in that they’re mostly initiated by folk from this southwestern part of the UK wanting to go elsewhere, rather than being a big tourist haven attracting loads of people in.

“I’ve worked at airports of all sizes, anything between a 2 million-passengers per year airport and a 60 to 70 million-passengers airport such as Heathrow, where you’ve got much more inbound tourism.

“The main focus for Bristol is outbound leisure focused on Europe, sector lengths of up to three and a-half, maybe four, hours, and low cost. We’ve got four key carriers, two of which are low cost – EasyJet, which is the largest, and then Ryanair. We’re actually the second largest base for EasyJet in the UK.

“Then we have the holiday charters or holiday companies, along with the more scheduled legacy carriers and a number of regional carriers which go to the islands.

“Those big four – EasyJet, Ryanair, jet2.com and Tui – represent over 95% of our traffic. We’ve got very strong growth – this year we’re going to be a 10.5 million passengers, and we’ve got permission to grow to 12 million.

“We’re also the only UK airport to have bounced back so strongly from Covid, when we experienced a reduction from 300 flights a week to just three. Now we have 10% more flights than pre-pandemic.”

When it comes to sustainability, preparing for zero-emissions flights and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there’s a maze of figures and targets. The airport company is recognised around the UK as a leader in this work. Last year, Bristol won the International Airport Review’s sustainable airport award.

Dave says the intention is to have net-zero operations by 2030 for scope-1 and scope-2 emissions, and have a net-zero airport for all scope-3 activities (not controlled by the airport) by 2050.

By 2023, the airport’s carbon footprint had already dropped by 45% compared with the 2019 baseline year, while CO2 scope-1 and scope-2 emissions per passenger were down to 0.48kg, from 1.26kg in 2016.

He says the airport’s airside fleet is now fully electrified and buildings are being retrofitted. The airport’s renewable energy goals include a target of 25% of power consumption generated onsite by next year.

Earlier this year, Bristol was also the first airport in the UK to successfully trial the use of hydrogen in its operations.

This included using a baggage tug which was refilled with gaseous hydrogen for live flight operations. The tug on the apron area shifted baggage to and from aircraft. This was made possible following extensive work on the development of safety procedures with the UK regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority.

To end the visit, Dave takes me up into the control tower.  As well as the runways and airside operational areas, from here we also have a great view of the terminal and of where the major redevelopment is progressing out the front.

The tower building is also part of the redevelopment, with new cladding and retrofitting. That work was finished in May.

 There are three people on duty, including a trainee. What a view! The first thing that strikes are the thousands of cars parked across the other side of the runway, part of the airport’s park-and-ride operation.

There is one main runway, pretty much lying east-west, and the western end of it has a considerable rise. The rolling hills around here are quite a challenge, and apparently beyond that rise the land drops off almost cliff-like.

After about 20 minutes in the tower we head back downstairs. The terminal is packed with rugby fans arriving here for a six nations game in Cardiff.  The French team with their snazzy Le Coq Sportif tracksuits are gathering for a meeting, trying, but not succeeding, to look incongruous.

I didn’t have to wait long for the Bristol Flyer bus to take me back to Temple Meads station in the city centre. This double-decker leaves every 12 minutes and takes about half an hour each way.

The roads into the airport are busy. But after a few minutes, the airport disappears from view, tucked away behind the rolling folds of the West Country landscape.

Aviation writer Paul Gorman visited Bristol Airport in March 2024.