ABOVE: The ongoing consultation will precede a planning application to North Somerset Council.
Bristol Airport has launched a consultation on its proposals for future development by 2040, eyeing a three million increase in annual passengers served and the extension of various facilities at the airport.
With Bristol Airport’s latest forecast anticipating its annual passenger numbers to reach 12 million a year by 2027/2028, a subsequent increase in passengers to 15 million per year will require additional airport movements, projected to rise from 85,990 to 100,000 annually. This would equate to an additional 35 movements a day during peak periods, helped in part by an additional 1,000 night flights a year (whist adhering to existing restrictions on night flying).
To support this growth, expansion to existing terminal buildings would be required to process passengers, with ancillary facilities (including flight catering, maintenance and other business requirements) expanded accordingly. The airport’s current fuel storage area will be relocated and expanded, while new and wider taxiways, apron extensions and additional aircraft stands will also be built.
Additionally, a short extension of the runway (shorter than other UK airports, at just 2,011m long) will help to ‘help improve the operational efficiency of existing aircraft types that fly from the airport and meet the needs of new aircraft types that would service longer-haul routes’. The proposed 150m extension would be built within existing airport boundaries, between the existing runway and the A38.
The proposals build on a Master Plan first drafted in 2017 and subject to an initial public consultation between November 2017 and January 2018. However, although noting that there are ‘likely to be increases in the number of households affected by aircraft noise’ in the airport’s initial growth beyond 12 million passengers annually, ‘over time, with the transition to more modern aircraft, the areas most affected by aircraft noise will reduce’.
IMAGE: BRISTOL AIRPORT
