Support for planned airport expansion

INEVITABLY there has been a considerable amount of hysteria over the decision to allow the expansion of Bristol Airport. I wish to express my support for the venture.

Last month I made a three-week trip to Kenya to visit my sister-inlaw, who has a farm on the slopes of Mount Kenya. I had an eventful trip out after staying at the Bristol Airport hotel overnight. I flew on the early morning flight with KLM to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, before boarding the midday KLM flight to Nairobi. I then stayed in three hotels for a week because my Nairobi host and my sister-in-law had contracted Covid over Christmas and were in quarantine. Fortunately, both tested negative, as did I after my trip and hotel stays, and my holiday was as planned thereafter.

Having worked in East Africa for many years, I regularly used this way of travel and have found Bristol Airport, Schiphol and KLM excellent. The latter have won an award for the airline dealing best with Covid and are also among the most advanced in addressing climate change issues as is Bristol Airport. Within a decade, it is very likely that plane travel itself will be carbon neutral. I realise that being an agriculturalist and having travelled extensively by air in the past (I am now well retired at the age of 78) I have contributed to climate change. However, I attended the 2016 COP15 conference in Paris where Bristol was well represented, as well as the recent COP26 in Glasgow to which I went in my Renault Zoe electric car.

I am doing as much as I am able now to live a sustainable life.

Tim Roberts

Bath