Latest figures show LJLA is one of the UK’s ‘greenest’ Airports

Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) has received a double dose of good news this week with national recognition for its environmental carbon reduction commitments and statistics showing a record breaking Summer season for numbers of passengers.

Figures recently published by The Environment Agency show that Peel Airports is in the top 14% of UK organisations participating in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Scheme and one of the environmentally ‘greenest’ airports in the UK.

At the same time, latest figures for LJLA show that passenger numbers have continued to break previous records in recent months, bringing the Airport its busiest Summer ever with over 3.6 million passengers choosing to fly via the Airport between April and October 2011.

The publication of The Environment Agency’s first ever League Table of organisations participating in the Carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme for 2010/11, shows that the Airport is delivering on commitments to minimise its impact on the environment. Peel Airports are ranked 275th in a league table of some 2015 participating organisations from across the UK, including most other airports, ranking Peel Airports in the top 14% of all participating organisations.

By participating in the scheme, staff at LJLA have been measuring and reducing energy consumption across the site and implementing a variety of initiatives all aimed at cutting the amount of energy used at the airport. These include new lighting control systems across the terminal building that automatically turn off lights in areas where they are not needed or reduce levels of electric lighting when ambient lighting levels increase. New low energy lights have also been installed on parts of the taxiways used by aircraft prior to departure or upon arrival at JLA, in addition to a programme of increased staff awareness so that all employees contribute to cutting energy use where possible.

Whilst continuing to minimise its impact on the environment, the airport has also seen growth in passengers. Each of the past four months have been the busiest in the Airport’s history with July, August, September and October monthly passenger numbers, higher than previous totals for the time of year. The highest month August, saw over 580,000 travellers pass through the terminal – the busiest month in the Airport’s 78 year history.

The start of the school Summer holidays in July brought increased numbers of holidaymakers departing from LJLA. Despite the difficult economic climate, holidaymakers across the North West clearly continued to value their Summer holiday abroad, taking advantage of the many value for money flights available, with the added convenience of flying from their local airport. This year low cost operators easyJet and Ryanair operated flights to more summer sun destinations than ever before with a number of new holiday resorts featured for the first time.

Growing numbers of passengers also capitalised on the convenience of being able to travel to destinations across the world, by starting their journey from Liverpool with KLM. The airline’s flights to Amsterdam Schiphol with its hundreds of onward connections continued to prove popular.

Andrew Dutton, Peel Airports Head of Environment commented, “These results show that we take our environmental commitments seriously and whilst there is always room for improvement everyone here at the Airport is doing their bit.

We are continually looking at ways to reduce the environmental impact of running an airport such as Liverpool, working in partnership with the many other organisations based here who share a common goal by putting the environment high on the agenda when it comes to how we each run our business.”

Craig Richmond, CEO of Peel Airports added, “This news clearly demonstrates our commitment to growing the business but not at the expense of environmental impacts. We have always believed that it is possible to combine running our business in a sustainable way at the same time as growing passenger numbers, benefiting the region’s travellers and helping the local economy.

This has been a very good Summer for the Airport with these latest figures exceeding our expectations. I’m sure the poor British summer once again helped, but the great range of value for money flights from Liverpool have continued to prove extremely popular. Two weeks of sunshine clearly remains very important for families throughout the North West despite the gloomy economic climate.”