Farnborough Airport top UK destination for biz jet holiday departures

The UK’s Farnborough Airport is the top departure destination for business jets making purported vacation trips, a recently commissioned Greenpeace survey has revealed; contributing to what a CBI Economics study explains contribute £1.9 billion of Gross Value Added to the UK economy every year.

Commissioned by Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe, new analysis conducted by T3 Transportation Think Tank for Greenpeace analysed business jet activity to what the study deems 45 “European holiday destinations” in 2023. Data on some 434,458 flights was purchased from an unnamed flight analytics company, with some 117,965 qualifying flights analysed further, including both commercial and non-commercial business aviation. It is the first study of its kind Greenpeace has commissioned.

Excluding special missions (something the study did observe “some seasonality” in), almost 11% of these qualifying flights originated in the UK.  Farnborough to Cote d’Azur was the most-flown route (with 759 flights), followed by Luton to Cote d’Azur (500) and Farnborough to Geneva (484).

As the largest and only dedicated business aviation airport in the UK, this facility “plays an essential role in supporting this economically impactful air travel market,” commented a spokesperson for the airport, adding that “Farnborough Airport in particular, with its well-invested infrastructure and available runway capacity, has a critical role to play in supporting economic growth going forward, both at a local level and also across the wider UK”.

Overall, the three most popular destination countries for ex-UK flight were Spain, France and Switzerland, with the survey noting “a marked increase in private aircraft traffic during the summer season, strongly indicating that private jets were used more frequently for vacation purposes at these times. Summer destinations saw three and a half times more arrivals in July than in January”.

Although Greenpeace UK’s climate campaigner Georgia Whittaker expressed dismay, believing that the UK government should “ban polluting private jets and impose a wealth tax on the super rich” to “tackle both growing inequalities and the climate crisis,” a study published in July 2024 by CBI Economics revealed that “approximately 80% of the flying activity from Farnborough Airport relates either directly or indirectly to supporting UK business and inward investment”.

Additionally, this CBI Economics study noted that “the equivalent of 23,000 FTE jobs result from the economic opportunity created by the enhanced connectivity and travel assurance experienced by the users of Farnborough Airport” – with flights from the location “predominately of high economic impact, time-sensitive in nature, and essential in purpose”.