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Crowdfunder launched to fund fight to re-open Plymouth Airport
A second fundraising campaign launches this week in a bid to re-open Plymouth Airport.
Consortium campaign group FlyPlymouth is running a crowdfunder until October 29 and hopes to raise £75,000.
The money will be used to help fund a planning battle to get the airport re-opened for general and business flights.
The airport site, owned by Plymouth City Council, was leased to Sutton Harbour Holdings in 2000.
In December 2011, SHH shut the site down saying it was being used by less than 100 people a day.
The following year, the group behind FlyPlymouth ran a petition against the closure and collected signatures from 38,000 people.
"This showed us that 15% of Plymouth people are in favour of re-opening the airport and we are confident that more will come forward in the next round, largely because of the so-called Brexit bounce," said FlyPlymouth chief executive Raoul Witherall.
Plymouth City Council responded to the earlier campaign agreeing to safeguard the airport in the Draft Plymouth Plan for aviation use between now and 2031.
"The Plymouth Plan specifies only GA, but leaves the opportunity for scheduled operations open in the longer term," Witherall added.
"It is now clear that 2017 will be the deciding year in the story of Plymouth airport as a planning inspector will decide whether the City Council’s Plymouth Plan Policy to allocate the airport for aviation use between now and 2031 is sound policy."
He said the funds raised would cover operational costs for the coming year and pay for legal and aviation experts to help protect the airport at the Examination in Public.
"And we are putting down a marker by beginning to assemble our transactional funds to pay for costs involved in acquiring the airport once that Examination in Public is complete," said Witherall.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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