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Travellers face Heathrow disruption

LONDON: A bumpy landing awaits travellers arriving at Heathrow airport over the next few days as a week-long protest by climate-change campaigners against air travel picks up momentum. Hundreds of green activists were on Friday gathering at a camp near the airport to plan “direct” action over the weekend to highlight the damage being caused to environment by the unbridled growth of aviation industry.

Although protesters insisted that they intended to remain peaceful, police and airport authorities were keeping their fingers crossed amid reports that a radical fringe was planning a series of “dramatic” tactics that could cause disruption.

These included activists disguising themselves as passengers to enter the terminal building and disrupt work by resorting to sit-ins, dropping banners or chaining themselves to airport gates and vehicles.

They also reportedly planned to create security scare by leaving bags and other “suspicious looking” objects at the airport.

The British Airport Authority (BAA), which runs Heathrow, warned that it would not allow passengers to be “harassed or obstructed.” Its managing director Mark Bullock, said such reports needed to be taken seriously.

“If protesters do disguise themselves as passengers to get into the terminals or disguise themselves as businessmen to get into corporate headquarters that would not be a good thing at all,” he said.

Another BBA official said in the past such protests had “interfered with operational issues”. This would not be allowed, he said.

“We recognise their legitimate concerns about climate change. But equally we’ve seen in their past demonstrations that they have interfered with operational issues, and here at Heathrow, particularly with this difficult security time at the moment, we don’t believe Heathrow is a particularly valuable place for them to demonstrate,” Shaun Cowlam, BAA’s logistics director said.

Protesters, however, claimed that such reports were part of a “smear” campaign against them and that they had no intention of causing any inconvenience to passengers.

Thousands of people would be using Heathrow over the weekend as they leave for their summer holidays.

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