CAMPAIGNERS have cycled the length of a route that they say matches the ‘noise map’ of an expanded Leeds Bradford Airport.

Members of the Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport (GALBA) set off from Millennium Square in Leeds on Saturday, August 29 for the awareness-raising event.

Their aim was to remind people of how many parts of West Yorkshire - from Wakefield in the south up to Otley and Ilkley in the north - they believe would be affected should LBA be allowed to expand.

Other neighbourhoods set to experience more noise under the flightpath, according to GALBA’s analysis, include Burley-in-Wharfedale, Menston, Horsforth and Yeadon itself.

The airport is currently seeking planning permission to build a replacement new terminal that would enable it to increase passenger numbers to seven million per year over the next decade or so.

GALBA Chair Chris Foren said: “We are alerting people to what Leeds Bradford Airport expansion would mean.

“LBA wants to extend daytime flying hours to start at 6am and finish at 11.30pm, to impose no limit on the number of noisy flights permitted between 6am and 11.30pm, to allow planes to land up to 1am if they are behind schedule, and to remove the limit on the total number of flights per night.

“Its proposed night time ‘quota system’ would allow the equivalent of 20 flights by Airbus 320s between 11.30pm and 6am every night in the six months of summer.

“And LBA’s own planning application says that 123,000 more people would be exposed to increased night-time noise.”

The cyclists’ 100 mile route took in Leeds, Ilkley (where they enjoyed a riverside break), Bradford, Horsforth, Wakefield and Middleton Park, Leeds.

The ride finished with a family-friendly gathering of supporters in Leeds where a socially distanced lap of honour was held for everyone with wheels, including those with prams and pushchairs, bicycles, wheelchairs and scooters.

GALBA is opposing the airport’s plans on environmental, as well as disturbance, grounds.

Mr Foren added: “LBA’s plans also would mean doubling the airport’s greenhouse gas emissions in the middle of the climate emergency.

“If expansion is allowed, from 2030 the airport would pump out more greenhouse gas emissions than allowed in the carbon budget for the whole of the rest of Leeds.

“We all share the same climate so we all need to protect it - for the sake of everyone’s future.”

A decision on LBA’s proposals for a new terminal, which is expected to cost about £150 million and which the airport says would be one of the most sustainable in the UK, is due from Leeds City Council this autumn.

The airport’s CEO, Hywel Rees, has also insisted that the new terminal is essential to both its future and to the region’s economic recovery as it attempts to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic.