Operations at DUS and HAM Disrupted
Environmental zealots purportedly aligned with an extremist group known as The Last Generation precipitated turmoil at two German airports by gluing themselves to the runways of such for purpose of protesting pollution.
A self-described "national student-led organization focused on raising awareness for climate change and environmental injustice,” The Last Generation operates primarily in and recruits the majority of its members from Germany and Italy—an historically unfavorable pairing.
At approximately 06:00 Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) on the morning of Thursday, 13 July, Last Generation protestors converged upon Germany’s Hamburg (HAM) and Düsseldorf (DUS) airports and proceeded to affix themselves by means of epoxy resin to the tarmacs of both facilities, thereby occasioning dozens of flight cancellations and hours of delays.
Seven Last Generation members gained access to DUS by cutting the airport perimeter fence before making their way to one of the airport’s runways and gluing themselves—to the one—thereto.
A similar sequence of events involving nine Last Generation members played out at HAM, though only eight of the trespassers managed to stick themselves to the airport’s runway—insomuch as the ninth was arrested by German authorities.
A 21-year-old environmental extremist party to the criminal undertaking stated: "We can't watch any longer as our Earth burns with our government adding fuel to the fire every day with their fossil madness. That's why we're blocking the airport today."
The Last Generation set forth the DUS and HAM incidents—which more so approximated acts of eco-terrorism than peaceful protests—were deemed necessary by what the organization called the German government’s "lack of planning" and "breaking the law" vis-à-vis greenhouse gas emissions.
"Why the protest at the airport?” The Last Generation officiously pontificated. “If not at an airport, where is the right place to protest the destruction of our livelihoods?"
The wearisome rhetoric continued: "The world is on fire and we are the last generation to have a chance to pick up the fire extinguisher. Instead, we allow our government to subsidize air-travel, a major catastrophe accelerator, with billions annually. It is like a collective suicide and we can no longer accept that."
Inexhaustibly inane, the missive droned on: "Instead of presenting a concrete plan to prevent this and to reach the emissions-reduction target called for by law, the Transport Ministry is relying on ‘technological flexibility.’”
The protests coincided with the first day of German schools’ summer vacation interval and necessitated the cancellation, delay, or diversion of 46 Hamburg flights.
The eco-criminals were arrested for disturbing the peace, coercive behavior, and dangerous interference with aviation—so stated Hamburg police.
The incidents compelled German Transport Minister Volker Wissing to assert: "The Last Generation isn’t protecting the climate, they’re engaged in criminal activity."
On 06 June 2023, Last Generation protestors egregiously vandalized a Cessna 525 CitationJet 1+ parked on Germany’s Sylt Airport (GWT).
A video posted by Last Generation in the wake of the impropriety showed a group of six, back-pack-wearing vandals—five adorned in orange safety-vests and a one in unremarkable street-attire—utilizing bolt-cutters to breach the airport’s perimeter fence and gain access to the unguarded aircraft. The five vested hoodlums advanced upon the aircraft whilst the sixth took a position outside the fence and commenced filming the crime’s commission.
From their backpacks, the profligate quintet withdrew fire-extinguishers charged with orange pigment and proceeded to cover the $2-million light-business-jet in a heavy coat of bright-orange effluent, wreaking extensive damage upon the jet’s engines, paint, wing and engine de-icing surfaces, pitot-static and AOA systems, cabin windows, windscreen, and windscreen pneumatic rain removal system.
The wrong-doers subsequently clambered atop the CitationJet’s wings and unfurled a pair of German-language banners alternately reading Your Luxury = Our Drought and Your Luxury = Our Crop Failures.
Not content to merely display their hyperbolic standards, the protesters—aged 21 to sixty—used powerful adhesives to glue the banners and themselves to the aircraft’s wings and the airport’s ramp.
Auto-adhesive idiocies are a favored method of self-expression among Last Generation apparatchiks. To wit, in 2022, a sounder of such glued themselves to a runway at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport (BER).
One day, perhaps soon, an imperiled airliner, its flight-crew operating under emergency authority, will be made to choose between the hundreds of lives entrusted to their expertise and experience and the lives of a gaggle of imbeciles glued by their own volition and hands to a runway eminently conducive to an emergency landing. On that day, an intriguing drama will play out, and a number of well-meaning but tragically short-sighted individuals will learn the world abounds with exigencies vastly more immediate and final than global warming.
ANN's Daily Aero-Term (05.17.24): Very High Frequency
See All