Several hundred climate activists prevented private jets from taking off at Schiphol airport outside of Amsterdam on Saturday, resulting in dozens of arrests.
As the 27th UN Climate Conference (COP27) gets underway on Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, climate activists are increasingly targeting private planes, due to greenhouse gas emissions per passenger on a private jet coming at about five times more than on a normal plane.
A survey conducted for Greenpeace, for example, revealed that more private jets have taken off from Dutch airports Schiphol and Rotterdam-Hague in the first nine months of 2022 than in the entire year 2019. Furthermore, more than a third of these flights were less than 500 km and almost 11% were less than 250 km.
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As a result, protestors from Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace broke through airport barriers to enter the tarmac on bicycles. Some also chained themselves to jets and others sat under the planes or their wings, to prevent the jets from taking off.
Dutch police later stated that several dozen people had been arrested, with Greenpeace claiming that 350 demonstrators were still present at the airport on Saturday mid-afternoon.
