Background and History

The Group was originally established to make collective representations on behalf of smaller airports to the Davies Airport Commission. The collaboration initially called itself UAG (UK Airports Group). It renamed itself the Regional and Business Airports Group in 2014 to more accurately reflect its evolving membership and role, which grew to include the Crown Dependency airports and some business aviation airports, with little or no scheduled passenger traffic.

Since then the group has submitted several influential papers to the Airports Commission and takes some satisfaction that these helped to ensure that regional connectivity became a far more prominent component of the Commission’s work and one of the explicit evaluation criteria in their subsequent deliberations, which at the outset even they conceded it would not have been.

The group has developed a wider purpose and momentum and now has a membership of 40 airports – representing three quarters of all the airports in this category in the UK, and collectively carrying over 10mppa.