Seventeen cyclists dressed for 'climate code red' braved the cold and wet to pedal from Birmingham City Council House to Birmingham International Airport on Saturday 8 May in protest at the airport's prospective expansion.

Up to £32 million of public money (from Birmingham City and Solihull Councils) has been earmarked to divert the A45 Coventry Road in order to allow the extension of the runway. This development would subject local residents to the emissions and noise pollution of 17,000 new flights every year.

It is outrageous to use taxpayers' money to push through an economically unviable development that will destroy jobs by encouraging a ‘tourism deficit’ and damage our hopes of stopping runaway climate change. Aviation has been shown to have a deficit of £15 billion to the UK economy as a whole and £1.86 billion to the West Midlands. There can be no justification for propping up the profits of an airport when public services such as schools and hospitals are facing cuts.

Aviation is the fastest growing cause of greenhouse gas emissions, and with the apparent success of campaigns against the expansion of Heathrow and Stansted, Birmingham and Manchester form the new aviation front line in the UK. Heathrow's judicial review concluded that expansion there was 'untenable in law or common sense'. The 2003 White Paper on which expansion projects are based is seriously undermined by this ruling.

The protestors' ten mile route was mostly along the A45 itself. They finished with a picnic outside arrivals.