A spectacular Christmas switch-on took place in London’s Luton Airport, which saw 1.5 miles of multi-coloured LED lights and 850,000 light sequences illuminate an entire easyJet Airbus as a festive treat for airport staff and families.
easyJet Airbus is covered in Christmas lights at Luton Airport. Image by Joe Pepler/ PinPep
A team of 10 special effects artists and lighting designers spent four weeks working on the design and it took staff at the airport a painstaking 24 hours to create the display inside easyJet’s 5000 sq m aircraft hangar. An A320 Airbus was provided to ground staff by easyJet which became the star of the show on Monday as staff draped it in twinkling lights, while festive images were projected against the 120ft aircraft.
As a festive surprise – and to add some extra seasonal cheer – local children from Chantry Primary Academy and Whitefield Primary School were invited to the show which saw hundreds of people gather in the airport to see the festive projections and lights synced to a contemporary remix of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Nine-year-old Maddy Simonite, who kicked off the light display by switching on the lights for the first time, said: “Switching on the lights made me feel like I started Christmas! I’ve been to see the Oxford Street Christmas lights but this was ten times better!”
The Christmas spectacular was designed to celebrate the airport’s 80th anniversary and the completion of the three-year redevelopment of the airport, which increases the annual capacity of the airport to 18 million passengers by 2020. The £160 (US$203) million regeneration project is predicted to add £1 billion to the UK economy and an extra 10,000 jobs by 2030.
Crowds gather to celebrate Luton Airport’s festive switch-on. Image by Joe Pepler/ PinPep
Tina Milton, director of cabin services at easyJet, said: “Most people who work in a regular office get to partake in festive decorating, so we laid down the challenge to ground crew to create the most spectacular light show featuring a plane.”
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