Leeds Bradford Airport ranks among highest for airport arrests, including paedophile travelling from Ireland

Police data recorded from 2019 to 2021 shows it also had the third highest rate of arrests per million passengers across the UK.

A new study by Bounce analysed data secured through Freedom of Information requests sent to the relevant police forces serving each mainland airport. The findings were the used to identify the 10 UK airports with the most arrests per million passengers.

Leeds Bradford Airport saw a total of 172 arrests made between the years 2019 to 2021, with the most common offences being violence against another person, miscellaneous crimes against society and fraud.

Among the most recent arrests at the airport that of a man who was arrested and later convicted of travelling from Dublin to meet a ‘13-year-old girl’. David McGregor, 49, of Morning Star Avenue, had been messaging a Facebook profile that he thought belonged to a schoolgirl but was instead met by members of a paedophile hunter group when he landed at Leeds Bradford in June. He was later sentenced to three years and three months imprisonment.

Another arrest this year was that of businessman Andrew Askew who avoided jail after pouring alcohol over himself and being abusive to staff and other passengers on a flight to Leeds Bradford. The 46-year-old, of Brackenhurst Place, Moortown, was given 20 months in prison, suspended for two years.

The airports in the UK with the highest arrest totals overall were London Heathrow and London Gatwick, with 3,262 and 1,510 respectively. They were followed by Birmingham at 659, London City at 190 and Leeds Bradford at 172.

With just shy of four million passengers, Leeds Bradford recorded 31.37 arrests for every one million passengers in the period studied. This places it below nearby Doncaster Sheffield with its 47.66 arrests per million passengers – the highest rate of any UK airport – and Birmingham with 36.61 arrests.

A spokesperson for Leeds Bradford Airport said: “The safety and security of our passengers, staff and operations is our number one priority at LBA, which is why we have a zero-tolerance approach to violent behaviour.

"We work in close collaboration with West Yorkshire Police to create and maintain a safe environment at LBA for everybody.”