A school near Stansted airport has been accused of taking blood money for accepting £20,000 from Ryanair.
Campaigners have described the gift to Mountfitchet high school as inappropriate at a time when 12,000 local residents have had their homes blighted by plans to expand the airport.
Ryanair presented the money to the school yesterday after a pledge that it would hand over the proceeds of a "fly for 10p" promotion which was taken up by 200,000 travellers.
Carol Barbone, of the local pressure group Stop Stansted Expansion, accused the school of ignoring pleas from anti-airport campaigners to speak to its pupils. She suggested the aviation industry was trying to win over young people before the construction of new runways in 2011.
The row has exposed deep divisions about the future of the airport. Stansted employs 11,000 people and Ryanair is its biggest airline. But an extra runway will involve the demolition of 100 homes and will subject more than 8,000 people to noise pollution.
Ryanair's head of communications, Paul Fitzsimmons, who presented the cheque, said: "Any donation which improves facilities for children is hardly blood money."
The school has a mentoring arrangement with the airport's operator, BAA, and Stansted airport's finance director is on the board of its trust fund. The school's headteacher, Jo Mullis, said that she had turned down requests from anti-airport campaigners to speak at the school's assembly on the grounds that any discussion would have to cover both points of view.
