All UK airports should stop charging blue badge holders for being dropped off close to terminals, a disability charity has said.

Several people with blue badges got in touch with the BBC following news that more than half of the busiest airports had raised the so-called “kiss-and-fly” fees to as high as £7 in some cases.

Many airports already offer discounts or waive the fee for disabled drivers, but blue badge holders say the system is complex and inconsistent.

Graham Footer, chief executive of Disabled Motoring UK, said some airports have “allowed greed to cloud their judgement”, and argues people with disabilities should not have to pay the charge at all.

“Disabled customers deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and not fleeced as soon as they arrive,” he said.

The BBC contacted the 20 busiest airports in the UK to confirm their policy on drop-off charges for blue badge holders.

London City does not charge drop-off fees for any kind of passenger.

Gatwick, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Heathrow, Liverpool John Lennon and Manchester all charge a drop-off fee, but blue badge holders do not have to pay it.

Luton, Glasgow, Belfast International, Belfast City, East Midlands, Aberdeen, and Southampton all charge blue badge holders the same as other passengers for using the drop-off spaces closest to the airport. But they also all offer separate free drop-off parking specifically for blue badge holders elsewhere.

For Glasgow and Aberdeen, this parking is only free if blue badge holders are being dropped off by family or friends – not if they are dropped off by taxi.

All airports offer free drop-off options further from the terminals for all passengers – not just blue badge holders – such as “park and ride” facilities where people can leave their car and take a bus to the airport.

Bristol, Leeds Bradford, and Bournemouth all charge blue badge holders for drop off but allow them to stay for longer than other passengers at a lower fee.

Bristol charges £7 for 40 minutes, Leeds Bradford charges £7 for 60 minutes, and Bournemouth charges £5 for four hours because it said disabled passengers “may require more time”.

Only Cardiff, Newcastle, and Stanstead charge the same fee with no discount at all.

Cardiff charges £3 for 10 minutes, Newcastle charges £5 for 10 minutes, and Stanstead charges £7 for 15 minutes.

Airports UK, which represents the industry, said that the best accessible drop-off for blue badge holders depends on the layout of the airport.

“No one option is ideal at all airports, so to optimise access at each airport the offer will necessarily be different,” it said.

It advised passengers to check the airport’s website before travelling to identify the best drop-off location.

Most of the airports that waive drop-off fees do so if a disabled driver shows their blue badge at the airport on the day.

However, for Heathrow and Liverpool, the exemption needs to be claimed online or on the phone either before or after travelling. Heathrow says its online process for confirming blue badges can take five days to complete, though it told the BBC it usually takes 48 hours.

James Williams, 67, from London finds these services difficult to use.

“I am a blue badge holder and I have to pay because I am not computer literate,” he says, arguing that “you have to jump through hoops to get this discount”.

Jonathan Cassar, 51, from London says the complex nature of online registration means that “disabled people who need to be dropped at terminal cannot be spontaneous as others can”.

Heathrow said it had tried to make the blue badge registration process “as simple as possible” and advised anyone who needs registration urgently to get it approved over the phone.

Liverpool said it had introduced online confirmation “to minimise abuse of the blue badge system”.

Not all blue badge holders feel being charged for airport drop off is unfair.

Gordon Richardson, chair of the British Polio Fellowship Board, is a blue badge holder but says he is “not against the principle” of disabled people paying the same as non-disabled people.

He says what is most important is that the space is accessible and easy to use.

He urges blue badge holders to contact airports before travelling so that the airports can have the staff ready to help them and ensure they get their discount or free parking.

Many of the airports the BBC contacted said their blue badge policies had been drafted in consultation with disability groups and with special consideration for their needs.

In a modest-sized university lab in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, researchers are using a tiny drill to scrape away enamel from a 2,500-year-old tooth.

Researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University say the tooth belongs to one of two human skulls that they have used as models to digitally reconstruct faces to understand what the region’s early inhabitants might have looked like.

The skulls, both belonging to men, were excavated from Kondagai, an ancient burial site about 4km (2.5 miles) from Keeladi – an archaeological site that has become a political flashpoint in India.

Tamil Nadu state department archaeologists say an urban civilisation dating back to 580BC existed in Keeladi, a claim that adds a new dimension to the story of the Indian subcontinent.

The Indus Valley Civilisation, that emerged over 5,000 years ago in the northern and central parts of present-day India, is the country’s first major civilisation – and narratives around urbanisation have so far been confined to the north.

But state archaeologists say the findings at Keeladi indicate for the first time that an ancient independent civilisation existed in southern India as well.

They say the people of Keeladi were literate, highly-skilled and engaged in trade across the subcontinent and abroad. They lived in brick houses and buried their dead along with daily necessities like food grains and pots in massive burial urns in Kondagai.

Archaeologists have excavated about 50 such urns from the site so far.

Researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University are now extracting DNA from human bones and other goods found in these urns to better understand who the inhabitants of Keeladi were and what their lifestyle was like.

But a more profound quest seems to be under way.

“We want to understand our ancestry and the migration routes of our ancestors,” says professor G Kumaresan, who heads the genetics department at the university. “It’s a journey towards answering the larger question of ‘who are we and how did we come to exist here’,” he adds.

The exercise of reconstructing faces of the 2,500-year-old skulls has revealed clues that can answer at least one part of this question.

“The faces mainly have features of Ancient Ancestral South Indians – a population group believed to be the first inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent,” says Prof Kumaresan.

The features also reveal traces of Middle-East Eurasian and Austro-Asiactic ancestries, hinting at global migration and the mixing of ancient population groups. But Prof Kumaresan says that more research is needed to properly establish the ancestries of Keeladi’s residents.

The facial reconstruction of the skulls began with researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University creating 3D scans of the skulls.

These digital scans were then sent to Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. Face Lab specialises in creating digital craniofacial reconstructions using forensic, artistic and scientific principles and technologies.

Experts at the lab used computer softwares to add muscles, flesh and skin to the scans of skulls, bringing out their facial features. These additions were made according to standard human anatomical proportions and measurements.

Then came the big challenge: adding colour to the images.

This brought up questions like which shade of brown should the men be, what colour should their eyes have and how should their hair look?

Prof Kumaresan says the standard practice of using colours that matched physical traits of people currently living in Tamil Nadu was followed, but the digital portraits still evoked lively discussions on social media.

They underscored longstanding divisions in Indian society – around race, culture and heritage.

Historical narratives championing Aryans (a term commonly used to describe people who settled in the northern part of India) as the “original citizens” of the country clashed with those that ascribed this title to Dravidians (a term used to describe people living primarily in India’s southern states).

India has always been plagued by a north-south divide that stems partly from the popular belief that Indian civilisation – and everything associated with it, like language, culture and even religion – took root in the north and shaped the rest of the country.

But Prof Kumaresan says the facial portraits of the Keeladi skulls reveal a message that’s more complex and inclusive.

“The message we can all take home is that we are more diverse than we realise, and the proof of this lies in our DNA,” he says.

This isn’t the first time that researchers in India have attempted to recreate faces from ancient skulls.

In 2019, scientists reconstructed faces of two skulls found at a cemetery in Rakhigarhi – an important Indus Valley Civilisation site in India. But the sketches lack colour and other physical traits.

“As humans, we have a fascination with faces – our ability to recognise and interpret faces is part of our success as a social species,” says Caroline Wilkinson, who headed the Face Lab team that worked on the Keeladi men.

“These facial depictions also encourage the audience to understand ancient remains as people rather than artefacts, and to establish a connection through personal narrative rather than a wider population history,” she adds.

At the Madurai Kamaraj University, efforts are under way to study Keeladi as thoroughly as the Indus Valley Civilisation.

“So far, we have learnt that the people of Keeladi were involved in agriculture, trade and cattle-rearing. They kept deer, goats and wild pigs and ate lots of rice and millets,” says Prof Kumaresan.

“Interestingly, we have found evidence that they also consumed dates, even though the date palm isn’t ubiquitous in Tamil Nadu at present,” he adds.

But the most challenging task for his team remains extracting sufficient DNA from human skeletons found at Kondagai to create a gene library. Because the skeletons are badly degraded, the DNA extracted from them is low and of poor quality. But Prof Kumaresan is hopeful that some good will come out of these endeavours.

“Ancient DNA libraries are like portals to the past; they can reveal fascinating insights about life as it was and life as we know it to be,” he says.

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