The airport built the terminal without permission

The High Court has ruled that Warwick District Council's application for an injunction was an "abuse" of the court process and struck out the action.

The authority has argued planning permission was needed for the terminal - a claim rejected by the airport.

Tuesday's decision means Thomsonfly can continue to operate from the site.

'Wholly inappropriate'

Warwick District Council had hoped to win permission to ban all Thomsonfly services until the planning dispute had been settled.

Thomsonfly has said that a ban could have forced it out of business, putting 217 people out of work.

Mrs Justice Gloster said there was no reasonable prospect of a trial judge granting a permanent injunction, adding that the procedure adopted by the council was "wholly inappropriate".

The judge said a government-appointed inspector would be looking into the planning issues in October and, if it was decided that planning controls had been breached, the airport authority had agreed to comply with any terms.

Local objections

She said it would be "undesirable in the extreme" for the courts to conduct a factual inquiry into whether there had been breaches at the same time as a planning appeals inspector was doing the same thing.

Mrs Justice Gloster said it was not for her to comment on the strength of the case against the airport but, on the evidence she had seen, she said that "Warwick District Council may have real difficulty in establishing that there have been breaches of planning controls".

The council took action after receiving 2,500 letters from the public objecting to the expansion of flights at the airport, which had previously been used almost exclusively for transporting cargo.

Thomsonfly told the court it had sold 150,000 tickets to destinations including Marseille, Nice, Rome and Jersey since its launch in March.