Airport News
Below are news items relating to specific airports
Lib Dem Pre-Manifesto 2014 – definite opposition to any new south east runway, taking account of climate impact
The Liberal Democrats have launched their Pre-Manifesto 2014, and it contains an emphatic statement against any new runway at Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted - and no estuary airport. Their policy: "Ensure our airport infrastructure meets the needs of a modern and open economy, without allowing emissions from aviation to undermine our goal of a zero-carbon Britain by 2050. We will carefully consider the conclusions of the Davies Review into runway capacity and develop a strategic airports policy for the whole of the UK in the light of those recommendations and advice from the Committee on Climate Change. We remain opposed to any expansion of Heathrow, Stansted or Gatwick and any new airport in the Thames Estuary, because of local issues of air and noise pollution. We will ensure no net increase in runways across the UK as a whole by prohibiting the opening of any new runways unless others are closed elsewhere." It is thought that this position will not be popular with big business, which wants expanded airport, and ever increasing aviation - with little consideration for the climate impacts.
Click here to view full story...
Formula 1 boss’s fury over new Heathrow aircraft noise – at least with Formula 1 people know where the noise is
A significant Formula One car racing engineer, who lives in Sunninghill under a Heathrow flight path test route, has joined an increasing band of residents complaining about the new flight paths over Bracknell and Ascot. He describes them as “intolerable”. The chief technical officer at Formula One team Red Bull Racing has hit out at Heathrow after its new trial flight paths started last Thursday, for 5 months. The aims of the trials are to try to reduce 'stacking’, speeding up departure times to cut departure intervals, so increasing airport profits. He said though having lived in Sunninghill since 1997 and the noise has never been an issue before. "It is pretty intolerable because currently we have planes flying over our heads at 11pm at night .... it’s very antisocial really. ....I can’t even sit in my garden and socialise with my friends because it is just too noisy. There has been no proper consultation..." Realising he himself works in a very noisy industry, he said "... with Formula One is that there are no new race tracks being built anywhere, so people who buy houses next to race tracks know what they are getting.” There is an active petition in the Ascot area against the flight path trials, with around 2,400 signatures today.
Click here to view full story...
Campaigners call on CAA to suspend consultation on City Airport flight paths
Campaign group HACAN East has written to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to ask it to suspend the current consultation being carried out by London City Airport into flight path changes in East London. HACAN East argues that the tens of thousands of residents who are in line to get more planes over-head if the flight path changes go ahead are not being told about them. London City is proposing to concentrate the flights taking off from the airport in a narrow corridor, but its location is not being made clear enough. Areas directly under the favoured flight path will be Bow, Hackney Wick, Leyton Midland Road, Leytonstone, Barkingside and Colliers Row - but the airport is not leafleting these areas. People will just not realise the full impact till it is too late. New computer technology can now guide aircraft much more accurately [like satnav for planes, enabling an aircraft to fly a very exact route] when landing and taking off. It gives airports the option of varying the routes the planes use in order to give all residents some respite from the noise or of concentrating all the planes on one route. London City has chosen to concentrate the aircraft.
Click here to view full story...
London City Airport accused of creating a “noise ghetto” with proposed concentrated flight paths
London City Airport have started a consultation on airspace changes (4th September to 27th November) as it wishes to alter flight paths. The change will be because instead of less accurate navigation by aircraft, they now can fly using a very accurate form of satnav for planes. This is referred to as RNAV, meaning precision navigation, by which aircraft can all fly a course accurate to within a few hundred metres. The effect is concentration of flight paths, so most fly the exact same route, and anyone living under that route gets all the planes, and all the noise. Campaign group HACAN East has accused London City Airport of failing to spell out to tens of thousands of residents in East London that they are in line to get many more planes overhead if proposed flight path changes go ahead. The consultation does not make this clear. Areas directly under the favored flight path - and the concentration -will be Bow, Hackney Wick, Leyton Midland Road, Leytonstone, Barkingside and Colliers Row. The effect will be to create a noise ghetto. Air traffic controllers like concentration of flight paths. However, it is often better - less unfair - to share out the noise burden, so many people get some flights, rather than a few getting them all.
Click here to view full story...
HACAN to distribute 50,000 copies of newspaper “Third Runway News” setting out reasons against it
HACAN has proudly launched a new local newspaper, called "Third Runway News," a new publication which provides residents of west London, east Berkshire and north Surrey with the facts about what an expanded Heathrow Airport would mean for them. It is 4 pages in full colour, illustrated - link at Third Runway News. HACAN is a residents-led campaign, and by contrast with the millions of ££s that Heathrow airport has for its publicity, benefits from the work of local volunteers. The new newspaper has been designed by a local HACAN member, not by a hugely expensive professional design company. The paper asks people to get in touch to say which of the many impacts of a 3rd runway they are most concerned about. These include noise pollution, air pollution, increased car traffic, loss of their home - or loss of the value of their home, or impacts on children and schools from aircraft noise. Meanwhile Heathrow airport have massive adverts, containing extravagant claims for "benefits" of a 3rd runway, (with no supporting evidence), such as "120,000 more jobs" and "£100 billion of economic benefits (not time-scale indicated)" and "loss of £125 billion per month in last trade" for every month without the new runway. Really??
Click here to view full story...
Woodland Trust asking Gatwick respondents to send a photo of themselves, to prove to Gatwick they are real people
Gatwick carried out a consultation, that ended on 16th May) about its 2nd runway plans. There were some 7,700 responses (the vast majority against a new runway) and of those, 4,092 came through a campaign by the Woodland Trust. However, in its analysis of the consultation responses, Ipsos Mori decided to discount these responses, as they had been generated by a campaign and were sent in electronically. It is too convenient for the airport to discount over half the responses in this way. The Woodland Trust is now asking everyone who backs their campaign against Gatwick destroying areas of ancient woodland for its runway, to send in photos and details of themselves, in order to prove to the powers-that-be that they are real people, their opinions are real, and there is no reason for their consultation responses to be invalidated.You can add your photo, and a brief comment, on the Woodland Trust website here. The Trust is rightly appalled at suggestions by Gatwick that they can justify destroying ancient woodland by just offsetting it, through planting 3 new saplings to replace each ancient tree - or translocating woodland soil to new locations for new saplings. Neither even partly replace the richness, quality and diversity of true ancient woods.
Click here to view full story...
Prime Economics: “Out of thin air – the economic case for a 3rd Heathrow runway”
Prime Economics, a group of independent economic thinkers, has taken a look at Heathrow's claims about the economic case for a 3rd runway. They are not impressed. While Heathrow (see its latest advert) says: "If we want Britain's economy to keep growing, we need to grow Heathrow", the reality is very different. Among Heathrow's dodgy 3rd runway economic claims, they say: "• It will bring economic benefits of £100bn • It will bring 120,000 new jobs • Every month the problem goes unresolved is costing the British economy £1.25bn through lost trade". Prime Economics says "the evidence for each of these is very thin and hypothetical .... The link between trade and airport capacity is at best indirect, and certainly opaque. At a macroeconomic level, the impact is simply invisible." They say "Economies depend on many factors, and hub capacity is one of the least significant, at least once you reach a decent threshold of scale." They pick to pieces the £1.25 billion figure; the idea that the UK needs flights to every destination in every country; and the hub competition between EU countries. "The current debate assumes exponential growth both of our economies and of our travel into the indefinite future. This will not happen ... Airports ...are not the main drivers of economic success nor of national well-being." Well worth reading.
Click here to view full story...
Call for all affected by Gatwick noise to ask their councillors if they back a 2nd runway. If “Yes” – don’t vote for them
In a letter published in the West Sussex County Times, Sally Pavey - who is the chair of the local residents' group CAGNE writes about the need for elected representatives to do more for people suffering from Gatwick flight paths. People who have now found themselves at risk of being under a concentrated PR NAV flight path need their elected representatives to work on their behalf. CAGNE was formed due to the flight path trial, called in the jargon, "ADNID" that took place for 6 months, ending in early August. Sally questions the democratic process that permits this insult to the quality of life of thousands of inoffensive citizens, in order that the foreign big-business owners of Gatwick can make more profit. She asks how democratic the airport is, when the only consultation done on flight path trials is through the GATCOM and NATMAG committees, at neither of which the public can speak. Sally urges local residents to "ask those that seek to represent you, ie parish councils, district councillors, West Sussex county councillors and your MP, a simple question. Do you support a second runway at Gatwick Airport? Yes or No. And if the answer is Yes, do not vote for them."
Click here to view full story...
Heathrow flight path changes / trial inflict more noise misery on Ascot area and 3 villages area
Heathrow airport and NATS are experimenting with flight path changes and new technology systems for Heathrow flights. The aim is to reduce ‘stacking’ of aircraft waiting to land, and to speed up departure times, getting more planes in the air per hour - in order make the airport more efficient (or more profitable). There is a series of trials, over a period of years from 2012 to 2017, advertised on Heathrow's website. They are to inform the London Airspace Management Programme (LAMP) consultation. One trial, for departures to the west, started on 28th August and will last till January 2015. It will test how sharply aircraft are able to turn on take-off and how fast they can climb. The results will be factored into Heathrow’s revision of flight paths that are required under the European ‘SESAR’ programme. The reality for people being over-flown is that there are now more aircraft passing over Ascot, Sunningdale and Sunninghill, and these planes are low (around 3,000 feet) and climbing. The gaps between planes are also shorter than before. A petition has been set up by people in the Ascot area, to get the trial ended immediately. The new noise barrage has created new fears in those areas of the impact of a 3rd runway.
Click here to view full story...
Open letter to Stewart Wingate, asking for explanation of the increased aircraft noise being experienced
An open letter to Stewart Wingate, the CEO of Gatwick airport, has been written by a member of one of the new opposition groups that has mushroomed in the past two months. These have emerged, as the noise from Gatwick arrivals over parts of Kent (especially around Tunbridge Wells, Hever, Penshurst and nearby areas) has increased. Due to subtle changes in concentration of flight paths, and apparently lower approaches, the lives of thousands of people have been badly affected by the noise. And these people are absolutely not prepared to lie down and accept this unwelcome, unpleasant intrusion into their lives. There is a steely determination, and unflinching resolve shared by thousands. A letter to Mr Wingate is copied below. AirportWatch does not endorse the sentiments in the letter, (at times expressed bluntly) nor do we make any claim that all the points made are accurate. It is copied here, to indicate the problems of many people in Kent and West Sussex, as they perceive them. It shows eloquently their anger, and their refusal to believe they are not being fobbed off with half truths by the airport, which insists nothing has changed.