Noise News
Below are links to stories about noise in relation to airports and aviation.
Stop Stansted Expansion supports call to take part in flight path consultation, and says changes should be postponed
Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) welcomes NATS' call to local residents to have their say and respond to the proposed transfer of traffic on departure routes from Stansted Airport. The proposed change involves switching daytime traffic from the existing south-east (Dover) departure route to the existing east (Clacton) route (see map). The consultation closes on 8th September. Traffic on the Clacton route would double if this proposal were implemented. NATS' own figures show 1,470 fewer people would be overflown, but 2,400 people would be overflown more intensively. NATS says that the driver for change is network performance and to avoid Heathrow traffic congestion. SSE says significant changes to Stansted's airspace are likely to come in the next airspace review phase scheduled for 2018/19. If there is a new south east runway, that will mean significant redesign of Stansted routes in future. Therefore SSE says there must be clear and compelling benefits for local residents before any changes are implemented. They recommend that NATS' proposed changes should be postponed until the airspace redesign planned for 2018/19.
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Mole Valley MP Sir Paul Beresford joins the battle over Gatwick aircraft noise
Sir Paul Beresford, the MP for Mole Valley, has joined the battle against aircraft noise due to Gatwick airport, over the south of the district. Documents for the recent airspace consultation by Gatwick (closed on 15th August) show that one of Gatwick's departure routes was changed in November 2013. This flight path had too tight a turn for modern aircraft (though they can climb faster than older planes) and planes were increasingly straying further north. As a result, the official route, the NPR (noise preferential route) was changed at the end of last year to allow for a wider turn, meaning 7,200 people who were previously unaffected are now under the flight path – including communities in Leigh, the Holmwoods, Brockham, Capel, Betchworth and Beare Green. Sir Paul said: “It’s quite a disaster. People who bought houses under the previous flight path knew what they were buying. People who have bought under the new flight path did not know. ..... the whole thing is totally unacceptable." He is deeply opposed to a 2nd runway, partly due to the thousands of houses that would have to be built, on green field land, to accommodate workers. “They are actually bussing people in from the South Coast to do jobs" already.
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Heatwave blamed for record number of complaints about Heathrow noise
Heathrow anti-noise group, HACAN, says nearly 300 people contacted it during July to complain about aircraft noise, more than three times the monthly average. The weather was warm in the south east in July, with a good summer. That means people spent more time outside, and they slept with windows open. That led to even more awareness of aircraft noise than there is in cooler weather. The record number of noise complaints was due to a combination of warm temperatures and a record 6.97 million passengers using Heathrow during July. John Stewart, Chair of HACAN said: "It puts into perspective Heathrow's current consultation on compensation if a 3rd runway is ever built. You simply can't compensate people for the disturbance of planes thundering over as they sit in their gardens trying to enjoy the summer sunshine..... Just imagine how much worse the noise could be with a third runway and at least 250,000 more flights each year using Heathrow." Heathrow itself received 603 complaints about noise in July, only a slight rise on the 578 made during July 2013. They acknowledge that: ..."an airport of the size and importance of Heathrow can have downsides for people living nearby."
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Campaigners in Tunbridge Wells area gear up for legal action over flawed Gatwick consultation
Campaigners against the noise from Gatwick flight paths say that legal action will be taken against the airport's inadequate airspace consultation. Fundraising has already begun to raise some £70,000 estimated to be needed to challenge the case in court, and residents of the areas beneath a proposed narrow corridor, including the High Weald Area of Natural Beauty, Edenbridge and Tunbridge Wells, are preparing to take the airport to task. The proposal affects Gatwick flight paths below 4,000ft and suggests a narrow flight path rather than the current one, which is spread out, although the exact location has not been revealed. There will be one corridor for daytime flights and another for night flights. Adding to a growing list of concerns raised by the consultation, which Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark described as “flawed,” critics are also criticising the decision to remove information about the ownership of Gatwick from the airport’s website. People have been greatly angered by the way Gatwick has conducted its consultation, and communities are working together. The airport is not succeeding in "divide and rule" between communities, to pass the buck of noise misery elsewhere.
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“Scrap new flight paths,” says GACC in their response to Gatwick’s airspace consultation
Gatwick Airport’s consultation on new flight paths ends on Thursday, 14th August. GACC (the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, the well regarded main environmental body concerned with Gatwick, with nearly 100 Borough, District and Parish Councils and environmental groups in the area as members) has submitted a powerful response (GACC AIRSPACE RESPONSE). The consultation has been highly inadequate, giving no flight path detail, and GACC is therefore asking the CAA to declare it void. GACC is demanding that all the new routes should be scrapped. They are asking that Gatwick and NATS should issue a new joint consultation, with detailed maps, showing all proposed flight paths at Gatwick for arrivals and departures up to 10,000 feet. GACC is also asking that the CAA should refuse permission for any new route outside existing NPRs until Gatwick agree to a scheme for compensation. Where flight paths are now concentrated on a single narrow line GACC is calling for compensation to be given to people whose houses are devalued. According to Brendon Sewill: "The law says that, when a new motorway is built, people with houses nearby must receive fair compensation. The same should apply to new motorways in the sky."
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Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark urges Gatwick CEO to “go back to the drawing board” on flight paths
Greg Clark, MP for Tunbridge Wells, has written to Gatwick asking them to reconsider the “flawed” consultation on aircraft flight paths and noise, and urging them to “go back to the drawing board.” He recently (14th July) met Gatwick and NATS staff about the problem. He tells Gatwick that the consultation has not only caused outrage among his constituents for what it proposes but also for how the consultation has been managed. There are serious concerns among local in the area about the "superhighway" overhead, though Gatwick says the increase in noise is just that more Brits are flying abroad this summer, (on cheap flights for holidays). Greg says that the noise disturbance has considerably worsened recently and many have been "disturbed and dismayed by much higher levels of aircraft noise this summer.” He adds: "... the consultation has been unfit for its purpose.....(its) ..purpose was to have been to gauge reaction to particular precise routes. Yet the exact route has not been disclosed to the public. Instead, a wide swathe has been marked on maps which make it exceedingly difficult to work out what is the exact route proposed.....the proposals being put forward (are) too ill defined to comment properly.” He believes the misguided proposal to increase flights over Langton Green, Speldhurst, Rusthall and Bidborough should be rethought.
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Crispin Blunt MP investigates recent increase in aircraft noise in Redhill area due to changes to Gatwick flight paths
Following a recent increase in complaints of increased aircraft noise over Redhill and Earlswood, MP for Reigate, Crispin Blunt has visited Gatwick Airport for an explanation. He has also met Heathrow and the MP for Mole Valley, Sir Paul Beresford, to identify the cause of the increase in over-flight noise, and investigate potential remedies and future trends in aircraft noise patterns. Crispin has set out a clear explanation of what has been happening, and why people in his constituency are now being affected. Gatwick is trying out new routing patterns, that might come into effect in 18 months time, by which flights take off in a similar pattern as before, but follow a much narrower air corridor over Redhill and Earlswood. This has reduced the area in which people are overflown, but concentrated the amount of noise that a smaller number of residents on the narrower flight path have to suffer. Some Gatwick departure aircraft are being held low by NATS over Redhill, to avoid aircraft stacking prior to landing at Heathrow. These are tracking north closer to Redhill than before. This is part of the FAS (Future Airspace Strategy) which is being worked on, and which will not be completed till 2019. By then, the conflict with the Heathrow routes may be resolved.
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Francis Maude says it is intolerable for some people to be very intensively overflown, “to the extreme detriment of their lives”
Francis Maude, MP for Horsham, wrote that the ADNID trial has been almost six months of intense misery for many of his constituents. He has been liaising with the airport, the CAA, NATS and the Secretary of State for Transport on the trial and its impacts. Gatwick is aiming to increase potential take-offs at peak times from 55 to 58 per hour from its single runway, and to do this it claims to need more focused flight paths, allowed by better aircraft on-board navigation systems. Gatwick says it needs to use new NPR routes, rather than the established ones. Government policy is that the decision about new routes, which rests with the Secretary of State, will be based on reducing the numbers of people overflown, in a simple headcount exercise. But there are local circumstances which allow for other considerations - background noise, altitude above sea level - to be taken into account, and Francis says "this is our best hope of seeing off this threat." Sharing of the noise misery burden may be tolerable but " What is intolerable is when fewer people are very intensively overflown, to the extreme detriment of their lives." He adds: "I have sought reassurance that the consultation being run by IpsosMori will be independently scrutinised by the CAA, using the raw data if necessary."
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Thousands of Londoners would hear a plane “every 90 seconds for 13 hours/day” if Heathrow 3rd runway is built
Heathrow knows it cannot get a 3rd runway unless it can somehow persuade people that there will be less noise from 50% more aircraft than there is today. In order to try and achieve this miraculous result, some massaging of figures is needed, and some clever use of statistics. In reality, it is likely that with three runways, tens of thousands of people in west London would lose half of their daily “noise-free” period (from runway alternation - switching runway at 3pm). HACAN, the group campaigning against the noise impacts of Heathrow, and thus against Heathrow's expansion, say some areas would have planes passing overhead every 90 seconds for a “nightmarish” 13 hours a day. HACAN discovered the noise data “buried” in an appendix to one of Heathrow’s reports sent to the Airports Commission and “slipped out” before the holidays. It appears likely that residents under the southern flight path, including areas such as Richmond, would lose almost 4 hours of their 8 hour quiet period. People living under the current northern flight path would continue to get about 8 hours of respite but HACAN claim this would be spoiled for many because they would hear aircraft from one of the two other runways on either side of them.
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Gatwick CEO says planes over Reigate “could be from Heathrow” …? Just as likely to be Gatwick ….
Many residents living near Reigate have recently reported increased aircraft noise. This may have been due to planes arriving at, or departing from, Heathrow. That is the claim from Gatwick Airport's chief executive Stewart Wingate, who has assured residents the offending noise is not due to flight path changes at his airport. The Heathrow "WebTrak" website shows (approximately - not 100% accurate) the positions and tracks of aircraft arriving at, or departing from, Heathrow. The Gatwick "Casper" website also shows the tracks of planes arriving at, or departing from, Gatwick. Both these websites show aircraft in the vicinity of Reigate. The WebTrak record suggests planes stacking, waiting to land at Heathrow, at about 9,000 to 9,600 feet. Planes taking off from Heathrow, flying near Reigate, would be a bit higher than 6,000 feet. Planes taking off from Gatwick are also shown in the area close to Gatwick, at 5,500 to 6,000 feet. So it appears people in the area south of Reigate may be subjected to planes using both airports.