When a new flight path comes your way, unexpectedly…..
This is taken from a paper produced by Gatwick Area Conservation Group, which represents residents impacted by Gatwick Airport, but people around most airports will share the emotions it describes when a new flight path unexpectedly comes their way......
Stage 1. Astonishment.
‘What are all these planes suddenly flying over our house? We’ve never had it like this before. OK yes, the occasional one once or twice an hour but these are absolutely nose-to-tail! Why haven’t we been told? Is it just a trial or is it going to be permanent?’
Stage 2. Anxiety.
‘I’m not sure we can live with this. We can’t go out-of-doors, can’t open the windows, we feel trapped in a hermetically sealed prison. Perhaps we should sell our house, move to somewhere quiet? But that means our children having to go to a new school and us leaving all our friends behind. And anyway this new flight path has knocked thousands of pounds off the value of our house, so we would have to make do with somewhere smaller.6 Trapped, with no escape! It’s all getting on my nerves. No wonder it causes heart attacks and strokes.’
Stage 3. Anger
‘Why weren’t we told? Meeting in the town hall – never heard about it. Parish Council objected – of course no one takes any notice of them. All this misery just for more and more cheap holidays, stag and hen nights. And I hear that airlines don’t pay any fuel tax or any VAT. Why should those bastards get all the benefit and we don’t get a penny in compensation for having our lives ruined?’
Stage 4. Determination
‘We hear there’s a local protest group started, and hundreds have already joined. So will we. We’ve got to fight this injustice. Worth subscribing generously if only we could get this flight path moved.’
Stage 5. Action
Protest group employs noise experts. Considers judicial review but usually finds it too costly. And each protest group encourages its members to write to the airport, or to NATS, or to the CAA, or to the DfT, or to local MPs, or to all of them. Thousands of emails are written, many addressed to the chief executives. Judicial review is sometimes successful.
Stage 6. Fury
The CAA confirms the route. The thousands of emails are ignored. Experts are over-ruled. Hard luck! No compensation. Distrust of the system….. in a recent case 17,000 objections were consigned to the waste bin because most of them came from outside the 57 leq contour, a ridiculous excuse when the Government is proposing to reduce the standard metric to 51 leq…
Stage 7. Despair
Gloom and resignation but with an enduring hate and distrust of the airport and all the bodies that are supposed to regulate the environmental impact of aviation.
NB: There is still hope for residents impacted by London City! The airport has not ruled out looking again at its concentrated flight paths later this year.
The full Gatwick paper can be found here: http://www.gacc.org.uk/resources/GACC%20Airspace%20Design%20response%20.pdf
CHECK OUT THE FLIGHT PATHS
You can now watch and track the London City aircraft as they arrive and depart. You can see the flight paths they use and, by inserting your postcode, you can see what happens over your home: https://www.londoncityairport.com/home/page/track-aircraft-in-your-area
