Category: BLOG

2018 could turn out to be a significant year for communities impacted by Heathrow.  It is highly likely a decision on a third runway will be made. But it will also be the year when Heathrow will begin the biggest change to its flight paths since it opened in 1946.

The airspace changes are being driven by the introduction at airports across the world of new technology called Performance Based Navigation (PBN).  In essence, it means that aircraft will be guided more precisely as they land and take-off.  The norm will be flight paths along a few, predicable, concentrated routes.  This will allow more aircraft to use an airport, cut fuel costs for airlines, reduce CO2 emissions from each aircraft, improve the resilience of airports and probably cut the number of air traffic controllers required.

Performance Based Navigation is not, in my view, an optional process which any one airport can opt out of or any one community can successfully challenge. Hundreds of airports across the globe have already introduced it.  It has the backing of governments.  The aviation industry has spent huge sums of money on it.  In Europe the industry has invested 2.5 billion euros in PBN on which it expects to get a return of 4.4 billion euros.  And in America, it is estimated PBN improvements have accrued $1.6 billion of benefits since 2010 and it is expected that by 2030, the total benefits of PBN improvements will be $160.6 billion, at a cost of $35.8 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration and the aviation industry.

Opposing PBN is not a realistic option.  Our challenge as campaign groups is to shape it so it works for our communities.  Heathrow’s consultation on the design principles to inform its new flight paths, starting on 17^th January, gives us an early opportunity to start to do so.  

Understandably, the prospect of changes to our air space generates a range of deep emotions.  Communities not currently overflown fear they might be.  People in the parts of West London which get a half day’s break from the noise are afraid it might be lost or modified.  People under take-off routes, which have become a lot more concentrated over the decade, fear more of the same.  But others, such as many communities in South East London or in the Reading area, plagued at present by random all-day flying, would welcome fixed flight paths which would give them some relief from the constant noise. 

Fixed flights paths of course mean concentration.  And the relentlessness of concentrated flying – the staple diet of PBN – causes real fear.  The new technology will concentrate flight paths but – and here is the potential community benefit – its accuracy should also allow for multiple concentrated flight paths to be created.  If these flight paths were to be rotated, it opens up the possibility of meaningful periods of respite for impacted communities.  (And, I suspect, further from the airport – over 20 miles or so – some dispersal).  Although Heathrow Airport is committed to introducing respite where possible, it will not be an easy process, particularly if there are voices within the industry which might resist changes if they are seen as too difficult or too inconvenient.  Our task will be to challenge that attitude and shape the new PBN world so that it works for communities as well as the industry.

It will be a big task.  We are most likely to succeed the more united we are.  And we are most likely to achieve that unity and success if our campaign is firmly rooted in the principle of fairness and equity.  It’s a principle we doubtless all sign up to in theory but, in practice, we are keeping a watchful eye – perhaps even an NIMBY eye – as to what the flight path changes may mean for our street!  This is wholly understandable as a flight path overhead can be a brutal assault on our senses, particularly if it is over a new area.  But, unless a community campaign to shape PBN and future airspace is based on principle – the principle of fairness and equity – it will simply set one community against another.  To get this right will be a key challenge for local communities in 2018. 

The other big issue of the year will of course be the third runway.  Parliament is expected to vote on it before the summer.  It will be a surprise if Theresa May does not recommend the go-ahead and gets the backing of most Conservative MPs.  The Labour Party’s position is still evolving.  There has been a lot of support for a third runway amongst backbench Labour MPs and some of that support will remain solid. But the indications are that the majority of Labour MPs will go along with the position adopted by the Shadow Cabinet.  

Labour has set four tests which it says any new runway anywhere must meet if they are to back it.  The Shadow Cabinet has still to say whether it believes a third runway at Heathrow does so.  If Labour officially comes out against a third runway, the arithmetic looks more interesting but it would still need the bulk of Labour MPs to join up with the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative rebels to have any chance of defeating the Government which would have the backing of the Ulster Unionists and the SNP.     

If Parliament backs a third runway, it becomes official Government policy.  Heathrow will then start the process of drawing up and consulting on the more detailed plans.

HACAN has had a long record of opposing a new runway because of its potential impacts on the community.  That remains our position but later this month we will be publishing a list of six tough conditions which we think the Government should insist on if a third runway goes ahead.

Most of our members are clear:  they don’t want a third runway but, if it does go ahead, they want HACAN to fight for the best deal for communities.  We will start that process in 2018.

So, 2018 will be a significant year but, for most of our members, it will also be much of the same.  They are living with the noise, with the night flights which wake them up and, in many cases, with all-day flying.  For them, dealing with these bread-and-butter issues is as important as the longer term prospect of a third runway or new flight paths.  Our pledge to them:  in 2018 won’t let the high-profile issues of new runways and flight paths distract us from lobbying for immediate improvements to the current situation. 

It is not often you get to design your own flight path.  But that could happen over the next couple of years at Heathrow.  We won’t get to draw precise line on maps.  So, forget about putting it over the home of your worst enemy!  But Heathrow will be consulting about the principles on which flight paths should be based.

It is prompted by what will be the biggest change in flight paths since the airport opened in 1946.  This will happen whether Heathrow remains a two runway airport or whether a third runway is built.

It is driven by new technology which allows aircraft to be guided more precisely.  It will allow for more efficient use of airspace, enable airlines to cut costs and save fuel, reduce CO2 emissions, improve the resilience of airports (important at somewhere like Heathrow) and allow air traffic control to run a slicker operation using fewer staff.

Heathrow has no alternative but to introduce the new technology known as Precision-Based Navigation (PBN).  Aircraft and air traffic control systems across the world are being adapted and modernized to enable it to become the standard operating practice.

Heathrow’s challenge is to find ways to ensure it operates in the interest of local community as well as the aviation industry. It has watched other airports in the UK and America introduce it with almost uniformly disastrous consequences for the local communities.  It knows, given the huge number of people impacted by Heathrow, it cannot afford to get it wrong.

The big mistake most other airports made was to use the precision technology to concentrate their routes so that the communities under those narrow bands were subject to all-day flying without a break.  Noise ghettos were created and residents rebelled.  Lawsuits are being filed in America.  Complaints increased four-fold at London City. Communities are up in arms at Luton, Stansted and Gatwick (where vectoring changes that concentrated some routes took place).

Watching this unfolding disaster, Heathrow has decided to involve residents at an early stage. In two or three months time, Heathrow will consult the public on the design principles that should inform its new flight paths – for example, the importance people put on periods of respite if routes become concentrated.

Heathrow says it will be starting from ‘a blank piece of paper’.  The prospect of flight path changes can be frightening but many of our HACAN members and supporters see it as an opportunity to get rid of the all-day flights which has blighted their lives for decades.  They favour the introduction of multiple flight paths, rotated, to give them predicable periods of relief from the noise.  And see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make this happen.

There are three concerns emerging amongst communities.  One is the sheer dread of concentration without a break. But that is highly unlikely to happen at Heathrow as the airport has bought into the concept of respite and, indeed, will be publishing a ground-breaking report into what meaningful respite might look like later this summer.

The second big concern comes from the areas in West London, relatively close to the airport, which already enjoy predicable flight paths and a half day’s break from the noise when planes landing over London switch runways at 3pm.  Many people have built their lives around this long-established pattern and fear the consequences should it be changed.

The third worry is about take off flight paths.  At present there are Noise Preferential Routes (three kilometres wide) which departing aircraft must use until they reach 4,000ft. In recent years aircraft have become much more concentrated down the centre-line of the NPRs.  This has caused real problems for the communities right underneath them.  Looking forward, the questions being asked are whether the new technology can allow for the routes to be varied within the NPRs and/or whether new NPRs would need to be introduced.  The latter would almost certainly involve planes flying over new areas which brings its own issues.

Precision-Based Navigation that does not involve pure concentration is more challenging for departures than arrivals.  In my view, the positive thing is that Heathrow is involving local communities at the earliest possible stage.

In the second half of 2018 Heathrow will have a second consultation.  This will be on noise envelopes it has drawn up based on the design principles it will consult on this year.  The noise envelopes will outline the areas where the flight paths will go rather than the details of the flight paths themselves. 

The detailed flight paths are not expected to emerge until a couple of years later.  They will obviously be dependent on whether Heathrow by then knows it can plan for a third runway.  But, even if a third runway does not happen, Heathrow will be starting from a blank piece of paper to residents the flight paths at a two-runway airport.  The prospect may generate concern or hope (maybe dependent on where you live) but the changes, driven by new technology world-wide, will happen.  They are the biggest changes for 50 years and may well last another half-century.  Ours in the generation which can shape these changes.  It is both a daunting and exciting prospect.              

Here’s an odd thing.  The number of flights at Heathrow has more than doubled since the 1980s yet, according to official statistics, the number of people annoyed by the noise has fallen from 1.2million in 1980 to around 250,000.

But this is more than an historical curiosity.  It matters for the future because the Department for Transport’s National Policy Statement, Heathrow Airport and Sir Howard Davies all argue that if a third runway – with 700 more flights a day – is built fewer people will be annoyed by noise from Heathrow than are today.

In my view, the apparent contradiction is down to the inadequate way noise annoyance has been measured…….. 

What has surprised us during the General Election campaign is the level of previously silent opposition there is to a third runway at Heathrow amongst key candidates.

Campaigners opposed to a third runway attended over 20 ‘hustings’ meeting during the General Election Campaign.  I was at half a dozen of them. We also wrote to the key candidates. 

This is obviously only an estimate but on the basis of the responses campaigners received our best guess is this:

In the next Parliament there could be: 

• 36 London MPs opposed to a third runway; 
• 18 in favour; 
• 19 whose views are unclear.  

It’s rare I write a blog at 11 o’clock at night with tea and a scrumptious cream scone in my hand.  But that it what I did last night when I popped into see Pearl, one our long-standing members in Camberwell, on my way home from an election hustings in nearby East Dulwich.

I told Pearl about the constant noise from the planes as I left the East Dulwich meeting and we got talking about Heathrow’s plans, announced last week, to undertake the biggest change in flight paths since the airport opened in 1946, starting from ‘a blank piece of paper’.  Flight paths will be radically altered even it Heathrow fails in its attempt to build a third runway and remains a two runway airport.

Pearl said that said that these changes could transform her life if multi-flight paths could be introduced.  They would allow some relief each day from the all day-flying that she finds so hard to bear.  

More about how that could be done in a minute but first let Pearl introduce herself for this is really a joint blog:   

“It’s always rude to ask a lady her age so let’s just say I’m old enough to have two lovely children who’ve just settled into their first jobs but certainly not old enough to retire from my job as a check-out assistant at Tescos.  I came across from the West Indies 30 years ago and since then I have lived in the same estate in Camberwell.  It used to be called council housing.  Now it is known as social housing.  But it is still the same flat.  It is good for shopping and for public transport and we’ve got Burgess Park and Peckham Rye not far away.

It’s only the planes that really get me down.  I can’t afford to move away.  In fact I don’t really want to.  Only the planes make me think about it.  I sometimes dream of  just staying on in Bournemouth when summer holiday finishes..

I don’t think that my friends in West London understand that we, too, suffer aircraft noise 20 miles from Heathrow.  It was never like this 30 years ago when I moved in.”

Pearl and myself talked about the way the changed flight paths, driven by new technology, Precision-Based Navigation (PBN), would help the aviation industry.  It will enable planes to be guided more precisely, saving the airlines fuel, cutting CO2 emissions, allowing air traffic control to run a slicker operation with fewer staff and giving airports more resilience, the latter critical at a busy airport like Heathrow.

The challenge for Heathrow and for NATS (the air traffic controllers) to make sure the new technology also benefits local communities.  Twenty miles from the airport there is scope for multiple flight paths to be used to remove the curse of all-day flying from places like Camberwell and to give people like Pearl a break from the noise each day.  It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve the noise climate for hundreds of thousands of people.  If that happens, it becomes a win-win situation for the aviation industry and the local community.

But, according to Pearl, the rewards could be even greater: “I’ll give the people from Heathrow and air traffic control Earl Gray tea, served in my best china cups, with as many of my cream scones as they want if the can end all-day flying.  And, if they can do it quicker than before 2024 or 2025, I may even crack open a wee bottle of Jamaican rum with them.” 

Changing its flight paths: Heathrow’s chance to be a beacon for positive change

It’s the other big aviation story.  The focus has been on the third runway at Heathrow.  Perhaps inevitably, given the controversy it creates.  But the other big event over the next decade will be the flight paths changes that will take place at virtually every airport in the UK.  It will signal the biggest change in the use of airspace for over 60 years.  Indeed, it will be a worldwide phenomenon.

Heathrow has said it will be starting from ‘a blank piece of paper’ to put in place what would be the biggest change in flight paths since the airport opened in 1946.  Flight paths will be radically altered even it Heathrow fails in its attempt to build a third runway and remains a two runway airport.  

The change is being driven by new technology.  Precision-Based Navigation (PBN) is being introduced.  It enables planes to be guided more precisely, saving the airlines fuel, cutting CO2 emissions, allowing air traffic control to run a slicker operation with fewer staff and giving airports more resilience, the latter critical at a busy airport like Heathrow.

It can also in my view, if it is introduced well, benefit local communities.  The technology will enable aircraft to be concentrated along narrow flight paths.  That presents both dangers and opportunities.  The danger is that all the planes use those same flight paths all day long.  It is no exaggeration to say that would create noise ghettos.  But the opportunity presented by precision flying is that it enables multiple (concentrated) flight paths to be used and be rotated so each community can get a break from the noise every day.  Certainly for many communities under the Heathrow flight paths that would be an improvement on the situation today.  They don’t get pure concentration but they get all-day flying……and the HACAN mailbox is full of people desperate for a break from it.

There are some in the environmental movement who oppose multiple flight paths and respite.  Their argument is that it could potentially increase capacity at an airport.  If there is no cap on flight numbers at the airport, that may be the case but I believe that, in trying to deny local communities a break from the noise, they are in danger of putting ideology over people’s well-being.

So far the introduction of PBN-driven new flight paths has not been good.  There has been uproar in many American cities when the airports introduced concentrated flight paths without any respite.  When London City concentrated its routes last year complaints shot up four-fold.  Complaints also increased at Luton and Stansted when these airports introduced concentrated routes and no respite.  Gatwick has been forced to backtrack on its new routes and, at the time of writing, Edinburgh proposals, out for consultation, have generated controversy and heated protest meetings.

Belatedly, the Department for Transport, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and air traffic control realized things weren’t working properly.  The CAA has revised its guidance to include much earlier community involvement.  And in its recent consultation on Airspace Strategy, the Department proposed changes to the way new routes are introduced including the importance of respite being included as an option at airports where that is possible and popular. 

These problems experienced at the other airports put even more pressure on Heathrow to get it right.  Heathrow was already aware that, given the numbers under its flight paths, it risked a big-scale community revolt if it got its flight path changes wrong. 

It therefore intends to involve local communities at a very early stage.  It will start consulting on its airspace changes later this summer when it launches a 12 week consultation into the design principles people want to see the flight paths based on.  It will be seeking views on things like whether people want the flight paths concentrated on a few communities or the noise shared around more equally.  By then it will have published a major study into what meaningful respite would look like.

Heathrow will take some months to work up noise envelopes after the consultation on design principles finishes.  In summer 2018 it will consult on these noise envelopes.  The envelopes will show the broad swathes within which there will be flight paths.  They will not include the exact alignment of the flight paths but those who will be outside the swathes will know they will not be under a flight path.  There will be a further consultation on the detailed flight paths, probably late 2020, with a view to the new flight paths being in place by around 2025.

These will not be easy issues, particularly if, in order to give some communities respite, aircraft noise might need to be introduced into new areas.  HACAN will be engaging with the airport in order to try to get the best outcome for residents.  The pressure will be on Heathrow not just because of the numbers of people affected but to show that airspace changes can be introduced in a way which benefits residents.  Heathrow really does have the chance to be a beacon for positive change.  No pressure then?! 

On the day that the consultation about a third runway closes it is still my view that a new runway at Heathrow is far from a done deal.

There are still many hurdles for the airport to overcome.  So far it has got over just two of them: the recommendation of a third runway by the Airports Commission in July 2015 and then last October the announcement from Theresa May that a new runway at Heathrow was her Government’s preferred option.  

The next big hurdle will be the vote in Parliament later this year or early next year.  Technically, it is a vote on the National Policy Statement on Airports (NPS) but in reality it is about a third runway.  It would be a surprise, though, if Heathrow falls at this hurdle.  With a majority of Conservative and Labour MPs expected to back the NPS is likely to be approved.

Perhaps the one thing which could alter this, or certainly reduce the majority, is the growing realization that the economic benefits of a third runway have been significantly downgraded.  The Airports Commission put them at £211bn (over a 60 year period).  The Department for Transport now says they will be no more than £61bn, and a lot less if the costs of noise, air pollution etc are taken into account.  Heathrow’s promises to the regions were based on the higher figure.  There are signs that it is beginning to hit home to MPs representing these areas that the benefits to them might be a lot less than they were led to believe.

Even if a third runway does scale the NPS hurdle it could emerge as a different beast.  A number of MPs with whom HACAN has spoken are attracted by the idea of making their vote for a third runway dependent on tougher conditions than the Department for Transport is promising.  For example, there is growing backing for a night flight ban to be longer than six and a half hours.

But beyond the NPS further hurdles remain.

There will almost certainly be a legal challenge by Greenpeace and a number of local authorities.  The case will be led by the same legal team which mounted a successful challenge to the last Labour Government’s plans for a third runway 10 years ago so the chance of it succeeding cannot be discounted.  Certainly a number of the local authority leaders believe they have a strong case.  It would need, though, to be a decisive win to deal a knock-out blow to a third runway rather than simply force the Government to come back with an amended scheme.

Air pollution will continue to cast a pall of uncertainty over the third runway.  The previous Government’s air quality strategy, published a few weeks ago, appeared to suggest air pollution around Heathrow could not be sorted until at least 2030 – five years after the new runway would be due to open.  Governments can often wriggle out of environmental problems but its wriggle-room on air pollution may be limited given the fact air pollution is such a high-profile issue, certainly in London.  It is much less dominant outside the capital where leaders tend to see it as largely a London problem. 

A third hurdle is the continuing uncertainty over the costs of the road and rail infrastructure needed to serve a new runway:  how high will they be and who will pay them?  The consultation document did not clarify either question.  The costs have been put at anything between £5bn and £18bn.  Heathrow has said it will only pay its share of the costs which it puts at £1.bn.  I would not argue that Heathrow should pay all the costs because the wider economy will also benefit from the new road and rail schemes but until it is clear what costs will fall on the public purse and whether the new Government will be prepared to pay them, this remains a hurdle in the path of a third runway.

The final hurdle is the continuing opposition to a third runway.  I suspect we will only be able to gauge the actual strength of this opposition when more will be known about flight paths next year.  Heathrow is trying to involve the community as closely as possible in developing its flight paths (flight paths will change significantly even at a two runway airport due to the introduction of new technology).  This makes sense but they know and we know it is flight paths which are most likely get local communities truly engaged in the issue.  The flight paths hurdle is the joker in the pack. Nobody really knows how it will play out. 

So, as we await a new Government in a few weeks, we are about mid-point in the hurdles race and still uncertain if any of them will trip up Heathrow’s plans.  As a boy I thrilled to David Hemery’s gold medal win in the 800 metres hurdles in the 1968 Olympics – https://youtu.be/fzofxFyNuG4 (worth watching if only for David Coleman’s legendary commentary).  Hemery dominated the field.  If Heathrow get to the finishing tape, it will be a very different type of race: one hurdle, one formidable challenge, at a time.  And there are still plenty of them to come.   

Some years ago, while doing some work for the UK Noise Association, I was asked to shortlist the noisiest roads in the UK.  I took a trip like no other.  Not for me seeking out the quiet beauty spots, the wooded glens or the babbling brooks.  I was on a mission to find the noisiest roads…and to spend as much time beside them as possible.

There are similar noise ‘hotspots’ under the Heathrow flight paths.  Go down to Cranford, for example, the last settlement in Hounslow before you reach Heathrow.  Mere words can’t convey the intensity of the noise.

Cranford, rightly, gets special insulation treatment.  Homes, including roofs, are fully insulated.  It get’s respite, a half day’s break from the noise when the planes are landing, but respite alone would not be enough.  It needs and gets ‘respite plus’.

Cranford, along with some of the other places, very close to the airport are obvious candidates for respite plus.  But are there others?  Are there less obvious hotspots which could qualify?

Heathrow is committed to the principle of respite but should it be looking at additional measures that would be required in the hotspots.  Of course, ‘hotspots’ would need to be carefully defined as funds are not limitless.

I would suggest that these are the sort of criteria which could be used in defining a hotspot:

• The noise of the aircraft

• The frequency of the aircraft

• The number of hours without a break

• Whether an area gets both arrivals and departures

• Whether an area is overflown by aircraft from one or more flight path or airport

Perhaps the defining criteria would be that somebody living in a hot spot could be endangering their mental or physical health if ‘respite plus’ was not offered.  There may be a role for the soon-to-be-established Independent Noise Authority in helping define the criteria. 

The airport – any airport – would then be required to work alongside the householders and the local authority to look at what respite plus might entail.  This would not be an easy task but the first step on the road would be to recognise there are hotspots where respite on its own may not be enough to mitigate the noise problem.