Night Flights Ruling

Residents vow to fight to win

Residents from HACAN ClearSkies vowed to continue their fight to stop night flights at Heathrow following today’s judgement from the European Court of Human Rights. The court overturned the earlier judgment that night flights breached the Human Rights Convention (1), but it gave the residents the green light to take their fight back to the UK courts (2).

John Stewart, Chair HACAN ClearSkies, said, “The European court seems to have given us the opportunity to argue our case again in the UK courts. We fight on. We fight to win. We believe it is a battle we will win as we have the support of most of the politicians in London and the Thames Valley. The political pressure on the Government will remain to do something about night flight.”

Notes for Editors

  1. The Appeal Court did not agree, by a majority of 12-5, with the the judgement of the earlier court (released in October 2001) that night flights were a breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention that guarantees people a right to “the peaceful enjoyment” of their own homes.

  2. The Appeal Court did find, by a majority of 18-1 (only the UK judge dissenting), that, under Article 13 of the Human Rights Convention, the residents had not been given the opportunity to make their case fully in the UK Courts: crucially, that they had not been able to argue the human rights aspects of the case in the UK courts because human rights legislation had not been incorporated into UK law at the time.

For further information contact John Stewart on 0207 737 6641 or 07957 385650.