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Aircraft numbers matter

One of the most significant, and most welcome, sentences in the Government’s Aviation Green Paper (1) is this:

“the government recognises that statistics showing past and future improvements in noise do not necessarily match the experience of some people living under flightpaths, for whom the benefits of quieter aircraft can be cancelled out by greater frequency of movements or the effects of concentrated traffic associated with more accurate navigation technology”

It is official recognition that, for many people, it is the number of planes overhead that can be the all-important factor in how disturbed they are by the noise.

And the Government expects a big increase in aircraft numbers by 2050:

The table, taken from a major study the Government commissioned from the CAA (2) shows increases at individual airports of up to 83% (with an average just under 40%).

The CAA study found that, despite the projected increase in flight numbers, the numbers people impacted by noise would fall.

The study, the most comprehensive ever undertaken to assess future noise levels, found that the fall would be greater if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of new homes will have been built in the impacted areas by 2050.

The CAA study also found that the number of people highly annoyed by noise would fall at most airports.

The main reason why the CAA expects numbers to fall is the progressive introduction of less noisy aircraft.

It is not the purpose of this blog to criticise the CAA's study. It would be arrogant and ignorant to do so. It is an impressive piece of work. All this blog wants to do is make the case that the total number of aircraft passing over a community may be the all-important factor.

The prime – and very often only concern – for most people is how many planes go over their own community. They are much less interested in the total number of aircraft using the airport or even how many runways it has. And many of them have little interest in other communities.

The challenge, therefore, for the industry and government is to find a way to cap number of flights over any one community.

This is likely to require the introduction of multiple flight paths. This can be made possible by new technology. Across the world airports are moving from ground-based technology to a satellite system to guide planes in and out of airports. It is known as Performance Based Navigation (PBN). PBN will mean the introduction of narrow, precision flight paths. If a number of them can be introduced at any airport, they can then be rotated, to give each community some respite from the noise and thereby cap the number of aircraft going over any one area. It would allow for some growth at the airport while protecting local communities.

The Green Paper not only proposes multiple flight paths as an option for airports to consider but also proposes a noise cap or noise reduction plans for airports.

These all could be useful tools for capping flight numbers over communities.

A noise cap can be more than a movement cap. The Green Paper says: “A noise cap (also known as a noise envelope) is any measure which restricts noise. In its crudest form this could be a simple movement cap, but the government proposes advocating caps which are based on setting maximum noise exposure levels (such as contour area or noise quota).” It could also include heights of aircraft, compensation packages and night flights.

But, while there is a clear upside to capping, there are two downside which would need to be addressed. The first is the introduction of multiple flight paths might necessitate the creation of flight paths over new areas. In my view, the latter should be avoided wherever possible – it is a brutal act to create a new flight path and would result in a lot of people becoming very angry and annoyed. It should only be done if it is the only way to benefit communities currently under a flight path.

The second is that at single runway airports – the vast majority in most countries – people under the final approach path cannot by definition benefit from multiple flight paths. They should be first in line for a generous compensation and mitigation package. But, if the time comes when any of these communities, even with good mitigation, cannot tolerate any more noise, perhaps that it is the signal that their particular airport has reached the point where further growth is no longer an option, certainly until much quieter aircraft can be introduced.

Bobby Seagull, who shot to fame in University Challenge a couple of series ago, said that his book The Life-Changing Power of Numbers is part biography, part a love letter to numbers. I’m not sure I love numbers like that but I suspect aircraft numbers will be critical to the future noise climate experienced by communities.

John Stewart

References:

(1) Green Paper: Aviation 2050, The future of UK aviation, A consultation

(2) CAA Study: Aviation Strategy: Noise Forecast and Analyses, CAP 1731

Hendy Noise

Din from gyms, bars and brothels is nothing new…

author and broadcaster David Hendy considers how the impact on society of global and historical soundscapes must inform our management of neighbourhood noise in today’s complex, crowded cities.

A year ago, while recording my BBC Radio 4 series, I found myself at a busy road junction in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. I could barely hear myself think, surrounded as I was by a rich sonic brew of passing cars, taxis, and lorries, competing with lamp-post loudspeakers blasting out advertising jingles.

Was it noisy? Undoubtedly. Unacceptably noisy? I didn’t think so. Not because I harboured some romantic notion that Ghanaians have some magical tolerance towards noise. They don’t: in Accra I also witnessed quieter neighbourhoods where whole families faced the almost daily aural assault of nearby evangelical churches blasting out amplified sermons at ungodly hours. Those Ghanaians certainly weren’t happy about what reached their ears.

It’s a commonplace to say that noise is in the mind of the beholder; that one person’s music is another person’s din. And most of us would agree that, whatever the merits of the decibel as an objective measurement, noise is ultimately a highly subjective matter. But what Accra brought home to me was something less often acknowledged in debates over sound-levels: that often noise is deep down a matter of simple inequality. Inequality between rich and poor, yes. But more generally, inequality between the powerful and the weak. Which is why we might fruitfully try to think of noise as an abuse of power.

At that busy road junction in Accra, people tolerated the racket because it was the accumulation of sounds, piled one on top of the other, from many different sources. No single sound dominated. No single person caused it. Responsibility – and suffering – was evenly distributed and mutually acknowledged. In that sense, there was no abuse of power going on. The noise, so to speak, was owned collectively. In the quiet neighbourhoods, though, the sound was all one-way. There was the offender – a church – and a group of victims – those living nearby. Responsibility and suffering were starkly divided. There was no collective ownership, and, in short, an obvious abuse of power.

Across history, those in positions of strength and authority – churches, colonists, slave-holders, factory-managers – have by and large been able to impose their standards of behaviour on those with no authority: citizens, parishioners, indigenous peoples, slaves, factory-workers, and the rest. They’ve decided who makes a noise and who doesn’t. They’ve exercised their power to shape the soundscape. In ancient Rome, for example, a city of a million people living cheek-by-jowl, delivery carts would trundle loudly along the narrow stone streets all night long. Gyms, bars, brothels – all stayed open into the small hours, and sleep was a rare commodity. The city’s elite, of course, lived in calm oases such as the Palatine Hill, where they’d only be disturbed by a few footsteps on marble and the trickle of ornamental water. Not only did they care little for those living in the teeming apartment blocks below – why would they? – but they made things appreciably worse for them: night-time deliveries were required specifically to ensure the ruling class could move through the city with ease during the day.

Modern towns and cities are more muddled and layered than ancient Rome. Rich and poor don’t necessarily live together. But neither can they live entirely apart. The city is now a place of rapid movement and constant turnover. Dividing lines between those who make noise and those who don’t are blurred. A great deal of noise is irritating and unwelcome, but much is also generated by productive activity: the whirr of commerce, the buzz of street culture. Silence, meanwhile, can signal calm gentrification – or a place of bleak abandonment. There is also that modern condition: a retreat into private solutions – moving to the suburbs, putting on one’s headphones, soundproofing our places of work and rest. All of which is easier for some than for others. The result is that all too often, the world’s supply of unwanted sound has been distributed very unevenly – and that a collective response to the problem of noise is too often abandoned as simply too much for us to contemplate as individual citizens.

What remains even today, then, is this fundamental and enduring difficulty: ensuring that noise is in some sense ‘equitable’ – generated by all and experienced by all, under the control of no one person more than any other. That way, everyone has an interest in ‘solving’ noise – by which I mean agreeing some sort of mutually agreed notion of what is tolerable and what is not. Creating this delicate equilibrium is never easy. Wanting an off-switch will lead to no end of trouble: it sets the bar too high. The more realistic aspiration is to find some point in the volume dial that is workable, some live-and-let-live ethos. The Dutch had a slogan for it back in the 1970s. It simply said, ‘Let’s be gentle with each other’. That might sound a little wishy-washy to contemporary ears, bruised and bloodied as they are by all our disputes and anxieties and suspicions. Yet it reminds us that even today sound has to be managed not by technology or by force but by ethics.

That, of course, is where noise enforcement and legislation comes in. For we cannot always trust ourselves as individuals to be as ethical and as selfless as we would wish. In our democratic era, it is local councils that are – or at least should be – able to ensure on our collective behalf a proper balance between all our competing needs and desires. The powers-that-be don’t always get it right, of course. In ancient Rome, one of the few attempts at reducing noise ended with the bizarre rule that coppersmiths mustn’t operate in any street where a professor lived: a great victory for the education lobby, but hardly much use to anyone else. In New York at the start of the 20^thcentury, street hawkers, newspaper sellers, buskers, roller-skaters, children playing were all targeted – with the result that streets were soon abandoned to traffic and stripped of the sounds of sociable human interaction. Generally, though, we’ve learned by our mistakes. And a simple but profoundly important set of principles has come to be embodied in the various noise regulations now enforced in most modern British, European, and American cities: that there are limits to the noise we can make if it disturbs our neighbours, and there are certain times of day that we can and cannot make a racket.

It’s a code of ethics to which we submit, sometimes happily sometimes grumpily. But it is based on a relatively simple set of compromises. And it is for the public good. Over the years, and with a certain amount of rough justice, it has helped hold cities together and minimise strife. The results have been life enhancing, in the true sense of the word. So whenever we hear our leaders urging that ‘red tape’ is to be slashed, we need to remember what that might mean in practice: the cutting of legislation that keeps the soundscape of our living environment in workable order, the destruction of a social compact, and the potential loss of one of the great democratic achievements of the modern era.

David Hendy wrote and presented Noise: a Human History for BBC Radio 4 in 2013. A book of the series has been published by Profile, and is out now in paperback. He is also Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Sussex.

Robert Light as the head of the new Independent Commission on Civil Aviation Noise (ICCAN).

Changes to flight paths

A New Type of Flight Path Coming Our Way

Over the next few years Heathrow will see the biggest change to its flights paths since it opened in 1946. It will happen whether Heathrow remains a two runway airport or if a third runway is built.

Changes to flight paths are happening at airports across the world, driven by new technology. Ground-based systems are being replaced by satellite-based systems. This is a world away from simply replacing one flight path with an alternative one.

Essentially SATNAV of the air will be coming in. It is called Performance Based Navigation (PBN). In essence, it means that aircraft can be guided more precisely as they land and take-off. Flight paths will be along a few, predicable, concentrated routes. This will allow more aircraft to use an airport, save on fuel costs, possibly reduce CO2 emissions from each aircraft, improve the resilience of airports and probably cut the number of air traffic controllers required.

In January Heathrow will be consulting on the second stage of its plans for new flight paths. Earlier this year it asked for views on the key things people wanted from flight paths. By a big majority people rejected concentrated flight paths flying over the same communities all-day long. People wanted to see new areas avoided if possible but also wanted predicable breaks from the noise.

Heathrow are designing the flight paths to reject all-day concentrated routes and to give people respite even if that may mean some nears are impacted. In January, as part of a major consultation, Heathrow will be asking us for more detail about the sort of flight paths we want.

The choice of new flight paths, though, will constrained by the new technology. PBN flights will be along narrow predicable routes. That is not up for grabs. So dispersing the planes across a wide area will no longer be an option. What is an option is the creation of multiple narrow flight paths which, if rotated regularly, would mean each local community could enjoy guaranteed periods of respite which many don’t get – and yearn for – at the moment. Heathrow has committed itself to rotating flight paths. The limiting factor will be the number of flight paths which can practically be created in the busy airspace of the South East.

The consultation in January will be our next chance to help shape our future flight paths.

PBN

Performance-Based Navigation

More fundamental than changed flight paths

A revolution is taking place in the way aircraft use airspace. And it will have a lasting impact on local communities. Flight paths are changing across the world but the change is much more fundamental than simply moving routes around. New technology is enabling aircraft to be flown in a fundamentally new way. And this will bring significant benefits to the aviation industry.

The way the industry is looking to cater for the predicted explosion in air travel over the coming decades is through making more efficient use of airspace. For much of Western Europe and America, think airspace change, not new runways.

The airspace changes are made possible through the introduction of new technology called Performance Based Navigation (PBN). In essence, it means that aircraft can be guided more precisely as they land and take-off. Flight paths will be along a few, predicable, concentrated routes. This will allow more aircraft to use an airport, save on fuel costs, reduce CO2 emissions from each aircraft, improve the resilience of airports and probably cut the number of air traffic controllers required.

Given the scale of the benefits, it is little wonder the aviation industry is investing huge sums in PBN. 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: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/modes/air/consultations/doc/2014-01-31-sesar/sju1.pdf. In America, its 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 FAA and the aviation industry. 190 countries across the world have introduced PBN.

PBN is not, in my view, an optional process. It will become an integral part of the aviation industry. Check out this video: https://youtu.be/5eMENLKYY6o(if you remember the cowboy and war trailers of the 1960s, you’ll enjoy the dramatic music and voice-over!).

PBN will be hard to reverse. The old technology which guided planes – ground-based systems – is being replaced by something quite different: satellite-based systems. This is a world away from simply replacing one flight path with an alternative one. It is explained in this video: https://youtu.be/FOmyNC8hvOk

PBN will have huge impacts on local communities. Narrow, predicable concentrated routes will create noise ghettos – as has happened at many American airports where PBN has been introduced in a brutal way. At a number of these airports residents have been in revolt and some of them, often backed by their local authorities are taking the Federal aviation authorities to court. The outcomes of the cases are as yet uncertain but, if the residents are successful, it is unlikely that the courts will order that PBN is no longer used. It is more likely the courts will order the flight paths are shared around more equitably or possibly limit the introduction of PBN routes over new communities.

PBN, introduced sensitively, could assist local communities. If there were multiple concentrated routes, rotated regularly, each local community could enjoy guaranteed periods of respite which many don’t get – and yearn for – at the moment.

I’m all too aware that the price of getting such respite is enduring some periods of intense concentration of aircraft overhead: the sort of thing which happens in West London at present when planes landing at Heathrow switch runways at 3pm to give residents a half day’s break from the noise.

But we do need to be brutally honest with ourselves about what the alternatives are……and are not. PBN will become, is becoming, a fact of life. It can either deliver one concentrated route and everything which that entails – noise ghettos; no relief at all for those communities under it; blatant unfairness – or delivers the equitable option: multiple routes, rotated to provide respite.

Some campaigners have argued that they want to see dispersal rather than concentration. I understand that argument but I’m not really sure that is on the table under PBN. The respected former Concorde pilot Jock Lowe is of the view that it would be asking too much of the technology to fire off individual planes in different directions to allow for planned dispersal.

The aim is to introduce PBN at all airports in the UK over the next 10-12 years. The Department for Transport is working closely with NATS, the CAA, the airlines and the airports to make it happen. It is overseen at the highest level by a board chaired by the aviation minister. Key community groups, such as the Aviation Communities Forum and HACAN, have ongoing discussions with the Department and industry stakeholders as the plans are being drawn up. Indeed, HACAN has initiated seminars and working groups to explore how PBN can benefit communities.

NATS have made clear that respite is possible under PBN. Particularly in the congested airspace of London and the South East, the number of multiple routes will be limited but some respite will be possible. And Heathrow is committed to respite being central to its flight path changes.

Fundamental changes to our airspace will be made over the next few years. They will have lasting changes for communities. HACAN has been involved in trying to influence them for over a decade. We will continue to be so to try to ensure PBN-inspired changes benefits communities as well as the industry.

Change on this scale can be frightening for local people. And there is an understandably tendency to do nothing and hope it will go away or to believe we can stop this gigantic wave of change driven relentlessly, as it is, by the onward march of new technology. What we can do is strive to shape that change. I fully believe PBN can bring benefits to local communities. But we need to campaign for them.

to Heathrow and City

Here’s your starter for 10. How many times during a typical year has the east wind blown above 5 knots between lunchtime Saturday and lunchtime Sunday?

The question is of more than quiz trivia interest to people in South East London because it is the only time many of them get a break from aircraft noise.

Here’s how it works:

West Wind: Planes landing at Heathrow; can be over 40 an hour

East Wind: Usually no Heathrow planes, but London City aircraft land in their concentrated corridor over swathes of SE London

Light East Wind: Heathrow planes still landing (because they only switch when the wind gets above about 5 knots) but City planes are also landing (because they switch immediately wind direction changes). Total can be over 50 planes an hour.

East wind above 5 knots Sat lunch – Sun lunch: No planes! Heathrow aircraft are landing over Windsor; and London City is shut.

Last year because of the beast from the east and its summer cousin we saw a lot of east wind but in a typical year it just blows about 30% of the time. How often is it over 5 decibels? I’m not sure. And how often is it over 5 decibels between Saturday lunchtime and Sunday lunchtime? Even less. But that is the only time many in SE London get a break from the noise.

Heathrow and London City have started talking. When Heathrow introduces its new flight paths after 2025, there is the opportunity to provide respite through the introduction of multiple rotating flights (particularly if London City will play ball and add to its current single concentrated flight path). In the short term HACAN is speaking with both the airports and NATS to look at what could be done to ease matters.

A bonus mark to those of you who added Christmas Day: City Airport is closed and an east wind above about 5 knots means Heathrow planes land over Windsor.

Here’s your starter for 10. How many times during a typical year has the east wind blown above 5 knots between lunchtime Saturday and lunchtime Sunday?

The question is of more than quiz trivia interest to people in South East London because it is the only time many of them get a break from aircraft noise.

Here’s how it works:

West Wind: Planes landing at Heathrow; can be over 40 an hour

East Wind: Usually no Heathrow planes, but London City aircraft land in their concentrated corridor over swathes of SE London

East wind above 5 knots Sat lunch – Sun lunch: No planes! Heathrow aircraft are landing over Windsor; and London City is shut.

Last year because of the beast from the east and its summer cousin we saw a lot of east wind but in a typical year it just blows about 30% of the time. How often is it over 5 decibels? I’m not sure. And how often is it over 5 decibels between Saturday lunch time and Sunday lunchtime? Even less. But that is the only time many in SE London get a break from the noise.

Heathrow and London City have started talking. When Heathrow introduces its new flight paths after 2025, there is the opportunity to provide respite through the introduction of multiple rotating flights (particularly if London City will play ball and remove its current single concentrated flight path). In the shorter term HACAN is speaking with both the airports and NATS to look at what could be done to ease the situation.

A bonus mark to those of you who added Christmas Day: City Airport is closed and an east wind above about 5 knots means Heathrow planes land over Windsor.

There is no doubt that the Civil Aviation Authority’s backing last month of London City’s concentrated flight paths was a huge blow to very many people.

But I suspect that is not the end of the matter. There may be renewed pressure on London City to offer some respite.

The pressure could come from three directions:

Local discontent will not go away. And may intensify as thousands more homes are built under or close to the flight path in East London over the next few years. These homes may be well-insulated and many of the newcomers will have some awareness that they will get aircraft noise. However, It is expected that, London City could come to impact at least 74,000 people which would mean it would overfly more people in the UK than any airport except Heathrow and Manchester and almost twice as many as Brussels or Schiphol. Will they all really keep quiet if they get no predicable break from the noise?

Flight paths at airports across London and the South East will be altered. Before Christmas NATS, the air traffic controllers, will publish a major report looking at how the flight paths changes at the different airports can mesh together. It is probable that NATS will not expect to see changes to London City’s flight paths but the changes to the airports’ flight paths are so fundamental that nothing is guaranteed.

Heathrow is committed to introducing respite. Heathrow’s new flight paths are not expected to come in before 2025 (when a third runway would open if it is given final permission) but Heathrow flight paths which were rotated to give people respite would highlight just what a poor deal people were getting from London City.

Licence to grow

In its Aviation Green Paper, expected in December, the Department for Transport will promote the ‘Licence to Grow’ concept where the aviation industry will only be allowed to grow if it deals with its downsides. In this blog I argue that, if the DfT can pull it off, it will get the benefits of aviation growth while minimizing its downsides. You can read it here.

Numbers impacted by a third runway

The Select Committee were right to call on the Department for Transport to come up new estimates of how many people would be impacted by a third runway using the most up-to-date contours. At present, as I indicate below, it is very messy.

Contours

Contours are created by averaging the noise out over a 16 hour day. Until very recently, the Government argued that the 57 decibel contour marked ‘the onset of community annoyance’. Following the SONA report it commissioned from the CAA, this has been revised down to a 54 and 51 contour. The Guardian report was based on the numbers in a 45 contour (which has not been used before and is lower than the WHO currently regards as problematic).

Percentage of population severely annoyed by aircraft noise

57 contour (approx 9 miles from Heathrow) 13%

54 contour (approx 13 miles) 9%

51 contour (approx 17 miles) 7%

45 contour (unknown, but probably over 25 miles) 2.5%

National Policy Statement 2017

(using the 54 decibel contour)

Without 3^rd runway With 3^rd runway Difference

2015 590,000

2030 560,000 650,000 + 92,700

2040 475,000 515,000 + 45,000

2050 430,000 475,000 + 45,000

The Transport Select Committee Report 2018 found thatif the 51 decibel contour was used the total number of people in the noise annoyance footprint in 2030 with a third runway in place would be 1.15 million.

The Guardian article reflects the number of people who would be impacted with a 3^rd runway in place using a 45 decibel contour. The number would be 2.2 million in 2050.

The Department for Transport put out this statement yesterday to confirm it: The figures referenced include everyone that will experience any change in noise level, including those below the Lowest Observed Adverse Effects Level of 51dB LAeq and even those below 45dB LAeq.

What we lack are figures about how many people currently live within the 45 or 51 decibel contours or how many would in 2030 and 2050 if a 3^rd runway is not built. This means no comparisons can be made. Almost certainly, though, the numbers currently within a 45 decibel contour will be over 1.5 million.

by John Stewart

Adventures on night trains

It would be a pity if night trains in Europe disappeared. It would reduce choice for travellers. That is why the week of action starting today organised by Train Tracks Europe – https://back-on-track.eu/action-week-april-2018/ – is important. The campaign seeks to preserve the remaining night trains and bring back many of those which have been withdrawn in recent years.

Night trains may not be everybody’s cup of tea – and in fact on one or two nobody got a cup of tea! – but I’ll miss them if they go. And perhaps more to the point, they will reduce my options for getting across Europe and not just for going on holiday for attending business meetings.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used them on holiday. But that’s just because I’m a lazy holiday-maker. If you can’t get a tiny bit of luxury, a comfortable bed in a nice hotel on holiday, when can you get it? Out with campsites, back-to-nature, do-it-yourself hostels and anything with Airbnb in the title!

But I digress. Night trains have worked for me when going to meetings and conferences in Europe. Take Barcelona. I was invited to speak at a mid-morning press conference by a group of residents living under the flight path to Barcelona airport. Left London on Eurostar late afternoon, change in Paris; in Barcelona for breakfast. Admittedly my hosts struggled to welcome me: they were so unused to somebody arriving by train from London that they went to the wrong station!

Press conference, a long lingering Spanish lunch by the beach, a stroll down Las Ramblas, onto the night train, checked my emails in Paris back at my desk in London mid-morning.

But my overnight trip to Vienna beats that. I made £5,000 whilst on the train.

by John Stewart

Metrics matter

Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have been reading a blog on metrics; far less writing one. I’m not sure I’d really have had much idea of what “metrics” were.

But having chaired HACAN for nearly 20 years I now know metrics matters a lot. The way noise is measured and the assumptions behind when it becomes annoying are critical factors in the determining Government policy on noise.

The importance of getting metrics right was recognized by the Transport Select Committee in its recent report on the National Policy Statement. In effect, it suggested the Department for Transport recalculate the number of people which could be impacted by a three runway Heathrow using the most up-to-date metrics. If this was done it believed ‘an extra 539,327 people would be captured in the annoyance footprint; taking the total number of people in the noise annoyance footprint to over 1.15 million’. This is considerably higher than either the DfT or Heathrow have acknowledged.

The importance metrics right is the also one of the key messages of the report HACAN published this week (in association with Plane Hell Action) which found that aircraft noise can be a problem over 20 miles from Heathrow – areas where the traditional metrics simply ignored: http://hacan.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Corridors-of-Concentration-Report.pdf

It needs to be acknowledged the real progress there has been in recent years in devising more realistic metrics. Credit goes to campaigners who gave banged on about outdated metrics for nearly 20 years, the Airports Commission who came to the issue with fresh eyes, Heathrow who came to understand the need for change and to the Department for Transport which moved things forward significantly in its new airspace policy announced in autumn 2016.

Things are not yet perfect – which I’ll come to later in the blog – but we are in a different world from the dark days of two decades ago. Then the 57 decibel contour was king. If you were inside the contour, it was accepted you had a noise problem. Outside of it, you didn’t really count.

So what was so magical about the 57 decibel contour? It was constructed like this. Over a 16 hour day, the number of aircraft passing over an area and the noise of each plane were noted. The noise was then averaged out. This was then turned into an annual average. If the annual average was over 57 decibel, the area was within the 57 decibel contour.

Why 57 decibels? Because, at the time, this was the level at which the Government argued ‘the onset of community annoyance’ began. Acousticians were careful to say that it was more subtle than that and that some people became annoyed at lower levels but, to all intents and purposes, the 57 decibel contour became the official cut-off point, used at public inquiries and in industry and government documents to illustrate the numbers impacted by individual airports. Latterly, it made no sense. Around Heathrow for example places like Putney and Fulham – both clearly heavily impacted by aircraft noise – were outside the contour.

Things began to look up when, over a decade ago, the EU required member states to use a different metric known as 55Lden. It argued that the ‘onset of community annoyance’ started at a lower level. The difference in numbers impacted at Heathrow was huge: over 725,000 using 55Lden compared with around 245,000 using 57LAeq.

The Airports Commission under Sir Howard Davies, although criticized in other areas, moved the metrics debate forward significantly. It suggested a range of metrics should be used included the ‘N’ metric. Local communities often feel these are more meaningful to them than the average noise. So, for example, N60 would indicate the number of flights over 60 decibels that went over an area in any given period. Heathrow also began to move towards using a suite of metrics.

The culmination of this improved process was the Government’s Airspace Policy announced in autumn 2016. It effectively ditched the 57LAeq contour and replaced it with the 54LAeq as point where ‘the onset of community annoyance’ starts. But it went further. On the basis of a report it had commissioned from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the Department for Transport recognized that around 7% of people could be disturbed when the noise averages out at 51 decibels. These are more meaningful metrics. And not far from what the World Health Organisation recommends.

In geographical terms, it takes the annoyance boundary from about Barnes (57 contour) to Clapham (54 contour) to about the Southwark/Lewisham border (51 contour). As the crow flies, Barnes in 9 miles from Heathrow, Clapham 14 miles and Nunhead (fairly close to the Southwark/Lewisham border), 19 miles. Similar calculations can be done west of the airport.

Accurate metrics matter because only when there is a clear idea of the numbers impacted by noise from an airport can realistic policies be put in place to deal with that noise. Metrics can determine levels of compensation, whether efforts should be made to provide communities with relief and respite from the noise and, indeed, to assess the impact of any new runway.

Campaigners will be pressing for real action based on these more meaningful metrics. We will also continue to press for still further improvements. For example, the existing metrics do not reflect the actual noise impact in areas like Ealing or Teddington which only get planes (on easterly departures) about 30% of the year but, when they do, the impact is significant. A metric that measures only the days areas are overflown would be more meaningful and needs to be added to the suite of metrics used. This would also capture the problems experienced in places like Reading and Caverham which are currently a little outside the 51 decibel contour when measured over a year. A metric also needs to be used which reflects the cumulative impact on areas which experience noise from two airports, such as Heathrow and London City.

The dark days when one outdated metric was relied upon do seem to be over. But the light is not yet shining as brightly as it could be.

by John Stewart

Shaping the Future

Shaping 2018

The essence of successful campaigning is to shape the future. There will be a number of opportunities for aviation campaigners to do that in 2018. It will be the year when crucial decisions will be made and pivotal policy positions set in train.

The most headline-making decision will be on a third runway at Heathrow. Already it is the Government’s preferred option. If Parliament backs it in a vote expected by the summer, it will become official Government policy. The next step will be for Heathrow to begin the 2 – 3 year process of drawing up and consulting on the detailed plans before presenting them to a local planning inquiry for approval.

HACAN has long campaigned against a third runway and will continue to do so. Our principle objection is this: we feel that an extra 700 planes a day will only worsen the noise climate (despite any welcome improvements in aircraft technology and better operational procedures that may be on the way). It will be particularly hard on areas – such as parts of Hammersmith, Chiswick, Brentford and Ealing – which have never had planes before. Lives will be turned upside down and, for some people, it will never go back to the pre-plane days. Already, according to the European Commission, 28% of people impacted by aircraft noise across Europe live under the Heathrow flight paths. We feel that, whatever economic benefits a third runway may bring, the noise disbenefits are simply too great.

While the long-awaited decision on the third runway will capture the headlines, it important that, as campaigners, we don’t let it overshadow our chance to shape other key decisions that will be made in 2018.

On January 17^th, Heathrow will launch two public consultations to run in parallel over a 10 week period. One will concern the very local impacts of a third runway; the other will be about the reorganisation of its flight paths.

While HACAN continues to oppose a third runway, if it does happen, we want the best possible deal for our members who will the people who will be living with the impact of the new runway. We are determined to try to shape that deal. We would of course prefer not to be in a position of trying to shape a deal before a final decision has been taken but that it the reality of where things are and it would be a dereliction of our duty to our members if we didn’t use every opportunity to get the best deal possible.

So, during the consultation, we will be putting forward and campaigning for tough conditions to be embedded in any recommendation the Government may put before Parliament for a third runway.

The six key HACAN conditions would want to see:

A tougher night flight regime than the 6½ hour night currently on offer

Guaranteed respite for all communities within 25 miles of Heathrow

A noise envelope that sets firm limits on noise and flight numbers

World class compensation

A Community Engagement Board

A fourth runway to be ruled out

The conditions should be become part of primary legislation agreed by Parliament in order to provide the firmest guarantee possible that there will be no going back on them.

We will also seek to shape Heathrow’s flight paths consultation. HACAN’s well-known position is that PBN could work for communities if the precision technology is used to introduce a number of routes which are then rotated to provide predicable periods of respite. It could be a positive benefit for communities from Lewisham to Reading who at present are being tormented by all-day flying. Whatever system is finally introduced, it needs to be rooted in the principles of fairness and equity.

The other piece of emerging legislation which will be developed in 2018 will be the new Aviation White Paper being put together by the Department for Transport. It is likely to enshrine in legislation some of the positives which were outlined in the Government’s Airspace Policy, published towards the end of 2017: more realistic metrics for measuring noise annoyance; the recognition of the importance of respite; the establishment of an Independent Noise Authority (expected to happen this April). These are measures HACAN campaigned hard for over many years. We will be joining other organisations like the Airports Community Forum to press for tough measures to cut noise and for airport communities to have a stronger voice in decision-making to be included in the White Paper.

But the consultation last year on the vision behind the White Paper was based on a huge predicted growth in passenger numbers over the coming decades. As indicated above, aviation growth can bring benefits. But future growth, unless regulated in some way, could overwhelm us. When the 90% or so of the world’s population who have never flown start to do so, some controls will probably become inevitable. A fair fiscal system would be the most effective form of control. It needs to be a graduated system where those who fly most frequently – and those who travel the greatest distance – pay the most. Air Passenger Duty, which raises £3.2 billion a year for the Exchequer, includes a distance element. The much-discussed Frequent Flyers Levy – http://afreeride.org/ – bases the tax paid on the number of trips made in a year.

Finally – and as important as anything else for people living with the noise right now – in 2018 we will press for immediate improvements to the current noise climate around Heathrow. Early in the New Year we will publish a report which will suggest that, while most flight paths have not changed in recent years, there has been more concentration of aircraft both of landing and take-off. This needn’t wait until new flight paths are in place to get sorted. We will suggest it is something with air traffic control could deal with in the short-term.

We will continue to defend the runway alternation enjoyed by many people in West London. And back the trials of slightly steeper approaches being carried out by Heathrow. And back the research being carried out into the impact of steeper departures. We will continue to play an active role in bodies such as Heathrow’s Community Noise Forum and the Community Engagement Board (which will incorporate the Heathrow Consultative Committee).

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