London City Airport’s Airspace Modernisation Consultation & Our Future Skies

[JGD]

The Forest Hill Society has been engaging with London City Airport for some time, particularly over the adverse environmental impacts on residents of the twenty-mile, low altitude, concentrated level arrivals flight path introduced by the Airport over SE London early in 2016.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) as the regulator and primary decision maker for UK Airspace has directed that UK airports prepare Airspace Change Proposals and submit them to the CAA in a Seven Stage process all of which may take up to five years before they are implemented. This government led programme to modernise UK airspace which is anticipated to be completed by 2025, is all part of a European and world-wide initiative to modernise how our airspace is used.

London City Airport has published its first outputs in this process and is seeking responses by 25 August 2019.

It has emerged that LCA’s consultation in 2014 was not as wide nor as complete as might have been expected. Questions had been raised about these processes, the narrowness of the consultation base and the outcomes. Some of these issues have been overtaken now by the new CAA directive to modernise the airspace, that has led to LCA being instructed to engage in a second round, all as part of the national exercise.

LCA failed to introduce any mitigation measures when the flight paths were redesigned in 2016. A single concentrated arrivals flight path under 2000 ft over SE London was an appalling environmental misjudgement by the airport. Until this has been corrected no further expansion should be proposed by the airport or considered by any London planning authority. It is noteworthy that the airport was warned very clearly about the expected environmental impacts on the overflown but chose to go ahead anyway.

The consequences for residents in our community who live under the low level narrow corridor flight path is hugely detrimental to their well-being and entitlement to enjoy open-spaces and their gardens without excessive noise intrusion.

Some of these questions have remained unanswered about the conduct of that 2014 consultation and certain behaviours are re-emerging in the current round that suggest that consultees must be alert to key matters being systematically ignored or excluded from consideration in the mandated processes by LCA.

We have concluded that the LCA approach to this consultation is specifically shaped to deliver objectives that are much more closely aligned to the needs of the airline industry as opposed to a balanced approach that makes full and proper consideration of the needs of the communities affected by the current and future airspace design.

London City Airport’s Airspace Modernisation Consultation under the national Our Future Skies programme can be viewed at:

https://www.londoncityairport.com/corpo ... ture-skies

Forest Hill Society response plus explanatory information can be seen at:

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AuV6NOp8I8tAp1vfUqATNHOgL9KP

You are invited to make a response as you may see fit or cut and paste the “Formal Responses – Recommendations “ or sections of it into the space provided at Q4 on the online response web-page:

https://assets.ctfassets.net/ggj4kbqgcc ... e_Form.pdf

[ThorNogson]

re London City Airport expansion terrific to see this letter to the Airport's CEO from Lewisham Council
https://twitter.com/SophieMcGeevor/stat ... 52169?s=20

[ThorNogson]

to respond to the London City Airport flight path consultation , which ends tomorrow, you don't need to get all technical. Here's a clear, heartfelt letter from a local resident which makes clear points. Respond to the consultation at [ourfutureskies@londoncityairport.com](mailto:ourfutureskies@londoncityairport.com)

*'Your Response Form is too ambiguous to complete correctly.*

*First of all, we do not consider that sufficient publicity has been given to this matter. Advertisements in a few freebie newspapers which are not generally available across the area has NOT given the public affected sufficient notice. It also appears to us that with the ongoing Heathrow Consultations, that City Airport are endeavouring to get their Consultations through under the radar.*

*London City Airport is situated in a densely populated residential area and consequently their planes flyover a large residential area including South East London at altitudes of 2000 feet or less when they are some 20 miles from touch down. The noise from these planes is such as to interrupt conversation, radio and television etc particularly in hot weather when windows etc are open. *

*We do not agree that no new areas should be overflown, the noise and pollution generated by these planes must be shared out more fairly and not targeted on the same unfortunate residents. It is imperative, that as a matter of urgency that residents are NOT overflown by planes from more than one airport. This area of SE London is overflown by both City and Heathrow planes.*

*City Airport was built on the understanding that it would be used by turbo prop aircraft and the BAE 146, not the jets now thundering over SE London. In addition, it would be an airport used for business people with the result that there would not be that many flights. Nowadays, planes are thundering over every few minutes. *

*It is amazing how we have to respond to numerous Consultations now, but Concentrated Flight Paths were imposed upon us without any prior notice or Consultation.*

*We are also concerned about safety and pollution with the number of aircraft which fly almost non stop over this area.*

*Resident’s health should come before profit of airports, particularly when they are not even UK owned.*"

[JGD]

Here is a November 2020 update on Airspace Redesign, aircraft noise and the activities of ICCAN, the Independent Commission on Civil Aviation Noise from @ThorNogson. The pandemic has made our skies virtually devoid of aircraft movements - but matters may return to high levels of air-traffic in the New Year.

Two years into ICCAN's mission, it is asking for views on what it should do next.

https://se23.life/t/aircraft-noise-over ... 0/13772/31

You are invited to respond and provide input and comment on the matter of ICCAN’s emerging view on the future of aviation noise management at this link:

https://iccan.gov.uk/future-aviation-noise-management/

Please make your views clear to ICCAN - and perhaps let us hear some of them on this forum.