Have your say on Heathrow Airport airspace changes

Some in SE23 have received a consultation leaflet thru the door. There are huge changes in Heathrow flightpaths being planned, many additional London overflights proposed whether or not there is a 3rd runway and the opportunity to say something about it is now. Many have experienced SE23 getting a raw deal indeed from London City when they implemented new flightpaths. Engaging with the consultation at least means we will be properly represented.

Airport Watch (a good source of analysis and information http://www.airportwatch.org.uk/) says:-
’ EVERYONE living within approximately 40 miles? of Heathrow should go to Heathrow website https://afo.heathrowconsultation.com/ and put in their postcode, to see if the proposed changes to airspace & flight paths will affect them. People currently NOT overflown will find they will be in future’.

Just kicking this off for discussion, and thought this major change is worth a thread in its own right - much more info and discussion about aircraft noise and the joint impacts of Heathrow and London City Airports on SE23 residents are in the existing thread on aircraft noise.

so the first news is that we will have two possible arrivals routes when there is westerly wind, A3 at 4-5000ft, 0-47 flights per hour, and a similar route A4 5-6000 ft, also 0-47 flights per hour. Not clear to me yet if these can happen simultaneously! this pic shows arrivals routes.

on easterly winds we are on Departures route D2 at 4-5000 ft, 0-17 planes per hour.
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A few people have complained that Heathrow is not holding consultation events in SE London. I asked why and they said they were focused on areas where planes would be under 4000ft - which they say will not include us. Nevertheless, our area will see many more Heathrow planes on new flightpaths, as well as of course London City-bound planes.

Well now there is a meeting with Heathrow, on Monday. Details are below.

There will be a meeting about the Heathrow Consultation focusing on the impact of the proposals on East, North East and South East London on Monday 4th Feb at 7pm.

It will be held in the Novotel London Blackfriars Hotel, 46 Blackfriars Rd, South Bank, London SE1 8NZ.

The venue is a short walk from Waterloo Station and from Southwark Underground Station and a few minutes more from London Bridge.

The meeting will be chaired by HACAN but senior people from Heathrow will be there to explain and answer questions on their consultation proposals.

It will be the only consultation meeting focusing specifically East, North East and South East London.

Here are two short briefings which HACAN has done you might find useful to have a look at before the meeting:

Here is the way the proposals could impact East and NE London: http://hacan.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/HACAN-East-Heathrow-Consultation-East-London.pdf

Here is the way the proposals could impact SE London: http://hacan.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Heathrow-Consultation-briefing-SE-London.pdf

Great - so basically we’ll have either Heathrow or City arrivals every day.

We already do.

Apparently the situation has changed and there is to be a further meeting, with MP Vicky Foxcroft attending.

BTW There are two consultations this year regarding Heathrow. The one currently open is about managing flights with the existing runways. The second consultation begins in June, and is about re-designing airspace and flight paths assuming the third runway is constructed.

yes that’s right. the details I have been given are as follows.
Vicky Foxcroft MP is also hosting an event on Thursday 21st February, 1830-2000 at Narthex room at Telegraph Hill Centre, Kitto Rd, London SE14 5TY and Heathrow reps will be attending.’

Given that airplanes are now a necessary part of almost everybody’s life and they have to land somewhere, who would you like them to fly over instead?

That’s effectively the question Heathrow is asking and is why they are having consultation events about it. They are planning radical flight path changes over London and need to consult with the overflown on how they should best manage it. Anyone who has a view can attend an event or complete the consultation.

I was trying to suggest, rather too obscurely it would seem, that wanting what, to me at least, is the fairly modest noise of the flight paths moved to someone else’s neighbourhood was all a bit NIMBY!

Let’s keep our commentary constructive please. Thank you @ThorNogson for your informative posts.

I think everyone accepts there’s likely to be some aircraft noise. However, there should be either a few routes so everyone gets some respite, or if there’s only one new route, those immediately under it should get some help to mitigate the noise/loss of property value. Someone will be profiting somewhere - it’s not fair that the cost doesn’t get applied to them.

Just to explain, one of the key issues is whether flight paths should remain dispersed or be concentrated. You mention that you regard the noise from flight paths as “fairly modest” which suggests that currently you do not have a concentrated flight path going directly over your house. This consultation includes (among other things) debate about whether LHR flight paths (which currently disperse arrivals fairly evenly over an area about 5km wide) should instead concentrate all those flights onto the same paths (using more accurate navigation). So you could wake up in a year’s time and find that suddenly you are living directly under a flightpath and now have 150 flights a day going over, rather than the relatively small number that currently do.

If you have followed the Aircraft Noise thread you will have seen that this is exactly what LCY did in 2016 following an almost non-existent consultation process - they have concentrated all their arrivals which used to be dispersed over a 5km area into an area that is about 200m wide meaning the poor people unlucky enough to live under that area went from having maybe 10-20 flights a day over their homes now have 150.

I always felt this was a good idea.

I went to the Heathrow community engagement meeting earlier this week. One of their proposals will be to have three flight paths in each area ‘envelope’ so that everyone has some respite from noise.

No-one at the well-attended meeting (people from all over SE and NE London) suggested that their area should have complete exemption from noise, it’s just that they want the pain to be shared.

It seems to be a trend in aviation that all flight paths are concentrated - Performance Based Navigation - so all flights will be (if not already) following a rigidly accurate flight path. The issue then is how many can you create, in order to share the pain.

Still unsure about whether to respond to Heathrow and make sure our area’s views are heard? It’s now easy to make sense of what to say with the help of the Forest Hill Society’s new guide to the consultation for South East Londoners. For each Heathrow question, there are suggestions about what the key issues are for people in our area and what we might say about them.

Here is the guide:- https://1drv.ms/p/s!AuV6NOp8I8tAkX-wJntuswM5961T

The deadline for responding to Heathrow’s proposed redesign of flight paths over London is 4th March. The Heathrow link to get started is here. https://t.co/oH5DQHiSsz

North Kent transport infrastructure would have needed tens of billions invested in it before there was any hope of that thing getting built. It would also have been built on a golf course I love to visit. I’m impartial though I promise.

Just seen this on Twitter:

Quick guide to completing the consultation at http://www.foresthillsociety.com/2019/02/heathrow-airport-flight-path.html

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