I have sent this letter to the Chief Executive of Heathrow Airport in regard to the issue of aircraft noise. I am also making representations to NATs, Wokingham Borough Council and to the Aviation Minister:
Mr John Holland-Kaye
Chief Executive Officer
Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited
The Compass Centre, Nelson Road
Hounslow, Middlesex TW6 2GW
8 October 2015
Dear Mr Holland-Kaye
I am writing further to our recent meeting at which we discussed the impact of overhead noise from aircraft travelling to and from Heathrow Airport.
As you are aware, this issue is very contentious locally and has become more so in recent months. It appears that there is now a concentration of flights in narrow corridors instead of spreading them out, creating air motorways over my constituency which cause big disturbance and unhappiness.
I enclose an example of correspondence I have received from local residents, which demonstrates the impact this is having. I would welcome your comments in response to this.
I believe we need to return to the previous status quo whereby flights operated on a much wider corridor, which helped to mitigate much of the noise. I would be grateful if you could raise this matter with NATs and encourage them to do more to tackle this problem.
It would also be helpful if planes entering and departing Heathrow adopted a steeper take-off and landing approach to enable them to fly higher.
Yours sincerely
John Redwood
October 13, 2015
Is there any reason for short haul flights the same rules as are used at London City Airport could not be used? This would require a change of aircraft fleet, which could be done over time. Use of quieter planes, much steeper land and take off approaches, would be a big help. It would not solve the problem for long haul planes but could certainly help with the shorter routes.
Also a number of planes have “hush kits” available which are added to the engines to reduce noise. These are mandated in places like New Zealand and I often wonder why we don’t use them here. Obviously they are extra cost so the industry is never going to do that without regulatory carrots and sticks.
As for the routing of planes really we need a step change in the technology used by air traffic control. This will be a big investment worldwide but there are large gains to be made. For instance allowing planes to climb and descend at the most fuel efficient rates, instead of having to swap altitude quickly to one of the main control layers, would reap large fuel savings, but this would need much more sophisticated air traffic control before it could become routine.
Good luck