Flightpaths over ED

[serif]

I don't feel that the planes are any worse here than anywhere else in London, or indeed any of the other European capitals.

[mikese22]

i quite like the planes, reminds me of holidays

[stench]

is this really such a big deal? we live in a city, and a big, important one at that. i take the point that it's not ideally designed, but fundamentally this is never going to change. sure, lobby to keep things in check if it winds you up, but i personally couldn't give a monkeys.. in fact, like the previous poster i rather like staring up and letting the traffic put me in mind of previous trips away. if it's ruining your walks, then go to the country. if it's ruining your dream of "living in a village", then go and live in AN ACTUAL VILLAGE

to whoever it was that said they couldn't hear the olympics commentary, and other similar comments i'd say... do you not suspect you're being just a little over-sensitive? and i was creasing up at the claim that we've got military flights overhead! have you ever heard a tornado jet fighter? no? ever seen the red arrows then? now that's loud... and NOT what i'd call a prominent local feature

i'll say one thing to try and show i'm not just deliberately yanking people's chains here... i DID actually get rather hacked off at Concorde 4 times a day or whatever it was... i DID think that was a bit much noice-wise. glad the old thing's been put out to pasture, courtesy of some marvellous french driving

anyway, i'll leave it at that. any longer would be a bit much to ask given the difficulties in reading and comprehending incurred by the relentless, remoreseless, deafening, nay, satanically doom-laden sound overhead

[macroban]

> satanically doom-laden sound overhead

That was the V1s. You couldn't hear the V2s.

I'd welcome hearing a Merlin a few more times over East Dulwich.

[cicelyl]

Some people are more sensitive to the noise than others. Also, living just a few blocks away and how good yoru windows are can make a major difference on what you hear. I live on a very bad street. At first I thought I was just being overly sensitive, but then when I have friends over who live three blocks south or five blocks due west and they have commented that the planes are way worse over my house.....great!

I actually disagree that nothing can be done. Not enought people have made this an issue, but I can tell you with air traffic levesl scheduled to double this will just get worse for south london. There are solutions, like rotating the planes more from east to west landings and developing other airports around London to spread the burden. Most flights still come in to Heathrow. I have also contacted local politicians and gotten a lot of personal responses. It just takes a few minutes to let them know this is an issue for you....or we could just all live the rest of our lives getting woken up at 5am by jumbo jets.

[SteveT]

When we have airports surrounding London why fly over it instead of landing at the nearest air strip.

Wouldn't that save on fuel, for which they surcharge?

Wouldn't that reduce the risk of one falling to potential disaster in a densely populated area?

[Sue]

Was it just me, or was the noise particularly bad this morning?

Seemed like a load of very loud planes, very close together and very low.

And once they'd woken me up, I couldn't get back to sleep again ....

:(

[Mellors]

They woke me up at about 4.45am this morning and have been consistently bad since then (hence the early morning post!), and we are in a house with new double glazing etc. They are pretty terrible to be honest.

[Huguenot]

Just to put this daft landing direction preoccupation to rest....

Planes take off in the same direction they land, and you have exactly the same number doing both. It doesn't matter which way they go, you'll have the same number of planes.

The stack extends both sides of Heathrow.

Planes taking off are noisier.

It's safer to put populated areas under landing paths rather than take-off paths.

[EDmummy]

I too am absolutely fed up with plane noise early in the morning. The rest of the day I don't seem to notice it. The worse ones for me are the annoying small plans flying in to City Airport. When we first moved in 9 years ago there was little if any small planes heading for City Airport. As someone said previously there is little or no parts of London that are not affected. Saying that, I would rather live here than South West London - terrible in almost all parts.

[Nero]

Cicely, if you post a link to the MP in question and to HACAN more people are likely to take a look and do something. You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink, I know, but at least if you point them in the direction of the water you'll have more of a chance of garnering support.

[Sue]

Brilliant idea - links please !!

[david_carnell]

To answer some of the questions that have been posted on this thread:

Why not land at some other airports dotted around London rather than fly across London to Heathrow? Well, presuming that these flights have come from Europe or the East in general, airports such as Southend or Biggin Hill cannot accomodate large planes (such as 747s) due to their small runways and other various bits of aviation regulation. Nor do they have the infrastructure to cope with the large number of flights that Heathrow deals with.

Why not fly over non-populated areas rather than across central London? In practise this isn' really feasable. Almost all of the South East is densely populated so trying to navigate a circuitous route to avoid populated areas would be complex at best and impossible at worst. By choosing to live in a city with easy access to half a dozen airports (and thus a quick getaway for your summer hols) you have the disadvantage that that close proximity brings - noise.

Why not stop airport expansion before things get worse? For many reasons. The economic benefits that mass air travel and transit bring is enormous. Tourists spending money trickles through the whole economy and the air shipping of goods makes British exports/imports profitable. Unless people are fundamentally prepared to ditch many aspects of their modern lives (foreign foodstuffs for eg) and sacrifice the jobs aviation provides, airport expansion must continue, albeit not infinitely. The environmental and social costs do, of course, need to be addressed but no government in its right mind would halt the growth of air travel and transit - especially in the current economic climate of uncertainty.

Why not build an airport in the Thames Estuary, away from people? It's certainly an option but has many issues to be addressed. Although it would be an immense undertaking and cost a lot these aren't the real difficulties. Heathrow is not merely "an airport". The knock-on industries surrounding it and the jobs that accompany those are huge. It's easy enough to build a high speed rail link to ferry tourists back and forth from the Thames Estuary to central London but you can't move tens of thousands of workers that way. Where would the warehouses for freight go? When you drive to Heathrow all around it are hundreds of offices and storage units all relating to the airport. These can't all be put in the middle of the sea as well. The cost of building the whole thing could be offset by selling Heathrow's land for housing but closing the entire airport would create huge job losses in the local economy.

Aviation is massively problematic and I certainly don't have the all answers but some of the overly-simplistic ideas often touted by environmental groups and the airlines themselves do little to further the argument.

[cicelyl]

Weren't the planes lovely last night?!? Coming in low and every 60 seconds for hours on end. If you think this is an acceptable way to live that is fine, but I don't. I cannot accept that sleep and peace of mind is going to be constantly erroded by such high levels of noise pollution. This problem has developed over huge areas of London and everyone seems to think it is just fine or that nothing can be done. Well, when they do away with the ban on night flights and no one can sleep then maybe people will listen.

East Dulwich is just as bad south west London if you live on or near the flight paths (top half of ED). There is very little difference and indeed our planes seem to be louder as they are turning over ED and have there flaps up, creating a high pitched noise. There are solutions - develop Gatwick and Stanstead and spread the pain, do away with the westerly preference and have more days where planes are landing from the west (spread the pain again) by acknowledging that communities like ED suffer from plane noise as much as communities that live closer to Heathrow and are near to take off paths, have the planes come off the stacks on different paths depending on which runway is in use (planes fly over ED regardless of which runway is being used, meaning we get planes all day but somewhere like Fulham only get them half the day), develop a real plan for 21st century aviation and have an airport which does not take all the planes landing in London flying in at 4000ft over the entire city!

Please write to our MP and city counsellors at www.writetothem.com. It takes a few minutes and I did actually get some good responses - keep the pressure up! They need to know this is impacting our lives. Also, join HACAN at www.hacan.org.uk

Something needs to be done, not just to stop the further planned expansion, but also to deal with the current unacceptable problem.

[LuvSnailz]

Last night I saw a spider the size of my bedside table with dreadlocks.

[AcedOut]

In 5 years of living in ED, I can definitely say it's gotten worse. With the 50% increase at City Airport already having been approved, this is only going to get worse.

Is the local MP the right person to go to? If so, can I suggest we set up some sort of petition, at least to get the ball rolling and to show the necessary people how many people this impacts.

We can talk about this forever, but why not try to action something here?

Silent/quieter aircraft propulsion is not going to be around in commercial aircraft for several decades...

[SeanMacGabhann]

Well, action may be required but unless we agree what the action should be it'll be fairly shambolic

I agree noise levels have increased and it can affect my sleep. But I don't think "spreading" the pain will solve anything. Pretty sure that resident in the north and west feel the way we in the south do too

Do these people have the right idea?

http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/

Are they not just doing what is proposed here? But if they are successful won't that have a knock on for us? So are they right or worng?

The only thing that will reduce noise levels for everyone is a reduction in air traffic - and that begs the question - are you prepared to do your bit and not travel or travel less? Anything else really is nimbyism surely?

[cicelyl]

I do think spreading the pain is the only solution as a wholesale stop on expansion over the next 30 years is not going to help. Spreading the pain means altering the westerly preference as well as using the other airports more. In addition the issue isn't just stopping further expansion, but cutting down on existing noise levels. If you look at development plands for Heathrow the plan is for over 700,000 (currently 475,000) flights a year which compares with 260,000 (190,000 currently) for Stanstead. Heathrow planes fly over much more densly populated areas thus impacting many many more people. They now say 2 million people are impacted by plane noise in London. ED is very badly impacted because we are on the flight path for the North runway, the South runway and for city airport. Basically planes converge over us all day long. However, Southwark has no official lobby on Heathrow plane noise and is not a party to 2M a cross-party lobby group which includes councils like Hammersmith, Fulham, Richmond etc. Unless the government acutally has the will-power to realize this is seriously impacting the quality of life in London and decides to develop a Thames estuary airport we will all spend a large part of our lives living with airplane noise or fighting to live in the few scraps of London not severally impacted.

I suggest you email both your MP and you counsellors on the website I set out above. Also, join HACAN. The more members they have from different areas the more effectively they can lobby. They are pretty well organized and run and their webiste has lots of info.

I will look into a petition and let your know if this could work....but a flood of emails and letters is also effective.

[macroban]

> If you look at development plands for Heathrow the plan is for over 700,000 (currently 475,000) flights a year which compares with 260,000 (190,000 currently) for Stanstead.

How stale are these data?

I was under the impression that there has been a permanent step-change downward in flight numbers.

[Asset]

isn't the westerly preference because of the prevailing wind from the west and therefore can't really be changed?

[SplendidLikePeckham]

isn't the westerly preference because of the prevailing wind from the west and therefore can't really be changed?

No. When there is very low wind or no wind at all, planes still fly over us - hence "westerly preference". Its not really fair and has been that way for ages. In such situations they should split it half and half easterly/westerly operation. That's not nimbyism - just common sense.

[Asset]

But when the wind is from the east we get no planes, doesn't happen often but is noticable when it does.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Mary Poppins is the one I feel sorry for.

Why can't we ban flights between 11pm and 7am? Works for the St John's clock bell. Bugger everyone else's time zone.

[SplendidLikePeckham]

Yes - when the wind's coming from the east (at a speed over 5 knots mind) we get no (Heathrow) planes.

But when that wind's under 5 knots, OR if there's no wind at all OR there's a westerly wind we get them.This is westerly preference.

Anyway, in my view the flights during the day I can pretty much live with, a bit annoying at times but bearable. It's the ones landing early in the morning which drive me nuts. I really think the impact level varies a great deal in ED and Peckham. If you're half a mile or so away from the actual route itself it can sound a lot quieter. If they come right over your house (as they do mine) it can sound incredibly loud.

It's not true to say that "South West London is worse" - parts of it are, but many parts aren't (bits of Chiswick for example)- as they are away from the landing routes - and of course runway alternation, whilst it lasts, helps those areas as well.

Bring on a petition I say, if someone regularly stood outside your property at 4.45 in the morning playing music/ shouting/revving their engine etc so that it woke you up pretty much every morning for years - would you seriously let it go without doing something? I signed the anti-Heathrow expansion petition and support Hacan as well. It's crazy that Southwark isn't a part of the 2M group -

A bit anoracky I know, and I apologise, but Cicelyl, do you happen to know why some mornings the planes are lower, or why on others (very occasionally mind) they seem to be a bit further away - usually towards Camberwell? I can't work it out - is it simply that the ATCs sometimes take pity on ED and decide to shift them northwards a bit?

[SeanMacGabhann]

Sorry to go off topic here - but what a fantastic name - SplendidLikePeckham

That is all