Proposed third runway
The government’s public consultation on the expansion of Heathrow closed on 27 February 2008. The council formally opposed the proposals at the cabinet meeting held on 26 February 2008. A government decision is expected late summer 2008.
The consultation document proposed a number of changes:
A 2,200m long third runway and a sixth terminal, on the north of the M4 motorway, leading to the demolition of over 750 properties in the village of Sipson. The new landing flight path will fly over the southern fringes of the borough when on westerly operations (approximately 76 percent of the time). The departure flight path will fly over Southall, Greenford and Northolt when on easterly operations (approximately 24 percent of the time). In order to meet noise restrictions, the new runway will be open by 2020, but will not operate at full capacity until 2030. A total of 702,000 flights will then come in and out of the airport every year - 230,000 more flights than at present.
As an interim measure, in order to increase airport capacity by an extra 60,000 flights per year, the government supports the idea of using the two existing runways for both landings and departures - this is called mixed mode operations. The airport alternates between one runway used for landings and the other for departures, swapping over at 3pm each day. Full mixed mode is expected to be in place by 2015, but some periods of mixed mode operations would be introduced before then. In order to accommodate these operational changes, the existing flight paths will have to change. Resulting in two departure flight paths over the borough during easterly conditions. One will be the same as today, passing over Norwood Green, Hanwell, central Ealing and north Acton. There will be a new flight path over Boston Manor, Gunnersbury, and central and east Acton. The government proposes to use these flight paths until the third runway opens and then to change them again (with a variety of options, one of which misses the borough entirely) reverting back to the use of one runway for landing and the other for departures.
View the consultation paper Adding Capacity at Heathrow Airport (pdf) for maps of the how our borough will be affected.
The new arrival flight path, whilst not directly overhead, will expose the southern fringe of the borough in the south Acton/Chiswick and south Ealing/Brentford borders. The maps show the departure routes during both westerly (yellow) and easterly (brown) operations. Our borough is affected by easterly departures, which occur for, on average 24 percent of the year.
The document uses 2002 as the base year, and it shows the landing and departure maps for that year. These are similar today, with a couple of important exceptions:
-
In 2002, Concorde was still flying and therefore any noise data for 2002 included the Concorde effect of being higher in the areas over which Concorde flew than in years without Concorde, but with the same total number of aircraft movements.
-
In 2002, the annual number of movements (landings plus departures) was 461,000. In 2006, there were an additional 10,000 movements per year, and by the end of 2007, this will have risen further towards the 480,000 cap imposed on BAA at the Terminal 5 Inquiry.
Newly exposed areas
The maps indicate that some areas will be newly exposed to
aircraft. During the period of mixed mode up until 2020, once the
third runway is opened and when the two existing runway flight
paths are changed. There will also be some parts of the borough
that will benefit after 2020 when the southern runway is used for
departures and the flight paths go further south, missing most of
the borough.
The use of average noise contours
The document uses noise contours to show the levels
of noise around the airport. The 2003 White Paper placed a
restriction on any further development at Heathrow by limiting the
area within the 57dBA to 127km2. All the contours shown in the
document are based on a 92 day summer period, which averages out
the effects of westerly and easterly operations, seriously
underestimating how loud a full easterly day can really be over
parts of our borough. In fact, on a day of full easterly
departures, the noise levels in Ealing can be 6dBA higher than any
92 day summer average contour map would suggest - extending the
57dBA contour into our borough.
The introduction of cleaner quieter aircraft?
The government claims that these changes can proceed whilst
still complying with environmental restrictions because new
aircraft technology will produce cleaner, quieter planes. Critics
state that this view is over optimistic, with improvements taking
much longer to be introduced than suggested. The consultation
document does not address the issue of climate change at all, even
though studies suggest aviation already accounts for 13 per cent of
UK global warming emissions and is the fastest growing contributor
to climate change. The government’s plans to expand Heathrow, and
many other airports across the country, undermines its stated
objective to reduce climate change emissions.
Attitudes to aircraft noise
Another criticism of the paper is that it makes little
reference to a recent study on attitudes to aircraft noise (ANASE)
which was published in early November 2007. The study shows that
people are more sensitive to noise than previously thought,
particularly at night, and that this is directly related to
increase in aircraft movements. The government, who paid for
this study, has criticised it’s conclusions and instead rely on
attitudinal data that is over 20 years old. We believe that the
ANASE study, if shown to be deficient, should be repeated, and the
new findings should be used to formulate new policies, rather than
using old outdated
information.
2M group
The council is still a member of the 2M
group
www.2mgroup.org.uk a
collection of councils that oppose the proposal for a third runway.
Even though the consultation period is over, we are still working
with 2M colleagues in ensuring the government understands the level
of opposition to the plans.