Sleep tight before the night flights bite

If you live within earshot of Manston, a good night's sleep will soon be something you can only dream of.

Make the most of your shut-eye before your Council sells you down the river... bit.ly/rbVl4a

Sleep-shattering noise? Grand. Fine.

It's Liberty Hall at Manston. It will be Living Hell with night flights. bit.ly/r6NZ2R

Blimey! A politician talking sense! I wish she was my MP.

It's Mary Macleod, MP for Brentford and Isleworth, who is lucky enough to have Heathrow Airport in her constituency. She is concerned about the health effects of night flights, and advocates phasing them out. How sensible! bit.ly/nkJ1zP

(By way of contrast, my MP is Roger Gale.)

Consultation news

I'm peeved that the most we've been told about the consultation process has come from a bunch of lawyers based in London, Birmingham and Bristol. When will TDC have the sense and decency to speak to us directly?  bit.ly/mWCPRz

Can a map make you cross?

See the Manston flightpath, and see where the TDC councillors live. Now wail and gnash your teeth... bit.ly/p8OsEl

Straight from the horse's orifice...

In the interests of even-handedness and fair play, I thought I would publish Manston's statement on the importance of night flights, despite it being crap. If you can bring yourself to plough through this litany of self-serving distortions and special pleadings, do please bear a few things in mind... bit.ly/nQAZlW

Dear Bob...

An excellent letter to Cllr Bayford that "may be of interest and stimulate other residents to convey their views to our councillors". A rattling good read. bit.ly/nV88K1

Needle and threat

Charles Buchanan, CEO of Manston Tumbleweed Airport, has launched the next round of his campaign to make the airport more sellable... bit.ly/nHkWeA

More on the night flights bid

Yet another "independent" report, written by an aviation lobbying group and commissioned by Manston, is coming out. It will probably forecast employment apocolypse for Kent if Manston doesn't get its way... bit.ly/qIpib5

Night Flights motion killed

The motion on night flights policy was scotched at the very last minute. Incompetence on the part of officers for accepting an illegal motion? Or political finesse on the part of the majority party? You decide: bit.ly/q9a3Xp

Airport Working Party neutered

Crumbs!  "Consideration of the airport's proposed night flying policy" is no longer the AWP's responsibility - so whose is it? bit.ly/pVmfwz

Night Flights: too hot to handle?

Calling all TDC-ologists: what's going to happen on Thursday? bit.ly/orpulo

Clarification

Let's not beat about the bush on this one, I'll make it as clear as I can: no night flights. Not scheduled flights. Not chartered flights. No night flights. Unplanned arrivals: diversions from other airports (due to emergencies, bad weather and so on), humanitarian missions or national crisis are fine. Obviously. But otherwise... no night flights.

I hope that's clear.

A plane coming in to land makes a LOT of noise. At night, when everything else is that much quieter, the sound stands out against the reduced background noise, so seems louder, and is more disruptive. This much is self-evident.

Even modern planes are noisy, and even when they're relatively high up. An enquiry at Stansted in 2007 took evidence of noise complaints that came from a roughly rectangular area 35 miles by 60 miles around the airport. The sound footprint of each aircraft is large; the combined impact of all an airport's traffic taken together is huge.

The noise itself is stressful, as is the loss of sleep - a 10 decibel increase of noise at night raises the risk of hypertension by 14%. On health grounds for all those within earshot, night flights are a non-starter. From the point of view of quality of life, ditto.

Economics: the aviation group of the Local Government Association reports that “no evidence has been produced by the Government or the aviation industry to justify claims that night flights have an overall economic benefit”. That sentence is worth re-reading out loud and thinking about carefully. The LGA, which covers the whole country, but concentrates on local interests and priorities has a 'Strategic Aviation Special Interest Group'. They've done their homework, they've done their sums, and they've come to the conclusion that night flights don't make economic sense.

Matt Clarke (Infratil's Chief Exec) has said that Manston is operating at a fraction of its capacity. Surely there can be no need for them to operate night flights. As there's plenty of available daytime capacity, that should be used up first.

Night flights: unhealthy, uneconomic, unwanted and unnecessary.

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Batty

They must be bats, wanting to fly in the dark. Not in the squeaky, blood-sucking sense. Just a bit nutso. Re-tune your ears and minds to human frequencies and I'll explain...

Quick bit of background for newcomers:

At the end of last year, Infratil published their draft MasterPlan, spelling out their hopes and dreams for the coming years. The projected growth in freight and passenger volumes is staggering. Both Thanet District Council and the CPRE were critical of the plan. The document will now rattle back and forth until an agreed final draft is produced, about September 2009.

In a separate but related development, Infratil (who were hoping to win a contract with BAWC) pushed TDC into changes to the Section 106 Agreement at very short notice. These changes would have allowed them a number of night flights to support the BAWC contract. This had the effect of drawing attention to the consequences of increased traffic through Manston. The BAWC deal fell through, and Thanet Council are now starting to draw up a pre-emptive night flying policy that will see them through until 2018.

With me so far? OK. But...

A lot of keen and clever people have spent a lot of time studying planes and airports. Much head-banging, hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing, midnight oil-burning... you get the picture. All this hard work has been condensed down into reports, analyses and presentations which we can all get hold of - we don't have to re-do all that slog.

The aviation group of the Local Government Association reports that “no evidence has been produced by the Government or the aviation industry to justify claims that night flights have an overall economic benefit”. That sentence is worth re-reading and thinking about. The LGA, which covers the whole country, but is focussed on local interests and priorities has a 'Strategic Aviation Special Interest Group'. They've done their homework, they've done their sums, and they've come to the conclusion that night flights don't make economic sense.

The World Health Organisation has found that people's health is damaged if their sleep is reduced or disrupted by noise. This wouldn't just affect those under the loudest part of the aircrafts' noise footprint - it would affect everyone within earshot.

In earlier applications for night flying, promises have been made that flights would be going in and out to the west of Manston, thus avoiding the more densely populated parts of east Kent. The key phrase in all those promises is "weather permitting".

Fact: most of the time the wind in Britain is westerly or south-westerly. Fact: for safety reasons, pilots prefer to land into the wind. So the most sincere of promises, made with the best of intentions, will come to nought if the wind's blowing in the wrong direction. The night flights would be coming in low over Ramsgate and Thanet to land at Manston. Lots of voters, waking up grumpy, needlessly.

Matt Clarke has said that Manston is operating at a fraction of its capacity, so there can be no need for them to operate night flights. There's plenty of available runway time throughout the daylight hours: surely it would make sense to use that up first.

No economic benefit; proven health cost; vote-loser; unnecessary. The Airport Working Group's recommendations on the proposed night-time flying operations from 2010-2018 should be pretty straightforward: don't.

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New readers start here

Some background...

• Manston Airport is owned by a New Zealand-based company called Infratil.
• Infratil have signed a 'Section 106 Agreement' (S106) with Thanet District Council (TDC) which regulates how Infratil can use Manston - they can't suddenly decide to turn it into a spaceport and launch satellites, for example.
• The S106 states that Infratil isn't allowed to schedule any night flights, although a scheduled flight that arrives late can actually land.
• A night flight is any take-off or landing between 11pm and 7am.
• Infratil have said they want more night flights.

Here's a chance to make your voice heard. If you don't want night flights, sign the petition. If you really don't want night flights, get other people to sign it too.

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