Night flight debate over east Kent rages on as consultation nears

Victor Hibben

Clipping: thisiskent

OPPOSITION is mounting to the threat of sleep-busting night flights above Herne Bay. Kent International Airport owner Infratil is asking Thanet District Council to overturn the ban on regular night flying, which could lead to up to six cargo planes a night flying directly over the town.

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Sleepless in Thanet

Steve Dawe

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MANSTON airport proposes to have more night flights. To do this ignores the known health impacts of aircraft noise. Research shows exposure to aircraft noise is damaging to health and even impairs learning in children. How productive will people in Thanet be if their sleep is disturbed, perhaps by noisy freight-carrying aircraft at night? The health evidence collected by researchers throughout the world is that there is a strong association between aviation noise at night and blood pressure problems.

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Public set to be asked for views on night flights from Manston airport

Bob Bayford

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THE public will be asked for their views on plans for regular night flights from Manston airport from 1st November. On Tuesday, Thanet council's chief executive Richard Samuel said its consultation on an application from airport owners Infratil for scheduled flights between 11pm and 6am will last approximately 12 weeks. Infratil submitted its proposals to Thanet council, the planning authority, last week. Part of its application is an assessment of the noise impact of its plans on surrounding towns and villages. Thanet council will have those claims independently reviewed before it launches its public consultation.

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Manston Noise Assessment

BAP filled with holes

Some of the more observant members of our team here at No Night Flights towers have been reviewing the Noise Assessment Report from Bickerdike Allen Partners. They have provided me with a detailed report which highlights issues such as presented on it, including seriously underestimating the numbers of dwellings that will be affected.  They have come up with the following observations...

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Questions, questions

The current owners of Manston Airport want to change the rules that govern night flights. This is a major change in the way the airport is used, so Thanet District Council will be launching a public consultation. Both TDC and Infratil (the airport owners) will probably be doing their best to engineer a "yes" result. Smoke and mirrors, misinformation and partial truths will all play their part.

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Warning to TDC and Infratil over Manston

Thanet District Council and Infratil, the owners of Manston Airport, have been warned they could end up in the High Court if the night-flights consultation process is botched. The warning has come from Paul Twyman, the chairman of airport watchdog the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee (KIACC).

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nightflight-nightmare

Listen up, good people: your Quality of Life is at stake. Scheduled night flights would be a nightmare - you can help stop them before they start.

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Many flights not needed

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Controversy over Manston airport is never far from the headlines but claims by a pilot that flights over Ramsgate are largely unnecessary will reignite the row. While most people in Thanet support the existence, and growth, of Kent International Airport, the subject of flights over the town has temperatures rising. Whether or not you live in the town, the blight that low-flying planes coming over the beaches and Eastcliff bring is pretty much indisputable.

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Hitch with noise monitor

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Problems with a machine used to monitor the noise created by Manston Airport has been blamed on a technical hitch. In July, the Isle of Thanet Gazette reported how members of the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee had been angry to find that a mobile noise monitoring system run by Thanet council had not been working for some months.

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Who knows how noisy

A mobile noise monitor designed to record the volume of flights from Manston airport is still out of action. The machine, which can be taken to different locations across Thanet, is the only one that can be moved from set locations to monitor the level of disturbance made by planes. However, it is lying unused because there are problems with data collection and taking the information from it. Thanet council could not say, or declined to say, exactly how long it had been out of use. A spokeswoman would only say it had not been in use “since early this year”.

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Quiet wisdom

There are people, it is true who are not sensitive to noise; but they are just the very people who are not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intellectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality.

from "On Noise" by Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

Noise map of Kent

click it to big itDear reader, those nice people at the CPRE have produced some maps that are both pretty and informative. They show the distribution of "Tranquility" across our fine nation, and come with an explanation of how the CPRE assess tranquility.

Looking at the map of Kent (click it to big it) the cities and towns are easy to spot, as is the M20 running through Ashford to Folkestone, and the roads radiating out from Canterbury.

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In a nutshell: Noise

Dear reader, your ears are astonishing. They have a subtle sensitivity that is beyond the skills of modern science to duplicate. And they're kinda cute, too. Millions of years of selective honing has produced an exceptionally capable system: consider what an extraordinary and useful skill it is to be able to tell when a politician is lying to you, even with your eyes shut.

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Anger as Kent leader stays away from Manston meeting

Paul Carter

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Paul Carter will be reported to KCC's standards committee after he pulled out of a meeting at Manston airport. The leader of Kent County Council Paul Carter could be reported to the authority’s watchdog on standards after failing to show at a meeting about Manston airport. Cllr Carter was due to attend Friday’s meeting of the Kent International Airport’s Consultative Committee but pulled out at the last minute and did not send a replacement.

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In a nutshell: airport manners

• The Draft Masterplan for KIA is indicative but insubstantial – it needs to be redrafted, and then put out to consultation properly.
• The Section 106 Agreement should reflect the needs of everyone affected by the operation of the airport, not just Infratil and TDC.
• There is absolutely no need or justification for night flights (other than emergency diversions).
• Flight paths should avoid population centres by overflying the sea, or sparsely populated land.
• If overflying towns is unavoidable, the planes could fly higher for longer, and then descend more steeply.
• These ‘people-friendly’ routes should be agreed and implemented before flight volumes increase.
• Infratil must demonstrate that the routes are being adhered to by recording and reporting what the planes actually do, by installing adequate noise and pollution monitoring equipment and ensuring it is used consistently.
• The readings from all the monitoring equipment must be recorded consistently, and the recorded readings must be published frequently and regularly (e.g. on-line).
• Failure to comply with the S106 agreement must be reported and fined. Any decisions not to fine must be explained.

In a nutshell: Manston

Manston a.k.a. Kent International Airport is an ex-RAF base in north-east Kent, just west of Ramsgate. It passed from the RAF to Wiggins, then PlaneStation, owners of EUJet (a budget passenger airline). EUJet went bust, and in August 2005 the administrators sold Manston to Infratil, a New Zealand-based multi-national infrastructure investor.

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Night flying fuels fresh Manston airport fight

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Agreements on night flights cannot be changed until the airport owners make a planning application. An independent group set up to advise on the development of Manston airport has said no to more night flights. Kent International Airport Consultative Committee chairman Paul Twyman told a meeting of Thanet council’s airport working group that while there should be a balance of “economic and environmental interests”, he was against changing current night policy.

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CCC's Regeneration Department

My favourite starfish

In the interests of spreading our love and help far and wide we (Mrs Earplugs and I) met up with some of the Canterbury people who will be dealing with Thanet District Council over the next few months while Infratil’s Masterplan is being goggled at.

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YES WE CAN: enjoy being awake

Yes we can: the story so far... To be commercially viable (let alone successful), Manston will have to be very busy; and night flights are undesirable on a number of counts. Top marks to those of you who have leapt to the conclusion that there will be a lot of daytime flights.

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YES WE CAN: monitor

Yes we can: the story so far… Infratil need Manston to be very busy; night flights are a bad thing; and the daytime flight paths must be designed to be as people-friendly as possible. So what happens next? Step aboard the time machine of your imagination, and gracefully swoop into the future…

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