People still have a month to submit their comments on the consultation by NATS, the UK's leading air traffic management company, on proposals to redraw the aircraft route map across a large area of south-east England.

The 13-week consultation, which opened on February 21, ends on May 22.

The proposed changes are the first fundamental overhaul in several decades for an area of airspace called Terminal Control North (TCN). They are designed to reduce delay whilst maintaining safety and improving environmental performance.

The region is one of the most complex areas of airspace in the world, with routes in and out of major airports including Heathrow, Stansted, Luton and London City as well as smaller airports such as Southend and RAF Northolt.

Jonathan Astill, NATS' Head of Airspace Management, said: "All these airports have grown considerably in the past 20 years within the existing airspace infrastructure.

"Just like bottlenecks on our roads, increased air traffic causes congestion in the airways meaning delay and extra fuel burn - and that has an impact on the environment. Redrawing the routes enables us to make them more efficient.

"We are consulting very widely on these proposals and have already visited more than 30 councils, and more than 20 MPs, to discuss local implications and to answer their questions on the proposals. We have more meetings scheduled. We are receiving a wide range of feedback which will be taken into account in finalising the proposal we put forward for consideration by the Civil Aviation Authority."

Members of the public can submit their views either through their local council or MP or via the dedicated website nats.co.uk/TCNconsultation, which includes a postcode search facility and an explanatory video. It also includes a page of frequently asked questions. Already people have viewed more than 1m pages and downloaded 200,000 sections of the consultation document.

Copies of the full 420-page consultation document are held by almost 700 libraries across the TCN region.

The four main objectives of the proposal are to: reduce congestion over Brookmans Park in Hertfordshire caused by converging departure routes from Heathrow, Luton, London City and Northolt.

relocate and separate the holding facilities for Luton and Stansted to accommodate their growth. The airports currently share two holds; under these proposals each would have a dedicated hold and Stansted an additional hold.

introduce continuous descent approaches (CDA) where aircraft stay higher for longer, reducing fuel burn and noise, for Stansted's easterly runway.

formalise arrival and departure routes for London City to reflect the growing number of jet aircraft using the airport, and to provide a new hold.

NATS has divided the consultation region into five areas to make it easier for people to understand what effect, if any, it may have on them. These five areas are Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and North East Essex; Chilterns and Luton; East Hertfordshire and West Essex; West and North West London; East London and South East Essex.

NATS is directly consulting more than 3,000 stakeholders including local MPs, county, district and borough councils, airport consultative committees, environmental groups and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, business organisations, airlines, and recreational aviation groups.

All feedback will be submitted to the CAA which decides whether the proposed change can go ahead. If approved, the change would not become operational before Spring 2009.

1:49pm Wednesday 23rd April 2008

Print

Email this