What’s airspace change?
Airspace change is the formal process of changing the local routes aircraft take when they arrive at or depart from an airport. These are the lowest altitude part of any flight, and govern where the noise falls and how widespread it is.
The route design governs whether the aircraft are tightly governed by GPS navigation (“motorways in the sky”) or can be widely spread under air traffic control, affecting a larger area but in a less concentrated way.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) currently oversees the process of design and consultation which is used when these routes are changed. At present it’s a multi-stage process with the airport, route designers and community reps working together to try to agree guidelines which will deliver the best outcomes.
Luton Airport has undertaken two such airspace changes in the last decade: firstly to tighten up the flights departing to the west and turning left past Redbourn to fly between Harpenden and St Albans. This was our first experience of a GPS route, and many people felt the “motorway in the sky” made them aware of a lot more flights compared to the previously more widely spread tracks.
The second airspace change was on flight arrivals, moving the Luton planes from the holding stack near Royston to a new stack over Grafham Water in near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. There have been vociferous complaints ever since from people in the villages across rural Hunts and Cambs who are now subject to howling noises as the aircraft descend.
In both cases – arrivals and departures – Luton’s flights are often held low by air traffic control due to the need to let northbound flights from London climb over the top of them, or to avoid conflict with Stansted flights. The airport operator had assured us that the current plan to redesign the whole airspace in the south-east would mean this restriction would be lifted, and flights would climb and descend continuously.
However, rather than airport-by-airport redesign, the CAA and DfT have set up the UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS) as a new, central body to redesign and modernise UK airspace, with the declared aim of creating “unified, efficient routes for quieter, quicker, and greener flights, especially around busy London airports, to handle increasing air traffic and new tech like drones, addressing limitations of decades-old designs”. The UKADS is funded by airlines.
Alarm bells start ringing here for three reasons:
- The key objective here, for government and industry, is to pack more flights into the airspace
- The centralised process means there will be far less awareness of local sensitivities and priorities
- Industry is funding this and wants a faster and more streamlined process
So what’s the consultation about?
The CAA is consulting on changes to the process of flightpath change, with the agenda of making it more streamlined by removing current checks and balances. These changes do not set new flightpaths, but will determine:
• how early the public gets to see plans
• how much evidence airports must provide
• how much power communities have to influence decisions
• how noise and environmental impacts are assessed
• what happens if new routes create unexpected harm
Streamlining the airspace change ‘planning’ process, at the expense of community involvement, risks:
• reducing transparency
• giving airports more freedom to move quickly
• limiting opportunities for community input
• reducing evidence about environmental and noise impacts
• weakening protections once new routes are in place
LADACAN and other community-focused organisations have raised strong concerns that the changes will make it harder for residents to be heard and easier for airports to push through changes with less scrutiny.
We need your voices in individual responses which will add weight, particularly if in your own words. To help with that, we have prepared some pages to assist you in understanding and responding to the questions.
Click here to move on to a summary of the consultation document.