Flight paths into several major UK airports are to be reorganised under plans announced by National Air Traffic Services (Nats), the company responsible for managing UK airspace.

The plans call for flights arriving and departing to be redirected over rural areas in an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of aircraft on populated urban regions.

The reorganisation would involve four new holding stacks being created to serve most of the London airports - Heathrow, London City, Stansted and Luton.

Nats' plans are now entering a 13-week consultation phase, where people and organisations from the affected areas being able to have their say on the proposals. Over 3,000 stakeholders, including airports, airlines, local residents and businesses are expected to be consulted.

Although Nats was unable to say how many people would be affected by the flight path changes, the plans would affect residents in west and north London, east London, Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and the Chilterns.

UK Air Traffic Congestion 'Getting Worse'

Nats explained that the flight path changes - which would be the first significant overhaul in UK airspace organisation for decades - are intended to remove worsening air traffic congestion in the UK's airspace infrastructure.

"All these airports have grown considerably in the past 20 years - London City has grown from virtually nothing since the early 1990s - and we have simply accommodated this growth within the existing airspace infrastructure," said Nats operations director Ian Hall.

Hall continued: "Redrawing the routes enables us to make them more efficient to reduce delay. Just like bottlenecks on roads, increased air traffic causes congestion in the airways meaning delay and extra fuel burn...now is the right time to overhaul the airspace fundamentally to ensure we maintain our high safety standards, reduce delays and minimise the effect on the environment".

Nats claims the reorganisation of the flight paths will mean 20% fewer people will be affected by noise from aircraft flying below 4,000 feet. It says noise which currently affects urban areas in the regions listed above, such as Hitchin, Hatfield, Royston and Southend - would reduce because aircraft would be re-routed away from those areas.

Nats Says Aircraft Noise To Increase

Newspapers have been quick to point out that at the same time villages in rural Essex, Suffolk and Hertfordshire would experience far greater noise. Nats' consultation document estimates the number of people affected by noise will rise by 11% near London City and by 9% in the areas surrounding Stansted.

Nats admitted that the flight path plans were likely to mean increased levels of aircraft noise in rural areas, but said the proposed routes were the best compromise possible in the circumstances.

The consultation document said: "Avoiding both densely populated areas and the surrounding countryside was not possible in airspace that is amongst the busiest in the world. As a result, requests for route changes tended to move routes away from centres of population to less populated countryside".

If approved by the Civil Aviation Authority, the new flight paths could be phased-in from March 2009.

Source - Airport International's Aviation Correspondent

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