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Initial Feedback Report for the consultation

Photos and news from the Rural Peace Rally in London

Event in London to mark the end of the NATS Terminal Control North consultation

Song lyrics written by local resident Lez Gray

What changes are NATS proposing?

Three new holding stacks, one for Luton and two for Stansted
New dedicated flightpaths into and out of Luton and Stansted

Aircraft load the stack at the lowest free space. Stack empty, the first plane will join at the lowest level, the second the next 1,000ft up and so on. It would be pointless for every jet to join at 14,000ft and then have to spiral down if it was the only one, especially as it would probably only require to hold for one circuit.

The race track pattern flown does in fact look like truncated funnel from the vertical elevation, broad at the top and narrower at the bottom. This is because the higher they fly the faster they have to fly, so a constant rate turn at 400 knots needs much more room than the same rate of turn at 250 knots. The reason they can slow down when lower is to do with numerous factors relating to engine power and lift and air density. Its quite complex but basically they can fly more slowly.

The pattern marked on the map shows the biggest circuit at the top. However local observation shows that the accuracy of flying these patterns can be somewhat wayward! So people should not think they will be excluded if they live outside the pattern. Also actual operation practice will probably cause unexpected variations.

This happened in the 1999 and 2004 airspace changes and resulted in heavy aircraft traffic along the Stour Valley where little had been expected. This despite "hours of testing"(NATS). The same line they are spinning over these changes, but wasn't Heathrow Terminal five tested as well!

Terminal Control operates over controlled airspace for aircraft to and from airports in the south east. Terminal Control North (TCN) serves the region north of the Thames for Heathrow, Stansted, Luton, London City and Northolt airports as well as for military airports. NATS is a Public Private Partnership whose shareholders comprise the Government, major UK airlines, BAA, banks and NATS employees. NATS provides air traffic services exclusively for TCN under license from, and regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority.

The NATS consultation document proposes route changes to certain parts of the system and breaks the region down into five areas for which there are varying degrees of interdependency. NATS are proposing significant changes to the flight path of air traffic arrivals into Luton and Stansted which pass over part of the Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and North East Essex area to cater for increased air traffic and reduce delays.

Due to the rapid increase of air traffic, the current TCN airspace is now inefficient in serving the demand from aircraft operators. In proposing the changes, NATS have tried to seek a balance between efficiency gains for the airspace users and consequent impact on the environment whilst assuring safety.

In the Overview Section of the consultation documents, NATS states ” Luton and Stansted currently share ‘holds’ where aircraft fly a prescribed circuit waiting to land (holds are also sometimes referred to as ‘stacks’). Sharing holds causes additional delay because traffic for one airport can get stuck behind traffic queuing for the other. This proposal will provide separate holds for Luton and Stansted traffic to alleviate this additional delay.”

Section E goes on to outline the perceived operational needs “Providing an area for aircraft to hold is important for safety as queuing aircraft must be kept separated from other traffic in the system. The number of aircraft using Stansted is forecast to increase (regardless of any proposals to increase its terminal or runway capacity) and future demand at peak periods is expected to reach levels where one dedicated hold would not be sufficient to accommodate the traffic queuing. Therefore, to ensure future traffic peaks can be safely accommodated, the TCN proposal includes two dedicated holds for Stansted. The two shared holds which exist at present would be replaced with three new holds, one dedicated for Luton arrivals and two dedicated for Stansted arrivals.”

The overall result is a compromise. Across a region with a population of 12.6 million, some efficiency gains are achieved and environmental gains are claimed. However almost all the environmental gains are achieved by moving air traffic to less densely populated areas. The result is that previously tranquil areas will now suffer from environmental harms. Some routes below 4,000ft have been moved to avoid sizeable population centres. Between 4,000 and 7,000ft, the new routes trade off noise against reducing fuel burn/emissions. Above 7,000ft, the priority has been to reduce fuel burn/emissions rather than reduce over flying of population centres.