Heathrow announces early cancellation of current airspace trials
Heathrow announced today that it will be ending the current airspace trials on two months early, on the 12th November 2014.
This is in light of residents feedback (thanks to all those that signed the petition and included comments) and meetings with local groups, authorities and MPs. Yesterday we met with Heathrow to discuss the trials and their effect on the local community – full write-up of the meeting & other info will follow soon.
LHR then expressed their wish to end the trials early due to the massive number of complaints they had received but also needed to ensure enough data was recorded to have results analysed.
The reasons for not widely publicising the trials in advance included not wanting to skew results, also the first trial Jan-June this year only received just over 100 complaints. LHR thought feedback to the second trial would be similar numbers so thought there wouldn’t be a need for fuller notice. This trial’s complaint level reached over 500 in one day! One admission from Heathrow is that they will ensure all trial details are fully publicised in advance of any future ones, clearly Heathrow realise that the lack of communication angered local residents.
Matt Gorman, Heathrow Director of Sustainability and Environment:
“These trials are crucial in helping us develop ways to manage our airspace more effectively and to reduce noise from Heathrow. We do, however, appreciate that some residents will have experienced a temporary increase in noise as a result of these trials. The feedback we have received during the trials is very important to this process. We are always looking to minimise the disturbance residents may experience as a result of flights around Heathrow, and so we are pleased to have been able to work with NATS to bring an early end to the trials.”