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 has been extended by four weeks.
The consultation, which opened on February 21 and had been due to end on May 22, will now close on June 19, giving primary stakeholders and members of the public an extra month to consider their views and submit them.
Jonathan Astill, NATS’ Head of Airspace Management, said: “We have listened to those people who have said there was not enough time for them to consider the details of these proposals, and therefore decided to extend the consultation period.
“It is important that everyone who has a view on the proposals has a chance to make those views known and this four-week extension will enable them to do so.
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.
Mr Astill added: “We are consulting very widely on these proposals and have already visited a number of councils, and briefed 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 1.1m pages and downloaded 250,000 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.
Notes to Editors:
· NATS is licensed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to provide air traffic control services and the terms of our licence require the company to be capable of meeting on a continuous basis any reasonable level of overall demand and permitting access to airspace on the part of all users whilst making the most efficient overall use of airspace. The terms of our licence are available to read in full on the CAA website.
· Any proposed airspace developments undertaken in the UK are carried out subject to the conditions of the CAA Directorate of Airspace Policy (DAP) Airspace Change Proposal process (CAP 725).
· NATS provides en-route air traffic control from the London Area and London Terminal Control Centres at Swanwick, Hampshire; the Scottish Area Control Centre and Oceanic Area Control Centres at Prestwick, Ayrshire and the Manchester Area Control Centre located at Manchester Airport.
· NATS also provides air traffic control services at 15 of the UK’s major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
· NATS handled nearly 2.5 million flights in 2007
