Air traffic changes over East Anglia scrapped
All plans to change flights path in air space across East Anglia have been scrapped
Two-and-a-half years ago (NATS) published plans to change approach routes into Luton and Stansted Airports.
The proposals would have moved the "holding stacks" into the countryside over Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, taking aircraft low over Newmarket.
There were petitions, there were marches, MPs were outraged. There were 15,600 responses to the public consultation and nearly all of them were against the idea.
NATS launched a second consultation and then postponed a decision for a year.
Now it has effectively scrapped the plans, saying it won't be launching any further consultations over changes to the region's air space.
"The downturn in air traffic levels since the 2008 consultation means there is less urgency on capacity grounds to achieve the changes. Current forecasts show that air traffic levels are not expected to return to the peak levels of 2007 until at least 2013/14," says a spokesman.
"Instead any (future changes) will be incorporated into a wider review of air space over southern England."
Among the proposed changes are plans to keep aircraft higher for longer and make them fly closer together.
At some stage in the future there will be changes to the UK's air space as the problem of overcrowding which first necessitated the changes will return.
But for now NATS can take a back seat.
Welcome to the political blog for the East. I'm Deborah McGurran, the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's Political Editor for the region. From Lowestoft to Luton, this is the place for politics with an eastern twist.
Comment number 1.
At 14th Oct 2010, PeterEastern wrote:My Second comment of the day - I doubt that I will keep up this level of contribution, however... my company (ITO World) which is based in East Anglia and specialists in transport data analysis produced a visualisation showing the recovery of air flights over Europe following the Icelandic volcano.
It has two days of more 'normal' levels of activity at the end. It is clear from the animation that 'normal' means a very large number of flights many of which pass over Suffolk.
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