Someone wants to know if you want night flights

The Save Manston Airport group are running a poll on their Facebook page to see how many people are for, and against, night flights. Here's the link:

savemanstonairport.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/to-night-flight-or-not-to-night-flight/

They are dissatisfied with the result of the Thanet-wide poll that TDC conducted, and feel that their Facebook thingummy might count for more.

Personally, I attach about as much importance to this kind of poll as I do to horoscopes. But nobody likes to see a "wrong" horoscope.

At the moment, about 80% of voters want scheduled night flights.

But that's because you haven't voted yet...

Go and vote - it's just two clicks.

Manston now consulting on NOISE

Ah, the joys of consulting. North-east Kent's favourite airport is obliged to produce a Noise Action Plan for the Government, and we all get to say what we think. As it says on their website:

It is a DEFRA requirement that all UK airports prepare a Noise Action Plan (NAP) based on 2011 noise maps. These regulations are a result of the European Directive commonly known as the Environmental Noise Directive (END).

The NAP considers whether the current noise control measures are sufficient with respect to Manston's operations, and also describes other measures that will be introduced over the coming years to further mitigate the impact of the Airport's operations on the local community.

Bickerdike Allen Partners have been retained by Manston Airport to prepare a Noise Action Plan. In summary this involves the drawing up of a draft NAP for consultation with the Airport's Consultative Committee and the wider public.

The Airport's Draft NAP is now completed and we invite you to view and comment on this document during the 16 week consultation period from 14 March to 4 July 2014. Following consultation the plan will be finalised and submitted to the Government.

So Manston have called in their old pals from Bickerdike Allen Partners to conjure up a report for them. Yes, it's the very same Bickerdike Allen Partners who were caught out under-stating the noise nuisance from Manston the last time Manston hired them.

Have they learned their lessons? Are their facts now crisp, and bang on the nail? Er, no. I only got to page 5 before the red mist rose and obscured the nonsense. Section 1.2.1 - Airport Location starts:

"Manston Airport lies approximately 20 km northeast of Canterbury, Kent and 4 km west of Ramsgate."

View fullsize

Click it to big it.

Here's a map, there's the scale, there's the airport, and there's Ramsgate. Four kilometres? Really? What do you think?

Manston Draft Noise Action Plan 2014

(51 pages, 1.2Mb PDF)

You can download your copy of BAP's fairy story by clicking the picture right.

There is a prize of incalculable worth to the reader who finds and sends in the greatest number of errors, half-truths and truth-omissions.

They're still pushing the line that noise should only be monitored between 11:30pm and 6:30am. And they say that the S106 is effective. And so on.

Read it, carefully, and TAKE PART IN THE CONSULTATION. If you live under or near the flight path, please remember that these people do not have your best interests at heart - it's time to make your voice heard.

Aircraft noise, Council silence

A reader writes...

I don't know if you recall that I contacted NoNightFlights about being sold our house without the estate agents or anyone telling us of the low flying planes over the house?  Well, the house next door to us is being sold by the same estate agents so I thought I would put a poster in our window to alert any potential buyers. 
 
I have just been in touch with Councillor Corinna Huxley and she has suggested that I send you the times I have noted of planes recently. 

• Sunday 19th May 6.24 am
• Monday 20th May 8.35 pm
• Friday 24th May 20.33 pm
• Saturday 25th May 6.29 am
• Sunday 26th May 8.35 pm
• Tuesday 28th May 8.26 pm
• Wednesday 29th May 8.36 pm
• (away on holiday)
• Sunday 16th June 8.32 pm
• Monday 17th June 6.25 am
• Monday 17th June 8.30 pm
• Tuesday 18th June 6.30 am

I wonder if you might be able to help me with information concerning other planes I have heard flying over and around the Ramsgate area very recently.  Councillors have suggested that they are BA training flights and they are flying continually at all hours during the day and night.  It's a constant rumble. 

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This is rather worrisome

This reader's councillor said to send information to No Night Flights. Another reader explained in the comments to another post that the Deputy Leader said to send information to TDC.  

This neatly illustrates the confusion that has followed the demise of the Airport Working Party. Once upon a time, there was a single point of contact, and a concentration of experience. When the airport breaches its conditions of operation, when people's lives are being ruined, who do they now speak to? Who should they contact?

Two weeks ago, I asked Madeline Homer which part or parts of TDC now dealt with the airport and related matters. 

No reply. 

That's simply not good enough. 

Here's a suggestion: if you have any complaints or comments about the airport or aircraft, send them to Madeline Homer and  the Deputy Leader (Alan Poole) and  No Night Flights. Just copy this into the "To:" line of your email:

 Madeline.Homer@thanet.gov.uk, cllr-alan.poole@thanet.gov.uk, NoNightFlights@gmail.com

and it will go to all three, and it will help us keep track of the impact the airport is having.

No Night Flights won't publish your complaints and comments unless you add something like "For Publication" to your email. 

Bean Ban Bombshell

New EU rules will outlaw flying Kenyan veg into Manston, meaning fewer cargo night flights in 2013.

Thanks to the automated cleverness of the web, I get a steady stream of more or less interesting stuff from every corner of the globe. This little snippet is courtesy of the European Commission, and I think I’ve managed to get the right end of this new bit of red tape.

Since 2009, the European legislators have been heroically protecting us from iffy food. The sort of things they look out for should never form part of a balanced diet - Aflatoxins, Salmonella, Norovirus, Hepatitis A, Pesticide residues, Aluminium and suchlike.

Anything that they’ve spotted as being a potential problem - specific foods from specific countries - goes on a watch list. The watch list is periodically reviewed, with items being added and removed, or having the testing frequency adjusted.

Two of the latest additions to this watch list are peas and beans (in the pod) from Kenya, the cause of concern being pesticide residues  (in particular residues of: Dimethoate (Sum), Chlorpyriphos, Acephate, Methamidophos, Methomyl, Diafenthiuron, Indoxacarb). It doesn’t appear to be a screaming dib-dabs panic, as they only plan to test 10% of imports - the lowest level of inspection. These additions to the watch list were published on 12th Dec 2012 and come into effect on 1st Jan 2013.

So what? Well, I’ve heard many descriptions of the freight flown into Manston - cut flowers, fruit salads - but a recurring feature has always been Kenyan green beans. This is what Cargolux and others are flying in when they arrive in the small hours, in yet another unexpected late arrival.

Watch list items can only be imported through Designated Entry Points - DEPs are the ports and airports that have the Food Standard Agency (FSA) approved facilities for randomly testing the agreed percentage of imports.

Manston is not a Designated Entry Point.

These are the UK’s current DEPs: Belfast port, Felixstowe port, Gatwick airport, Grimsby and Immingham port, Harwich port, Heathrow airport, Hull and Goole port, Liverpool port, London Thamesport, London Tilbury port, Manchester airport, Port of Bristol, Port of Tyne, Portsmouth port, Sheerness port, Southampton port, Stansted airport, Teesport.

This seems to mean that as of 1st January next year, Kenyan peas and beans (in the pod) can’t be flown into Manston - unless/until the airport is FSA approved. The FSA website site has a handy application form, if Infratil are thinking of taking that route.

Of course, all of this is exactly the sort of thing that most modern businesses prepare for through contingency planning, risk registers, SWOT analysis, and so on. Manston’s business plan should be able to deal with one income stream drying up.

With a bit of luck though, we’ll be getting fewer night flights while Charles Buchanan manages this unexpected opportunity.

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BBC Radio Kent airport debate in Rochester

BBC Radio Kent is hosting a debate on airport expansion.

A panel will come together at Cliffe Memorial Hall near Rochester on 30th October with doors opening at 18:00 GMT.

The panellists will be:

• Daniel Moylan, the Mayor of London's Aviation Advisor
• Councillor Alan Jarrett, Deputy Leader of Medway Council
• John Grant, Executive Vice President of aviation experts, OAG
• Charles Buchanan, Chief Executive, Manston Airport
• Sue Armstrong-Brown, Head of Conservation Science at the RSPB
• Clive Lawrence from Demand Regeneration in North Kent

If you would like to be in the audience, you can request tickets by emailing radio.kent@bbc.co.uk or writing to: BBC Radio Kent, The Great Hall, Mount Pleasant Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 1QQ.

Admission is by ticket only. Tickets are free but are limited to a maximum of two per person and will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis. Applications for tickets close on 19 October.

Thoughts from the think tanks

A couple of think tanks (Policy Exchange and Centre Forum) have got their heads together to produce a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of possible solutions to aviation capacity in the south-east.

The best approach would be to build a new four runway Heathrow, immediately west of the current site. These new runways would replace the existing runways. This would be straightforward to construct, and relatively low cost by the standards of hub airports. A combination of tightening permitted noise classes, ending night flights and landing narrow bodied planes more steeply makes it almost certain that this airport would be significantly quieter than the existing airport, despite catering for almost twice as many flights.

Leaving the airport where it is works for air traffic control. It also works for the wider economy: companies that have located near to the airport because they need to be near the airport do not have to move. The design of airport proposed here would be operationally efficient for both passengers and airlines, and would be the world’s best hub.

Bigger and Quieter: The right answer for aviation

Synopsis

Bigger and Quieter: The right answer for aviation examines all of the options for increasing airport capacity in the UK. It supports placing four runways immediately west of the current Heathrow site. This would double the existing capacity to 130million passengers, cementing it as Europe’s premier hub. If this was politically unfeasible, then a four runway airport at Luton would be the next best option.

The report says that the UK needs a new hub airport located in the South East which has spare capacity to accommodate the likely increase in demand, especially to cope with the rise in middle class travellers from emerging markets.

It doesn’t rule out the current proposal to build a third runway to the north of Heathrow, but claims that less people would be affected by aircraft noise if the four runways were instead located 3km to the west of Heathrow.

To reduce the effect of noise the report proposes:

• A complete ban on the noisiest aircraft at all times, rather than just at night. Airlines would have to ensure their fleet complied with new decibel measures by the time the new runways were ready for use
• Imposing a complete ban on night flights. The increase in the number of slots available would mean no planes would arrive or depart between 11pm and 6:15am
• Landing narrow bodied planes at a steeper angle as they already do at London City airport. This again means they are higher over any part of West London on their descent. For example, a plane would be 925m rather than 260m above Hounslow
• In addition, moving the airport west means planes will be higher over London than at present

Because the proposal reuses existing terminals and infrastructure, the price is likely to be around half that of Foster’s proposal for an estuary airport. Approximately 700 properties would need to be demolished compared to the 1,400 that would need to go to make way for the estuary airport. The cost and ease of travel to Heathrow as well as the fact many businesses are already located near the current airport makes it the most suitable site.

The report says that other than Heathrow, Luton is the best located London airport. It is close to a high quality, four track rail line that goes to London St Pancras in 21 minutes as well as to key cities in the Midlands. It is also close to the M1, arguably Britain’s most important road. If expanding Heathrow is politically unfeasible, Leunig proposes a four runway Luton Hub with two terminals, the first adjoining the M1, the second the Midland Main Line rail route. The disadvantage of Luton over Heathrow is that the terrain is much more challenging, and the location is not as strong.

The paper rules out:

• Foster + Partners estuary airport (aka “Boris Island”) as it is too hard to get to for too many people. The environmental and construction challenges are also much harder to overcome than at Heathrow
• Connecting Heathrow and Gatwick to become a single hub. The two airports are 25 miles apart meaning that a direct high speed rail link would cost approximately £15 billion
• A four runway airport at Gatwick. The costs are higher than for Heathrow, and the location is not as good. Instead Gatwick should consolidate its position as a good quality base for point to point traffic geared towards leisure travel and short haul flights
• A four runway airport at Stansted. Like the estuary airport proposal, Stansted suffers from a poor location, with a weak hinterland and slow connections to London and the rest of the country

Friday, 05 October 2012. 

Read the FULL report below:

Bigger and Quieter

All aboard the 4.20am flight to Amsterdam?

Let's have a quick look at the latest exciting news to come from Manston airport. The suggestion is that KLM's decision as whether or not to run a twice a day service between Manton and Schipol will be influenced (but not decided) by the response to Manston's online survey.

• Charles Buchanan says that KLM would have a plane parked at Manston overnight, ready to fly to Schipol each morning.
• Charles Buchanan has often said that planes only make money when they are in the air, so it follows that KLM would want their "Manston" plane back in Schipol bright and early so that it has plenty of working (flying) hours ahead of it through the rest of the day.
• Schipol Airport is effectively closed between 10pm and 6am, and Amsterdam is one hour ahead of us (at the moment).
• The flight time from Manston to Schipol would be about 40 minutes.
• To arrive in Schipol at 6am (local time), KLM's "Manston" plane would have to leave at 4.20am (local time).
• The online questionnaire doesn't ask what time of day people would like to fly - now you know why.
• The online questionnaire doesn't ask how much people would be prepared to pay for their flight.

As influential local commentator Maurice Byford has pointed out:

Any business worth its salt would carry out due diligence, population and traffic analysis and SWOT analysis without resorting to a survey. You might want to ask, how many people travel to Europe from Kent, but then you need only look at the traffic figures from EuroStar train from to see the passenger footfall for Belgium.

There are plenty of reputable consultancies that specialise in providing detailed economic and demographic analyses to help businesses make rational commercial decisions. They have access to all the available data on business activities, income distribution and socio-economic groupings by post code. They have a pretty good idea how many people run businesses with European interests, and how many people are likely to take weekend jaunts to the Continent or connect to long-haul flights.

It is very likely that KLM have already done their homework, which is why they were looking for £600,000 of public money to underwrite the risk of operating from Manston. The online survey doesn't cover two of the questions that KLM most clearly need answered - how much will people pay, and how willing are they to accept KLM's offering (i.e. first thing and last thing, and nothing in between).

Airlines are high investment, high throughput, low margin businesses. They employ people full-time to examine every available business opportunity, and re-examine each option every couple of years. All of the major airlines will have examined and re-examined Manston over the years it has been owned by Infratil. With the exception of FlyBe's tentative experiment with a couple of minor routes (which failed for lack of passengers), there have been no takers.

KLM's interest in Manston may simply be that it is cheaper to park a plane there than at Schipol, and there's the possibility that the passenger fares would exceed the fuel costs to Schipol. In all probability, KLM will discover what others have discovered before them - Manston's catchment area cannot support a successful passenger or freight airport. It doesn't matter how keen the local residents or the local businesses are - there simple aren't enough of them.

After years of fanciful forecasts, missed targets and false hopes, this may be Infratil's legacy - a minimal passenger service that only ever flies at night, while the airport is almost entirely idle through the 16 hours of daytime. This is Infratil waving goodbye, with two fingers.

Fan mail

You are so backward sorry

I live in Ramsgate & am on the flight path. I have no problem with flights between 6am & midnight. I am on the approach & realise that for the future we need to allow Manston to expand a bit. So if a fire station or Ambulance station was to open near you would you complain about the sirens at 3am???? Perhaps if I was your neighbour & you had to have an ambulance at 3am I would stop it due to the noise from the sirens.

Your

Alun

Cheers, Alun - you're a pal.

Airport Working Party: unprepared

The AWP may be prepared to shoot itself in the foot, but it's not preparing for much else.

In August this year - 5 months after the airport was put up for sale - the Airport Working Party had one of their games of musical chairs, when the membership and chairmanship changes. When the music stopped, Cllr Jo Gideon had become chair of the Group, the rest of the merry crew being Cllrs Alexandrou, Bruce, Gibson, Grove, Harrison, Marson and Worrow.

At that meeting in August, the AWP laid out its action plan and timetable for the foreseeable, starting with a review of the S106 and a good hard look at the results of a number of research trips to airports around Britain over the last few years.

Nothing like being prepared

The only members of the original cast to turn up for yesterday's meeting were Cllrs Alexandrou, Gideon and Marson, with Cllrs Campbell, King and Wise there as understudies, substituting for some of the absentees. It was one of those meetings where I found myself shaking my head in disbelief and growing horror, hoping that I might wake up.

The first stumbling block identified by Cllr Gideon was that none of them had the legal expertise necessary to make specific recommendations for a new S106. Fair enough. Cllr Gideon went on to say that they could instead look at why there had been so many concerns over the adequacy of the document. Good idea - identifying the flaws and short-comings of the current agreement would help when producing the next version.

However, Cllr Marson was concerned that they might just end up with a wish list of things they might like to talk about at some point in the future. Er, yes, that's the point - that "wish list" would be TDC's negotiating position, and that "point in the future" would be the negotiations.

Cllr Campbell pointed out that if the Council could come to a position on what it would want from a S106 agreement, then it would be ready to enter into negotiations with a new owner, should the opportunity arise. Thus the Council would be ready for negotiations if there is a quick sale, and it would be remiss of the Council not to have a starting position for negotiations. (EXACTLY!) Cllr Alexandrou agreed, saying that without an opening negotiating position, there is the risk that TDC will be seen as having an "anything goes" attitude, so there is a clear need for some ground rules.

The next stumbling block to be discovered was that the airport is up for sale. Er, we all knew that in August when the AWP's terms of reference were defined and the agenda for this meeting was set. Some of the AWP viewed the fact that airport is up for sale as a reason for not reviewing the S106 at all, but Cllr Alexandrou pointed out that there is currently someone to negotiate with - the current owners.

Nonetheless, Cllr Gideon concluded that the consensus was that this is the wrong time to review the S106 agreement, and that it should be revisited as and when the airport sale goes through, or a planning application is received. It would be marvellous if the AWP adopted the motto used by hundreds of thousands of scouts and guides across Britain - "Be Prepared".

It wouldn't be very difficult or time-consuming or expensive to produce an outline of TDC's ideal S106, with "must have" and "nice to have" elements listed in priority order.

• Right at the top of the list would have to be: the S106 must be attached to a planning permission - this would give TDC the leverage it is so woefully lacking at the moment.
• The new S106 must include an element of compulsion - it is absurd that the airport operator can choose whether or not to discuss the terms of its permission to operate on TDC's patch.
• The new S106 must be completely unambiguous - the current version has no clear definition of what counts as a scheduled night flight.

Do feel free to add your own ideas for what should be included in the new S106 in the comments section below.

Wasted Journeys

Our attention was then turned to the reports produced by earlier AWP outings to airports around the country. The intrepid councillors had been to Prestwick (Glasgow), Southend, Norwich, Bristol, Bournemouth and Luton. Cllr Gideon dismissed the papers as "reading a bit like someone's diary - not an incisive or meaty comparison document the AWP could do something with". Oh dear. Perhaps it was just as well that none of the councillors who spent all those days and nights away from their constituencies were present to see their work being rubbished.

Self-destruct

And things went from bad to worse. Having decided that there was no way they could force Infratil into a root-and-branch review of the S106, the AWP thought it might be a good idea to go to Infratil with the suggestion of making some "minimal amendments - bringing the agreement up to date, data compliance and so on".

This would be a disaster. The S106 stipulates re-negotiation every 3 years (although we all know this has not happened so far). Any negotiation with Infratil to make minor tweaks to the S106 would effectively reset the 3 year clock.

This would mean that the new owner of the airport (and Infratil for as long as they continue to own the airport) would then be completely within their rights to refuse to enter into any further S106 negotiations with TDC for the next 3 years.

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Where the S106 renegotiation is concerned, the only thing worse than doing nothing is not doing enough.