Woken in the small hours, 5th October

Yup, another night of misery for Ramsgate, as you'll see from the comments below. Here's a number of things for you all to think about:

• There will be a public meeting of KIACC (the Consultative Committee for the airport) on Tuesday 11th October. This is usually held in the passenger lounge at Manston. Time to be confirmed. [Correction: the KIACC meeting is Friday 21st October, time TBA. I was cruelly misled!]
• PLEASE could you check through the piss-poor replies you've had to earlier complaints for late Tuesday nights/early Wednesday mornings - I think we may have an unofficial timetable operating. Use the comments on this post to enter the date, time, and operator/aircraft details.
• A new contact within TDC for you is Madeline Homer, on madeline.homer@thanet.gov.uk - Ms Homer has taken on Brian White's role in Regeneration, and reported to the recent Airport Working Party that:
  • the S106 is voluntary (wrong)
  • the current monitoring gives no cause for concern (judge for yourselves)

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(1) low flying flight at ten past midnight tonight coming over augusta road, ramsgate

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(2) Large plane just landed at Manston at 12.05 a.m. Think blue and yellow livery, including 4 letters beginning A .T. ?. ?. Woke us up!

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(3) I've sent 2 complaints to the airport and KIACC this week re the planes coming in at midnight at 2:50 am. Admittedly the latter two were this evening but aside from the standard automatic responses I've not heard anything from Manston. Is there a contact at Thanet council we can also direct complaints to? Very awake now at this ungodly hour!

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(4) Yet again I find my family being woken during the night. Twice!

In your capacity as the airport spokesman can I ask how it is that flights are operating at these times despite there supposed to be an agreement in place that flights do not operate at night.

Obviously by now I understand that when TDC refers to a fines regime it actually means that the operator does what it wants and TDC says "fine", however, please indulge me and arrange for the usual standard letter setting out that there is no penalty for the operator and the excuses why. Perhaps, as in the case of my complaint re the 3:50am flight, this letter could again come from the environmental protection manager just to cap the ridiculousness of the situation.

I have copied in my councillor so that they are aware of my complaint.

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Manston's dreams and nightmares

"Nostrildamus nose the future"Nostrildamus says:

• Infratil's Charles Buchanan will shortly unveil his plans to stuff our ears with plane noise 24 hours a day.
• He will brandish carrots and sticks as if they were real.
• He will repeat the mantra that the airport will have to close if the proposals aren't accepted.
• He will never say that he will close the airport - far too personal.
• He will want to distract attention from the fact that the closure of the airport is a purely commercial decision, already more than half-made.
• He will want to abdicate responsibility to 'prevailing circumstances', and shift the blame onto an 'uncooperative' local Council.
• He will alarm the Council with the threat of dozens of jobs lost if the airport closes.
• He will cajole the Council with promises of thousands of jobs created if he gets his way.
• He will present the reports he's commissioned as proof of his case, because there is nothing else that supports his claims.
• He will never say that that the night flights he's asking for won't be enough to make the airport break even, let alone become profitable.
• He will say that night flights will be the catalyst that will make the Master Plan achievable and the airport profitable.
• He will never say that every penny of profit will be repatriated to New Zealand in the most tax-efficient way possible.
• He will never admit that the Master Plan, which has missed every significant target and forecast, is a work of unachievably optimistic guesstimation.
• He will muddy the water with promises of flights to New York.
• He will not explain that the carrier (currently called Acer Airways) says it won't exist until 2013 at the earliest.

• TDC's Cllr Bayford is unaware that KCC's Leader Paul Carter is using him as a disposable human shield.
• He will continue to champion the airport as a 'good thing'.
• He will do everything he can to ensure that TDC Labour don't have a free vote on the issue.
• He will continue the fiction that TDC Conservatives will have a free vote on the issue.
• He will continue to use last minute procedural and legal ploys.
• He will seek to skew the public consultation towards a 'Yes' result.
• He will ignore a 'No' result.

• Thanet District Council denies that it holds any records of legal advice on airport planning issues, night flights or the S106 agreement in the last 10 years.
• Nostrildamus has framed copies of the legal advice TDC has received.
• The legal advice confirms that the airport is long overdue for a formal planning application, due to the incremental development over the years.
• The legal advice confirms that the intensification of use resulting from night flights would require a planning application.
• TDC dreads this: it will highlight a decade of slapdash management and craven fawning.
• The airport dreads this too: it would automatically trigger an EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) lasting a couple of years, while the airport continues to lose £5m a year.

KCC, TDC and Infratil want the night flights proposals to be rubber-stamped with the minimum of fuss.

And they don't give a toss about you.

Manston dragging its heels over night flights

No haste = no need

OK, let's just make sure we've got this straight...

The night flights that Manston is hankering after have been portrayed as essential, crucial, make-or-break. Without them, so we are told, the airport won't be able to deliver on its fairytale Master Plan.

I find this VERY hard to square with (a) any facts in the real world, and (b) the airport's conduct over the last year. If night flights really did matter so much, why would they spend a YEAR dragging their heels?

Sep 2010: Manston submits its night flying proposal, backed up by the report it commissioned from Bickerdike Allen. A shambolic public meeting at Chatham House demonstrates the unpopularity of night flights, and makes Bill Hayton a household name for all the wrong reasons.

Oct 2010: Ramsgate Town Council has its own mini-consultation and rejects night flights.

Nov 2010: TDC get a technical review report from consultancy Bureau Veritas on the airport's proposals, which concludes that the costs outweigh the benefits. TDC cancels the public consultation on the day it was supposed to start, stating that Manston's proposals were too unclear and lacked economic justification.

May 2011: Local elections. Part 1 of the York Aviation report, commissioned by the airport, supposedly providing economic justifications for night flights is published.

Jun 2011: EasyJet snuggle up to Southend airport and launch a range of European services. Southend doesn't have night flights.

Aug 2011: Part 2 of the York Aviation report, commissioned by the airport, supposedly providing economic justifications for night flights, is leaked to the press and (presumably) given to TDC. No sign of it in public yet. Charles Buchanan appears on TV, predicting a night flight application "next month".

Sep 2011: It is next month. There is no application, yet. There is a meeting of the Airport Working Party on Wed 28th Sept. Surely, Manston isn't planning to release its next night flight application after the AWP meets? That could easily be seen as a crass attempt to exploit the Council's timetable.

Blimey! A politician talking sense!

Don't get your hopes up, though - she's not in Kent...

This is Mary Macleod, MP for Brentford and Isleworth, who is lucky enough to have Heathrow Airport in her constituency. She is concerned about the health effects of night flights, and advocates phasing them out. How sensible! (By way of contrast, my MP is Roger Gale.)

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Night Flights at Heathrow Airport 25th May 2011

In a debate in Parliament yesterday, during Noise Action Week, I challenged the Government to ban night flights at Heathrow airport on the grounds of health and quality of life factors for local residents.

New research from Warwick University published in the European Heart Journal in February this year studied the impact of hormones and chemicals caused by chronic lack of sleep in the body. They concluded that:

"If you sleep less than six hours per night and have disturbed sleep, you stand a 48% greater chance of developing or dying from heart disease and a 15% greater chance of developing or dying from a stroke."

The World Health Organisation and the HYENA report from Imperial College London also found that, even if people don't wake up, there is evidence that noise from night flights causes immediate increases in blood pressure.

The impact of night flights on the lives of those living under the flightpaths of Heathrow airport is something we must take seriously. Stronger enforcement of current quotas is required, together with higher fines for consistent offenders. As we prepare to set new night flight agreements for 2012/17, we must also give full consideration to reducing or eliminating night flights, especially between the critical 11.30pm and 6.00am period.

I also urge the Government to work with BAA and the airlines to ensure effective noise mitigation, such as insulation and double glazing, for those who are worst affected by the noise of aircraft at Heathrow.

I hope that the Government's current consultation on the future UK aviation strategy marks a positive step forward in relations between the Government and the aviation industry. I want us to ensure that Heathrow airport continues to thrive and, at the same time, takes into account the quality of life of those who live around the airport.

See more on: Health

Wouldn't it be a huge boost for the local tourist industry if Manston could actually develop a viable passenger business?

The research says that it wouldn’t. The UK exports tourists rather than importing them - more Brits fly abroad for their holidays than foreigners come here.

The UK currently runs a “tourism deficit” of £19 billion a year and about £17 billion of that flies out of the UK every year with people flying abroad on holiday. This aviation tourism deficit is costing the UK about 900,000 jobs a year because people spend their money abroad instead of here.

On Infratil’s own numbers, this year twice as many local people flew from Manston to spend their money in Edinburgh than the number of people who flew from Scotland to spend their money here. For every inbound holidaymaker or business person to Thanet, we lose two to Edinburgh.

Manston is leaching money from the local economy.

Worse still, night flights over Thanet and Canterbury will cost us tourism-based jobs – that’s real jobs that exist today. People don’t choose go on holiday somewhere where they will have noisy 747s flying over their B&B all night. The Council’s independent experts have already said, a 747 taking off at night over Ramsgate will create a noise footprint that can be heard by 30,903 people. That wipes out Ramsgate as an attractive tourist destination.

Thanet has over 5,000 tourism jobs and tourism grew 10% here in the three years to 2009. Every 10% increase creates 500 more jobs – that’s five times as many jobs as Manston has created in the last eleven years. We should be protecting and growing our existing tourism business, not exporting tourist expenditure abroad and decimating the ability of Ramsgate to continue to develop as a successful tourist destination.

What about the hundreds of indirect jobs the airport will create?

Indirect employment is just a way of double-counting people who are already employed in other industries. If every industry counted its indirect employment the way airports do, the number of people employed in British industry would far exceed the total UK population!

For example, indirect employment for airports includes workers who produce the goods sold in airport shops, for example, the Scottish distillery workers who produce the whisky sold in duty-free shops. It includes the bakers who bake the bread for the airline pilots’ sandwiches. It even includes the bakers who bake the bread for the distillery workers’ sandwiches!

It includes the workers on oil rigs producing fuel for aviation. When an oil rig worker takes a holiday in Cornwall, a proportion of the hotel staff are counted as part of indirect employment for airports. Honest.

Even if you believe in this fantasy of indirect jobs, far fewer are created than airports would have you believe.

Consultants for the Department for Transport looked at the number of local indirect jobs that aviation lobbyists claim have been created for each direct airport job. The average was 0.3 indirect jobs created for each proper direct job. Stansted itself quotes this number for its own indirect employment creation. Bizarrely, Infratil says that it will create 0.5 indirect jobs for every direct job.

Is it true that every 1 million passengers creates 1,000 jobs?

Far from it. You’ve only got to look at airports that have the kind of passenger business that Manston hopes for to see the truth:

Bristol – 439 jobs per million passengers.

Bournemouth – 408 jobs per million passengers now, and expected to fall to 247 by 2015

Prestwick (another Infratil airport) – 248 jobs per million passengers, and that was before the last two rounds of redundancies.

The rise of the low cost, no-frills airlines and fiercer competition mean that regional airports expect to employ fewer people per million passengers. They’re predicting more passengers in the next few years, but fewer jobs.

When Infratil asked the Government for a £600k sweetener to tempt a passenger airline to use Manston, it said that it could handle ¾ million extra passengers with just 23 extra staff. That’s about 30 jobs per million passengers - a very long way from the 1,000 jobs per million that they’re promising us now.

Infratil tells the press now that 2.4 million passengers will create 2,070 direct jobs. However, Infratil’s Master Plan says that 2.4 million passengers will deliver just 600 jobs.

It’s time they got their numbers straight.

Cllr David Green writes:

On Tuesday (30th August) I proposed, and Peter Campbell seconded, that a report, from the Council’s Airport Working Party, on the monitoring of activities at Manston Airport including Night Flights policy be adopted by the Thanet District Council (TDC) Overview and Scrutiny Committee, and forwarded to Cabinet. The committee voted 8 to 7 with all Labour Councillors and Cllr King in favour.

“1(a) The Council adopts a policy of not allowing scheduled, pre-planned or otherwise timetabled flights between the hours of 23:00 and 07:00

(b) That a period of 1 hour at either end of the flying day be allowed for late/early arriving flights only.

(c) That a penalty be applied to any flights arriving during the 1 hour periods

(d) No take-offs will be allowed between 23:00 and 07:00 hours

(e) A schedule of exceptions to the above will be prepared to include ‘mercy flights’, and flights, medical emergencies, coastguard movements etc.

2. In respect of aspirations to be carried into a successor to the current Section.106 agreement;

(a) Consideration be given to requesting the Airport owners whoever they may be at any given time to contribute to the cost of a TDC Airport Officer and that requirement is included in a new section 106 Agreement;

(b) A new Section 106 Agreement is negotiated within 12 months.

3. A further Term of Reference be added to the Airport Working Party; purpose that investigation is undertaken to the relationship between a possible Parkway Station and the Airport and the current need for it.

4. Quarterly or half yearly reports are received by Thanet District Council on the performance of the Manston International Airport as measured against the section 106 Agreement.

5. Thanet District Council be recommended to ask the Manston International Airport operator to review the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee (KIACC).”

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All of this is good sensible stuff, with a few provisos.

1. TDC needs to have sight of Manston's schedules in order to ensure that 1(b) isn't open to abuse.
2. The system of fines for 1(c) should be severe enough to be a deterrent - the current regime of doubling the fine for repeat offences would be a good starting point.
3. Does 2(b) mean that the requirement to rengotiate a new S106 every 12 months is written into the next S106, or that the current S106 should be renegotiated within 12 months?
4. Manston should be reporting, as per Cllr Green's point 4, on a monthly basis.

Surely we can trust Infratil’s numbers?

Infratil (who own Manston) also own Prestwick Airport near Glasgow. In autumn 2008 Infratil’s forecast for passenger numbers at Prestwick was 5.7 million by 2018 and 12 million by 2033...

Almost immediately, freight and passenger business plummeted, and Prestwick ran at a loss for the rest of the year. Shortly after that, 50 staff lost their job. By autumn 2010, passenger business had fallen so much that another 120 staff had been made redundant... so much for Infratil’s forecasts.

Infratil’s forecasts for Manston are no more reliable than its forecasts for Prestwick. In October 2008, the Master Plan said Manston would have 1,200,000 passengers this year. But by November 2009, the Master Plan forecast had dropped to just 100,000. In fact, the actual passenger total for 2011 will probably be around 35,000 - less than 3% of what was forecast just three years ago. The Council says Infratil’s Master Plan is aspirational… that’s one word for it.

Charles Buchanan is Manston’s CEO. When he was at London City Airport, he said that an extra 36,000 flights - none of them night flights, by the way - would make 3,135 jobs. He got his flights, but created only 726 jobs, around 200 of which went to local people. So, the promised 3,135 jobs turned into around 200 jobs for locals - not a great track record.

Of course, nobody can guarantee that every job created will go to a local - that would be illegal.

Over 2,000 airport jobs if Manston gets night flights - isn't that great?

It would be if it were true. However, their promises rely on everything in Manston’s Master Plan coming good.

The Master Plan relies on a lot of other things happening, but doesn’t mention the need for scheduled night flights.

These 2,000 promised jobs won’t be created by scheduled night flights.

Infratil has never said how many jobs would be created just by the introduction of night flights.