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Herne Bay, England, CT6
United Kingdom
Community website for all things Herne Bay (Kent, UK). Covers: The Downs, Herne Bay Museum, Herne Bay Historical Records Society, Herne Bay Pier Trust, Herne Bay in Bloom, East Cliff Neighbourhood Panel, No Night Flights, Manston Airport, Save Hillborough, Kitewood, WEA, Local Plan and much, much more...
Filtering by Category: Night flights
Click the links to view the documents, or to download your very own copy. More documents, and scathing analysis to follow...
There should be a neat widget-type thing above this line showing you a list of the proposal documents. If there isn't click HERE to see them in the NoNightFlights archive.
No Night Flights home page
A noisy cargo plane, which Manston's complaints department will undoubtedly tell me is a late arrival.
I learn from Twitter it was N383WA, a World Cargo Airways McDonnell Douglas MD-11.
As well as being one of the noisier planes to use Manston, the MD-11 is an incomprehensibly badly designed plane with a startlingly poor accident and safety record.
Visit www.airlinesafety.com for full details. I warn you, this is not for the faint-hearted.
No Night Flights home page
Hi There,
Just to let you know that we were woken at exactly 03:00 Wednesday 26 October with a very noisy night flight over Beltinge, Herne Bay. As my husband has to get up at 04:40 for a train to London he was not best pleased.
Best regards,
Hi,
I complained via Manston's website and received an almost instant reply... "we are sorry you have had cause to complain etc."
The plane was a Cargolux B744 QC2. Hope this helps.
Kind Regards,
Hi there, I emailed you the other day about a night flight and then last night I was woken up by a plane at 3am. I'm sure I can't have been the only person...
No Night Flights home page
Charles Buchanan will be giving the Night Flights new proposal to TDC Friday 28th October (as if they haven't had it for a while already!) and will be announcing the highlights on BBC Radio Kent - 96.7FM and 104.2FM and DAB.
BBC Radio Kent are having a "travel day" special on 28th October, and will be devoting 11am - 12 noon to Manston Airport. It will start with Buchanan talking through the highlights of the new proposals. I will be locked in a Radio Kent broom cupboard in Broadstairs with a mike and headphones, and being asked to comment on the proposals.
It appears that the proposals equate to an AVERAGE of 1.8 flights a night between 11:30pm and 6:00am.
If any of you have any experience of, or handy tips for, doing radio interviews, do let me know. Similarly, any sound bites (or good jokes) would be welcome.
It comes as no surprise to me that Charles Buchanan did NOT choose to announce these proposals at last week's KIACC meeting.
No Night Flights home page
An irate clown was in no mood for jokes when he arrived at Manston airport on Friday to highlight the "circus" over night-time flying. Sporting a wig, tartan suit and painted clown face, protester Malcolm Kirkaldie attended a meeting of the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee.
Mr Kirkaldie, a former committee member before he resigned in disgust this year, said Thanet council's failure to properly monitor night flights had made a mockery of the 106 agreement with New Zealand-based operators Infratil. He said:
"Given the recent events at the Airport Working Party and the admission of certain failures in the 106 agreement and monitoring, it has turned into a bit of a circus – so I thought how appropriate to dress up as a clown."
A main issue at the meeting was the airport's delay in submitting a revised policy on night flights to the council so it could go to public consultation. Claims by airport managing director Charles Buchanan that a new policy would be handed to the council "imminently and shortly" were greeted by laughter from members of the public in attendance. When Conservative Canterbury councillor Peter Vickery-Jones asked about the revised policy, Mr Buchanan said:
"It will be completed imminently, but I can't be specific. The report is still being finalised."
Committee chairman Paul Twyman said the airport was in need of a clearer timeline. He said:
"'Imminently' is as long as a piece of string. The consultation will take some time and Thanet District Council must take time to consider all views."
Council leader Bob Bayford, who sits on the committee as a representative of the council, said the 12-week consultation would be "wide-ranging and unbiased" but he attracted groans from the audience when he said the council was carrying out the consultation despite "not being under any obligation". At the end of the meeting most questions and remarks from the public concerned night flights.
Commenting on the usefulness of the gathering, a very serious Mr Kirkaldie said that it was "weak".
No Night Flights home page
For those of you who had better things to do on Friday evening, you can find out what you missed here:
Ramsgate Rat merrily blogging away for the last year or so on all things Ramsgatey and ratty, has produced a very readable write-up of the evenings jollities, and local newshound Andrew Woodman who was scampering about with a digital doo-dah and has captured the best moments on video, and put them on video-sharing website Bambuser.
One of the many important points that arose, that I would like you all to think about, was the question of representation on the KIACC committee. There's plenty of councillors (I mean LOTS of councillors), and there's the airport. Not much in the way of people (i.e. residents) or independent experts. This has to change.
For people/residents, I think a representative from NoNightFlights would provide some much-needed balance to the blanket pro-airport stance of some councillors.
For independence and expertise, I think the obvious option is CPRE Protect Kent. They know their onions, and they're not anti-airport (so no objection from Manston), but they are anti-night flight (hurrah).
The constitution of the KIACC committee is under review, so now is the time for all good men and women to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards) and contact KIACC at this address:
to nominate some new faces on the committee. If you don't make any suggestions, we'll be stuck forever with what we had on Friday... The decision is yours!
No Night Flights home page
If we all get cracking on this, we may be able to present our case to Infratil and TDC at Friday's KIACC meeting.
The infuriatingly poor responses that are churned out by Manston's complaints department do actually contain tiny grains of truth. With enough of these facts in one place, we can piece together an accurate picture of what's really happening.
Most email programs will let you search by sender, or by contents. Have a search through your emails for anything that came from one of these addresses:
elaine.tanner@kia-m.com
elaine.tanner@manstonairport.com
customer.services@kia-m.com
customer.services@manstonairport.com
or anything that contains the phrase:
cause to complain about the operation of the Airport
We all know that most of what appears in the email is the same old nonsense every time. The important bit that we're interested in is the stuff that usually appears in a little box about a third of the way down - the details of the flight(s) you complained about.
These are the details that we would like you to send in: the Date, the Time, the Operator and flight details, and any other comments that Manston included about the flight(s). Even if you've only got one of these emails left on your PC, please send us the details, because taken together with all the rest it will help complete the jigsaw.
We're particularly interested in Cargolux, Iran Air and Egypt Air flights, but every piece of information you send us will be useful, and much appreciated.
Send whatever you've got to: NoNightFlights@gmail.com
No Night Flights home page
KENT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE
MEETING IN PUBLIC
Friday 21st October 2011, 7pm
Airport Departure Lounge, Manston Airport
[click the poster below to download a copy]
No Night Flights home page
At first I thought that might be a surprising, or even shocking, headline. But on reflection, I'm sorry to say it isn't. At all.
TDC have never really chosen to exercise any control; Manston does pretty much whatever it likes; and us poor sods who live under the flight path (especially those who have used Manston's pitiful complaints system) are all too well aware that Manston operates what is technically termed "uncontrolled airspace".
All this relates to the now infamous 5th October "Wakey Wakey Ramsgate" incident. As you will see from their confession, Manston ignored the S106 agreement and flew planes in and out through the night.
If they get their way with their next night flights application, we'll be getting this kind of misery every night. Click HERE to see who to write to, and keep writing to them until the penny drops.
Dear Ms. Homer,
You will note from the response below that these old crates arrived AND departed during the night period. Perhaps you can explain to me why TDC thinks that this is acceptable.
Previous complaints to Infratil have established that late arrivals are always blamed on delays at some godforsaken African runway or another. I fail to see how this excuse can be wheeled out to explain why Infratil is allowing freighters to be scheduled to DEPART during the night period. Richard Nicholson will confirm that it was never TDC's intention to allow this and the Section 106 was intended to prevent any such unacceptable activity from taking place.
Unless you are planning to take some action of which I am unaware I think it is clear that TDC has lost control of this situation. The admission that the Council has failed to monitor the airport's activities, even after being warned, was bad enough. Now, we are seeing the result of years of neglect by TDC in failing to renegotiate and update the Section 106 Agreement.
We are sorry that you have found cause to complain about the operation of the Airport and apologise for any disturbance caused. As the operators of Manston, Kent’s International Airport, we are very conscious of the noise generated by the Airport in the local community. For this reason, Manston has in place operational guidelines for all aircraft operators designed to minimise airport related noise on the community. Your complaint has been investigated and the aircraft concerned was operating in accordance with safe working practice. Details of the Aircraft operating around the time you mention is as follows:-
No Night Flights home page
The Campaign to Protect Rural England - a bit of a mouthful, but it does what it says on the tin. Their mission is "to protect our natural landscapes from destruction and degradation".
Protect Kent - sounds pleasingly more like a battle-cry, and they're our local bit of the CPRE. Their mission statement begins:
Protect Kent seeks to ensure the survival of our County’s landscapes and heritage, and aims to protect the County from inappropriate developments wherever they may occur.
My kind of people! They are busy the length and breadth of Kent, battling the selfish and the senseless, for the greater good. Construction of superstores, destruction of woodlands, the Lower Thames Crossing and the Operation Stack Lorry Park - you get the picture. Of particular interest to us is their recent heroic performance at the Lydd enquiry:
This is our bread & butter, what our members expect of us, our raison d’etre – to challenge inappropriate and unsustainable development of whatever type, wherever it may be. The proposed expansion of Lydd Airport is an example in the extreme.
I was delighted to find that night flights at Manston feature on their map of Threats to Kent:
These people care about the things that you care about, and they have the clout and expertise to make a difference. They have the clout and expertise because they have full-time staff who have built up years of experience successfully doing the things we're trying to do.
These nice people need to eat, and buy clothes, and pay their phone bills. They need money. Your money. My money. Any money will do. This is where membership of Protect Kent comes in. Click HERE, now, to pop over to their website, where you can get whatever kind of membership suits you best - joint, family, concessionary, under 25, whatever.
Take your pick, and then press the magic buttons to make it happen. You'll get automatic membership of the national CPRE, and you'll get half-price entry to lots of nice places, and you'll get occasional magazines and other good stuff, but most importantly you'll get that nice warm feeling that comes from knowing you've done the right thing for the right reason.
No Night Flights home page
;)