Airplane noise BTC on the rise?! Post Reply

[bamse]

We live BTC, close to the small part of Clapham Common (train playground) with a north facing garden. We are shocked by how close the planes are flying at the moment. Sitting in our garden in the evening they are flying past every couple of minutes and are loud enough for us to need to speak louder to hear each other. Has it gotten a lot worse recently?! This is our first summer in this house. We used to lived 5 roads down with a south facing garden so don't know if it's just the garden position that's making it so much worse. Does anyone know if they change the flight path occasionally?! I'm so surprised how low they are here as our friends in twickenham can't hear them at all in their garden.

[janee]

I live near Wandsworth Bridge and it certainly seems to me that we are getting far more aircraft noise along the river, particularly weekend mornings. A few years ago I contacted hacan.org.uk/ and whichever organisation it is which overseas air travel. I was surprised that there are roughly 5 routes into Heathrow: 2 from the north, 2 from the south, and one along the Thames. I occurs to me that, in order to suppress some of the opposition to Heathrow expansion, the Thames route is being used more frequently at the moment.

What I don't understand is how having another runway at Heathrow will increase the number of aircraft. It seems to me that they are already flying in close enough together that, in the event of a problem, safety might be at risk.

The whole argument about where to increase capacity underlines the folly of putting services like these in competition with each other, rather than working on a national plan. Why have only Gatwick and Heathrow been considered? Why not Birmingham, for example, with an excellent train service from London? Have other airports further north been considered? Has any survey been done of passenger destinations?

[Luilou]

I agree, I have noticed it more first thing in the morning, 4:30 ish. I am guessing it depends on the direction of the wind as to how much the noise carries but definitely last week it was waking me up and I am generally a heavy sleeper! I am just by Wandsworth Common and from my top floor flat I can watch the planes turn and then line up on their approach.

[condorblanca]

Noise is a problem where I live too - between Brixton and Clapham North - we get Heathrow planes AND planes coming over to London City airport (which are low and loud) so a double whammy. So I have read the Heathrow website and ended up a bit of a geek on the subject!!
The planes come in over London the majority of the time (70-80% of the year) - the only time they change direction (coming in over Windsor) is when the wind direction changes to the east. Unfortunately this is often when the weather is bad so we aren't out in our gardens!
They alternate using each runways for landing - one week they use the southern runway in the afternoons, the next week its the northern runway (which affects South London a bit less). They change runways at 3pm. So one week you hear more noise in the mornings, the next week in the afternoons. There is never no noise though unless the planes are landing over Windsor instead of London - as the planes all have to join the final flightpath and they do this from all directions.
If you need more info/want to complain follow this link: http://www.heathrow.com/noise. It's all there even graphics to watch all the planes. Happy planewatching!!

[janee]

Thanks for this. It means that they have changed their policy since I last looked into it some years ago.