In The News

Heathrow airport has started the process of consulting on new flight paths. Four of the options could see Marylebone being blighted by aircraft noise. Worryingly, one of these does not even involve the 3rd Runway and could come into effect in under three years time with planes flying over our heads at 3,000ft, waking us as early 5am. These new flight paths will be narrower and more concentrated than they are today. If we do end up under a flight path our quality of life and local property values are likely to significantly impacted.

The World Health Organisation recommends that annual average night-time exposure should not exceed 40 decibels (dB). Heathrow claims that some of the aircraft noise will be over 65 decibels. Potentially, we could be looking at up to 47 flights per hour. If you don't like the sound of all this, then it time you made some noise about it.

Currently, Heathrow is consulting on the "design envelope" a geographical area within which it is technically possible to position one or more flight paths. Marylebone is within these envelopes, and therefore at risk of having a flight path designed over our community. We need to inform Heathrow and the CAA why our area should not be selected as suitable for flight paths.

Some of the arguments for flight paths to avoid our area include:

Our old Georgian properties have single glazing and poor sound insulation, our air quality is already bad enough.

The area already suffers from evening noise pollution and people in the West End tend to sleep in later compared to the suburbs.

We already have enough noise and disruption impacting our health and our daily quality of life without having aircraft noise as well.

We already suffer from prolonged helicopter noise policing demonstrations near the BBC and in other central areas.

Please take this opportunity to explain in your own words what it will mean to your quality of life if they put the flight path over our heads. Email: feedback@heathrowconsultation.com and cc airspacemodernisation@caa.co.uk or complete the online consultation here.