Representation by Janine Creaye
- Date submitted
- 25 October 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I object to Gatwick Airport’s application to use the emergency runway as a second runway, expanding the airport infrastructure and massively increasing air traffic in this over-busy airspace. My reasons for this are: 1) Climate change. Why are we increasing aircraft flights when these are responsible for such a significant percentage of carbon emissions and other pollutants that directly drive global warming? We hear that the con trails are proving to be a lasting cause of rising temperature by trapping solar radiation. As individuals we are all under pressure to change our behaviour because of the climate crisis, yet Gatwick airport propose that a massive increase in flights is desirable and they even encourage us to take leisure breaks by travelling in this way. A limited number of flights from Gatwick are necessary for the economy, and the concentration on cheap holiday flights largely just takes money out of the country to be spent elsewhere. Surely we must reduce unnecessary flying not increase it? 2) Levelling up. To serve a much busier airport in this very densely populated area of the South East of England there must be many more people brought in to work here as there is little availability in the immediate area. The proposal is that 46 million passengers (2019) would increase to 80 million which would need many more workers to create the infrastructure improvements as well as serve passengers. Unemployment is low and house prices are very high in Sussex. Large scale house building has been stopped in the Horsham area as the rivers cannot support the current water use due to over-population, yet this proposal wants to bring more and more people south of London to work as well as travel. Why are we draining the country down to the South of England when work and economic opportunity is needed further north? 3) Safety. Gatwick were rejected as needing a second runway yet are trying to get the same use, with even less room or facilities. We are seeing increasing incidents that bring air travel to a halt in this over-busy airspace, whether it is due to drone activity, computer system failings or lack of space to manoeuvre arrivals on the ground. This proposal makes this situation worse. We are seeing the results in the sky above us when the stacking goes on all night and with increasing ‘go arounds’ that pass very low as they cannot land. It cannot be safe to put more aircraft to mesh in the sky between Heathrow and Gatwick. 4) Noise. Sussex is blighted by the increase in aircraft noise. I live under the top end of the Willo stack. I was unaware that it was there for eight years until the arrivals flight paths were shifted and intensified by changes to the navigation systems in 2014. Since then (except for the Covid period) the noise has increased and become intolerable at times. It requires earplugs to sleep many times in summer as the noise can be bad particularly just after midnight and very early morning. Night flights are still not being stopped, so all the people impacted will suffer more sleep deprivation and health effects if these proposals go ahead. I am around 20 miles from Gatwick and the stack in this area stretches all the way down to Stanmer near Brighton. A large part of rural Sussex is adversely impacted by aircraft noise to date. We have been promised that closely ‘timed arrivals’ would stop the stacking but it has not happened, or even that the stack would move out to sea, which also isn’t apparent as far as I can see. ‘Maximum dispersal’ has been talked of to stop the intensifying of noise, as navigation systems now set aircraft on very tight paths which victimises people living directly underneath. There is not much evidence that this is working to alleviate noise in the countryside. Increased flights, even dispersed better, just ruin more quiet rural spaces. This proposal from Gatwick of over 35% growth in aircraft movements destroys any hope of future rural quiet in the South East. 5) Pollution. With the proposed growth in aircraft movements by over a third, comes pollution increase. No greener options of fuel are anywhere near ready to be scaled up to meet this encouraged demand, and there are far more detrimental impacts than just carbon emissions. Research on contrails show soot, nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide together have some worse impacts than carbon. Global warming is one issue but as people living underneath the busy airspace of Gatwick and Heathrow flights meshed in the sky, and particularly under an overused stack, increasing aircraft movements will inevitably cause more serious health impacts until radical changes are made to the fuel used.