Issue - meetings

To note an update on Heathrow 3rd runway, Flight Path design consultations and the Compton Route. A representative from Heathrow Airspace Team will be in attendance at the meeting.

The Senior Environmental Health Manager outlined the process for the three aspects related to the expansion of Heathrow: the Airports National Policy Statement (NPS) the Development Consent Order (DCO) and airspace design. She explained that an officer working group had been established to consider and respond to the content of the various consultations by Heathrow Airport Limited. She also provided information on the Compton Route, including the flight paths taken.

In response to questions about the Compton Route, Rachel Thomas and Dan Foster of Heathrow’s Airspace Team provided the following information:

·         Heathrow Airport is responsible for Compton route up to 6000 ft. NATS is responsible over 6000 ft. There was no requirement for NATS to inform anyone, including Heathrow, of procedural changes they made for operational safety reasons to departures on the Compton Route.

·         Heathrow now has a better relationship with NATS to talk about anything that can be perceived as a change. NATS and Heathrow are more aware of the impact of changes to flights on communities, even at higher levels. The Department for Transport are putting together a policy for dealing with such changes.

·         The Compton route was designed at a time when the air space was less busy and no longer works with the interaction between departures and arrivals.

·         There has been a long term trial solution in place since 2009, which means the controllers actively pass heading instructions to the pilots resulting in more variance on the route taken by flights than on any other route.

·         Controllers now prioritise talking to Compton route pilots earlier, with the aim of getting them as high as possible as quickly as possible so they do not interact with the any of the arrivals. If departures went further south than the Compton route they would interact with arrivals but in any case it is not possible because they would be flying outside controlled airspace.

·         Heathrow undertook an independent study in 2016, examining changes in flight patterns along the easterly Compton route between 2007 and 2015, in response to community feeling about airspace trials which were ongoing in 2014.

·         Flights on the Compton departure do not often start within the noise preferential route (NPR). As the NPR is wrapped around the Standard Instrument Departure (SID) which doesn’t particularly work on this route, the NPR is not relevant to a certain degree for these flights. Heathrow do not fine the aircraft, even if they wanted to, because they are not giving them the opportunity to start within the NPR.

·         Other routes out of Heathrow are better and ‘track keeping’ (the ability to keep aircraft within NPRs) statistics are very good.

·         Aircraft are taken off NPRs, legally, for safety reasons i.e. other aircraft in close proximity or thunderstorms. NPRs are important but not hard and fast.

·         A league table of 50 top airlines operating out of Heathrow is published quarterly in the National Press. The airlines are marked on a number of things so they tend to actively engage with Heathrow to improve  ...  view the full minutes text for item 63