Agenda item

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 the situation and their position in the league table.

·         In 2015 and 2016, 17% of traffic went down the Compton easterly. In 2017, this was 16% but this route was only used 19% of the time. On a specific day in 2017 when Compton easterly was used all day, there were 106 departures. The total number of aircraft using this route in 2017 for departure was 7119.

·         Since 2012 Heathrow has been trying to establish a SID that works on the Compton easterly departure and this project is ongoing. It is hoped to fix this issue before Heathrow introduces its airspace change proposals for the third runway.

·         Heathrow is using a ‘blank sheet of paper’ approach in designing the airspace for the third runway. Questions on their design principles have been asked at generic high levels in the consultation on the third runway.

·         The new design specification for expansion airspace and the Compton departure will use performance based navigation (PBN) because the Government, EU and the International Civil Aviation organisation demand a move away from conventional ground based navigation aids. PBN is a more precise satellite based technology which will keep flight paths within a smaller swathe. The new designs will be based around this new technology and this means the NPRs around those designs will be firmer and the aircraft will remain within them unless they are vectored for safety reasons.

·         The Air Navigation Guidance was published at the end of 2017. Heathrow has not yet provided details of the populations affected by the ‘lowest observed adverse effect levels’ within the Guidance because it is only at the beginning of the airspace change process and has not yet identified where the routes will go. The relevant information will be provided in due course, following further consultation.

·         Their noise action plan includes information about using a range of metrics and consultation on this will be in May 2018.

·         In re-designing the airspace Heathrow will endeavour to remove routine stacking in the vicinity of the airport as it is not efficient. 

·         Current projects are working on using new technologies to improve the way they work and these may enable Heathrow to increase its air traffic movement (ATM) limit. If they increased ATM they would bring forward the start of the new noise insulation schemes at same time to mitigate the impact these may have.

In response to Members’ questions, the Airspace Team provided the following information:

·         Heathrow cannot dictate to the airlines how they fly. Noise is managed by NPRs and other noise abatement rules. They try to talk to pilots about the impact of how they fly and some will engage to find the best way to do things, others not.

·         UK airspace is historic in the way it is split between civilian, general aviation and military aircraft. The MoD releases airspace when it doesn’t need it any more but there is no military airspace in this area, so Heathrow cannot benefit from bringing such airspace into its use.

·         Everything Heathrow does within the air traffic environment has to have a target level of safety assigned to it. The work around for the Compton route meets the target level of safety with the human level of intervention currently used.

·         The Compton route is the quickest route out of UK airspace for Transatlantic flights.

·         The second round of consultation will include airspace consultation with a snapshot of airspace information. Then Heathrow’s environmental team will work up the environmental information based on that snapshot.

·         The NPS will hold Heathrow to account in terms of meeting air quality standards. NPS will provide a noise envelope which the airspace will have to sit within. For airspace they have to follow the change process regulated by the CAA and for infrastructure they have to follow the process regulated by DCO.

·         Airspace change will happen even if there is no third runway. Using a ‘blank paper’ approach means they are not prejudiced in utilising what they currently know. They want the airspace to be more efficient, safe, flexible when it needs to be, and gives the opportunity to get better use out of it.

·         Heathrow is open to suggestions on rotation pattern preferences to offer periods of respite to communities.

·         Daily operational data for use of the Compton route is available on their website.

Resolved to note the report.