London Southend Airport currently has permission for 915 night flights a month. The new “restrictions” that would be applied if the runway was extended would mean 120 night flights a month. The airport tells us they currently operate about 50 night flights a month, but over the last couple of years it’s been significantly lower than that. In December 2010, there were only 7 night flights.

We wanted to find out how this compares with other airports, so we wrote to Southampton Airport and this is the reply we got:

Thank you for taking the time to contact the Southampton Airport Noise & Flight Evaluation Unit on 6th February 2009. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us and helps us to understand the experiences of our neighbours.

As you are aware, under the ’106 Flying Controls Agreement’ with Eastleigh Borough Council, the permitted operating hours for Southampton Airport are:
Monday to Saturday 06:00 – 23:00 and Sunday 07:30 – 23:00.
This agreement includes all aircraft that visit Southampton Airport scheduled and non-scheduled. For your interest, very little cargo is handled at Southampton Airport.

In addition to this, Southampton Airport is permitted 10 ‘out of hours’ movements after 23:00 per month. These can be due to emergency flights or delayed scheduled aircraft.

It is our intention to continue working with the local community in an effort to find a reasonable compromise which will allow the airport to continue operating normally whilst reducing, wherever possible, the impact of aircraft over flying local areas.

I hope this information is helpful. Further details about the 106 flying controls agreement are available at www.southamptonairport.co.uk under ‘About Southampton Airport, ‘Community Matters’.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact Southampton Airport.

Kate Sibley
Marketing & Community Communications Executive
Southampton Airport

One of our members has researched what happens at other airports:

• Norwich Airport closes at 9.30pm and opens at 6.20am closing time can be extended sometimes to 1.15am for unforeseen circumstances, which are rare.
• London City Airport closes at 10pm and opens at 5.15am.
• Southampton more or less closes around 10.30pm. There are no night flights as such.
• Heathrow virtually closes at midnight until 6am with a maximum of 16 flights that generally aren’t heard over the wider area. Remember that there are houses under the flight path far closer to Southend Airport though.

Night Flying Records

SAEN has obtained figures from Southend Council revealing the level of night flights at Southend Airport. The information shows that the airport has on a number of occasions breached the current night flying regulations and as far as we are aware, no action was taken against them.

Year	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D	Total for year:
2008				51	63	51	42	33	44	59	35	31	409 (from April)
2009	38	28	34	34	44	34	48	37	53	47	50	33	480
2010	24	35	47	30	53	47	42	37	34	24	45	7	425

The proposed night restrictions will allow 120 Quota Count (QC) night flights per month – that’s 1440 night flights a year: roughly a thousand more a year than the airport currently has. They would be allowed an unlimited number of QC exempt flights. This means that in reality, the night flight limit is going from 915 flights a month of specific allowable aircraft to an unlimited number of flights of any QC exempt type plus 120 flights up to QC1.

Regulation breaches

The current night flying regulations permit only one type of jet to fly at night – the BAE 146. However, according to the airport’s own records, other jets have used the airport at night including Boeing 737s, Learjets and even a Boeing 727. Between April 2008 and April 2010, we have counted 21 breaches of the regulations in this way – on average, that’s nearly once a month.