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.

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.