Night flight curfew should be eight hours

The Department of Transport (DfT) is conducting a night flights survey, closing on March 3 and this is particularly important for residents of Windsor, Datchet, Old Windsor and the surrounding areas.

The DfT says ‘there is growing evidence that exposure to high levels of aircraft noise can adversely affect people’s health’ and yet there has been no review of the night flight regime for 15 years and now they are proposing to extend it for a further two years.

The World Health Organisation, who have a leading role in these pandemic times, the US National Sleep Foundation and others strongly recommend that all adults have eight hours sleep a night, school age children nine to 11 hours and infants 12 to 15 hours sleep a night. They say that lack of sleep health ill-effects include stress, hypertension or high blood pressure, dementia and premature death.

The Times has reported neuroscientist and sleep researcher, Professor Matthew Walker, as saying ‘not getting enough shuteye makes us fat, damages our organs and alters our DNA’.

And ‘with less than seven hours, you can measure objective impairments in brain and body’, and that lack of sleep is increasingly being associated as leading to slower learning in children, obesity, dementia, calcification of arteries and a reduction in our bodies’ production of vital cancer-fighting cells!

NATS requires its air traffic controllers to get sufficient sleep ‘as a matter of life and death’ however similar requirements are not applied for the rest of us.

The DfT study is looking at continuing Heathrow’s existing night time curfew which is from 11.30pm to 6am. But this is ‘from the stand or gate’ and ‘to the stand or gate’.

So an aircraft leaving the gate at 11.30am takes around 15 minutes to taxi to the runway and a further 15 minutes to take off and be over local residents of

Windsor and surrounding areas at midnight.

But early morning arrivals are allowed from 4.30am; so over Windsor at 4am to arrive at the gate at 4.30am.

What the DfT say is 6 ½ hours respite is in reality only 4 hours for people trying to sleep soundly in Windsor and surrounding areas. But that’s not all.

Heathrow is allowed up to 16 ‘unscheduled; flights per night, ie departing late or arriving early.

These can and do occur at midnight, 1am, and even 2am, with the early morning arrivals at 4am or 4.30am.

One can’t imagine passengers waiting around at the airport, or Heathrow support staff being available for flights at midnight, 1am or 2am, so one has to question whether these are cargo flights?

Rather than continuing the existing Heathrow night-flight curfew, it should be increased to an eight-hour ban every night.

COVID has prompted a reassessment of priorities not to live by past standards.

Let’s use this opportunity to create a new normal, grow back better and protect the health of our children, our families and ourselves.

Please send your objections, experiences and adverse effects of night-time aircraft noise to the consultation at night.flights@dft.gov.uk by 3rd March.

Please also copy your response to info@stopheathrowexpansion.co.uk

PAUL GROVES Tithe Barn Drive Between Windsor and Maidenhead