Airport set to redesign flight paths due to freight increase
EAST Midlands Airport has launched a two-year programme to redesign its flight paths.
Because of an increase in the amount of freight in and out of the Castle Donington airport, managers are looking at ways of improving flight paths without creating more noise and pollution.
The UK’s airspace is the most congested in the world, but has remained relatively unchanged for decades.
East Midlands, part of the Manchester Airports Group, is used by about five million passengers a year.
It is second only to Heathrow in the amount of cargo it handles every year.
Each year, there are up to 76,000 flights to and from the single-runway airport. Most are short-haul.
The airport is also home to a flying school, as well as the East Midlands air ambulance and an aerial survey company which uses a small propeller aircraft on a daily basis.
Airport managers said the “ageing infrastructure in the sky” means advances in aircraft design and technology cannot be fully realised in the existing airspace.
The airport says it wants to improve flight paths, cut pollution and keep the impact on people on the ground at a minimum.
A spokesman said: “This will keep people and goods moving effectively and will involve redesigning flight paths around the airport, as well as the upper airspace”
The review will consider all of the airspace for which East Midlands Airport is responsible, from ground level up to 7,000ft, although it controls airspace up to 10,500ft.
The area affected by the review is bordered by Uttoxeter in the west, Chesterfield in the north, Stamford in the east and Market Harborough in the south, and covers the whole of Leicestershire.
Airport managing director Karen Smart said: “The Government has set the aviation industry a challenge: to modernise airspace across the whole of the UK, making it safer, more efficient and more sustainable.
“Air travel has never been so important. However, the ‘motorways in the sky’ that aircraft follow are old and, in some cases, out of date.”
In line with Government instructions, the airport will have to submit a detailed airspace design proposal to regulator the Civil Aviation Authority in 2022.
The first stage of the two-year process is to talk to communities, businesses, individuals and others to agree on a set of design principles that will determine the future routes. See: