LONDON (dpa) – The skies over Britain are now the most crowded in Europe. This year, seven of the worst European air traffic control danger spots are in British air space, up from two the previous year.
Nowhere in the world suffers the same concentration of planes overhead. And nowhere in the world has as many airport protesters.
In August a group of demonstrators occupied the boardroom of the British Airport Authority in protest against the environmental impact of the authority’s expansion plans. The local association for the control of aircraft noise around London Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport, alone numbers 25,000 members.
According to the Association of European Airlines, increased congestion also means that air traffic delays in Britain this year are expected to be the worst since the association started keeping count.
Nor is congestion confined to the more densely populated areas of London and the south-east of England. A recent survey published in the Guardian newspaper showed that even places like the Lake District, the holiday area in the north-west, are now among the worst affected, indicating just how far the problem has spread.
The British air traffic controllers’ union has pointed out that the problem is three-fold. There are not enough runways to dock the aircraft, not enough terminals to take the people and not enough space in the sky to slot the planes.
The skies are full. There are more planes waiting to enter the available airspace than can be physically dealt with. However well air traffic controllers perform, however many terminals and runways are built, there remains a finite number of planes that can occupy any sector of space above existing airports before the danger of near misses between aircraft becomes even more of a problem than it already is.
On the last weekend of July this year, the busiest weekend of the year for air traffic as the national school holidays get under way, a record number of people flew in and out of Britain’s airports. Estimates that appeared in the national press varied widely but range up to 1.5 million. Over a third travelled through London Heathrow where, at peak time, at least one plane was taking off or landing every minute.
Government approval for a fifth terminal at Heathrow could come this autumn. But that would only ease congestion on the ground. It would probably be at least a decade before a new runway could be opened. Manchester’s recently-opened second runway was the first to be built there since the Second World War.
Meanwhile, a new 600,000-pound air traffic control centre is due t to open in Hampshire in the south of England in January 2002. The centre will be managed by Airline Group, a consortium whose members include major airline companies.
The group recently took over the management of Britain’s air traffic control through the part-privatisation of the National Air Traffic Services. The first public pledge of the new organisation was to improve safety in the skies.
In the face of ever increasing numbers of travellers taking to planes for business or recreation, the problem seems almost insurmountable.
Between 1995 and 2000, the volume of passengers passing through British airspace rose from 129 to 180 million annually, according to figures published in the Observer newspaper. Forecasts for 2005 range from 220 to 237 million.
One solution that has been suggested recently in the Guardian is to resurrect a plan for an airport to be built in the south-east of Britain, in the North Sea. Its location would provide a convenient launch-pad into continental Europe without the need to over-fly already congested areas.
It is a concept that was first put forward in the early 1970s under the Conservative government but was shelved at an early stage of its development.
The idea was to build a new airport away from residential areas, on reclaimed land at Maplin Sands off the Essex coast. The chosen site consisted of a long sandbank which could accommodate an artificial island, the beginnings of which are still visible. It would be only an hour’s train ride away from central London.
The project never got off the ground. The original cost estimates escalated, residents in the only nearby town objected, and there were environmental and safety concerns about geese who spend the winter locally and might collide with aircraft. Most of all, air travel experienced a temporary nose-dive as the oil crisis of the mid-1970s made it increasingly expensive.
Yet the current unsustainable situation nationally makes mothballed schemes worth revisiting. And Maplin Sands, despite reservations, still enjoys substantial support as a means of relieving the pressure on Britain’s other, seriously congested, airports.
