Why Britain’s new flight routes are not good news for everyone

British air passengers are being promised quicker, more punctual and greener flights, as the Government plans to rip up the country’s archaic airspace design to replace it with a more efficient system.

Which all sounds quite positive, provided you don’t live underneath one of the new “highways in the sky” that form part of the proposals.

This week, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced it would begin a consultation to establish a UK Airspace Design Service, alongside the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which will work to modernise how planes fly in and out of UK airports.

The update to UK airspace is long overdue. Britain’s air corridors have been largely unchanged for more than half a century, dating back to a time when aircraft navigated the skies using ground-based beacons. In the 1960s, with the emergence of package holidays, Britain’s air traffic grew from one million to 15 million passengers per year, meaning airports had to establish set arrival and departure routes.

Many of these are still in place today, meaning flight routes designed for Comets are now being flown by Airbus A380s and Boeing 787s.

The aviation minister, Mike Kane, says: “UK airspace is one of the nation’s biggest invisible assets, but it’s been stuck in the past – a 1950s pilot would find that little has changed.”

Kane says that the new UK Airspace Design Service will “create a system that’s fit for the future… making air travel a better experience for all”.

Chronic inefficiency

Airlines will be happy. Last month, easyJet released a scathing report on the ineffectiveness of the UK’s airspace systems. The airline said that seven of its 10 least efficient routes occur inbound into London Gatwick, and that its UK operations had the “greatest inefficiencies” of anywhere in Europe. In total, easyJet predicts that airspace inefficiencies across Europe increased CO2 emissions by 663,710 tonnes per year.

Some of the problems in UK airspace include a requirement for aircraft to ascend in steps after take-off, complex routing, and pilots having to delay descents to manage the workload of their air traffic control colleagues on the ground.

Whichever way you look at it, the changes should be good news for British air passengers, particularly those who usually depart from London’s airports where the airspace is especially congested. If delivered as promised, a modernised airspace system will equate to fewer delays and quicker flight times.

It is also potentially good news for passengers with an eye on their carbon footprint. The DfT says that allowing aircraft to use modern navigation technologies will boost efficiency and reduce the need for pilots to enter holding patterns before getting permission to land on busy runways.

‘Tick-box exercise’

The flipside, of course, is that redrawing the UK’s flight paths will inevitably have an effect on people at ground level. Aircraft approaching airports could be channelled into new, relatively narrow highways in the sky. The introduction of continuous descent and ascent profiles will also shake up take-off and landing approaches.

Sally Pavey, the chair of the campaign group Campaign Against Gatwick Noise Emissions (CAGNE), has concerns that the consultation period (running until December 17) is nothing more than a “tick-box exercise” and that local voices will not be heard.

“There’s little if any benefit for us on the ground,” says Pavey. “With more planes comes more noise, with no compensation for our house devaluation or loss of wellbeing.

“Gatwick is planning to put a new flightpath over my village near Horsham. That’s not a balanced approach. That’s about Gatwick seeking more direct routes to Europe, while residents of my rural village and parish potentially won’t be able to sit in their gardens because of aircraft screaming overhead.”

The concerns are understandable. How would you feel, learning your home is going to fall under a new “air motorway”? But then again, is this something you should account for, when buying a home a little over five miles from a runway? Another consideration is that for every village experiencing intense new noise pollution, another that has long suffered from being under a flight path could be spared the pain.

A London Gatwick spokesperson said: “A large number of options have been developed through the process, and shared with stakeholders, including community representatives; however no new routes have been decided. A full public consultation is expected in 2025 to give the community and stakeholders the opportunity to scrutinise and [give] feedback on the proposals being considered to modernise the airspace in the South East of England.”

They added that the nationwide overhaul will “enable aircraft to climb more quickly and take more direct routes, leading to a reduction in noise, carbon emissions and delays.”

At this point nothing is set in stone, and it will be a while until anything comes to fruition. No formal timeline has been offered, but one of the stakeholders in the project, Tim Alderslade of Airlines UK, said he hoped the changes would be made “no later than the end of the decade”.

The holding pattern of airspace reform continues, but the route for change is clearer than ever. If you have any strong opinions on the matter, you have two months to make your voice heard. A nice way to kill an hour during your next flight delay, or while enjoying a peaceful moment in your garden, perhaps.