More than 60,000 extra flights will pass low over London each year under a government plan to suspend air pollution limits to allow Heathrow to expand, the Times reports. It says that the two existing runways will be used much more intensively, introducing 'mixed mode' operation meaning that people living under flight paths will no longer have half a day's respite from aircraft passing overhead.
The plan will result in an additional 25 million journeys by road to and from the airport each year, causing a sharp increase in air pollution from vehicle exhausts. The worst increases in nitrogen dioxide, which causes respiratory illnesses and premature death, will be along the M4 corridor.
At present, one runway is used for landings and the other for take-offs, with their roles switching at 15:00 each day. The Government is proposing to abolish ¡®runway alternation¡¯ and replace it with ¡®mixed mode¡¯, under which the runways would in effect be treated as separate airports with continual take-offs and landings on each.
According to the Times, the Government is planning to allow the expansion to start in 2010 despite having promised to adhere strictly to European Union limits on air pollution that come into force that year. It says that ministers are planning to apply to Brussels for a 5 year exemption from the EU limits, with the plan buried in a paragraph on page 88 of the Department for Transport (DfT) report Adding Capacity at Heathrow Airport, which was the subject of a public consultation that closed in February.
However, a delegation of leaders of local authorities that represent more than two million residents around Heathrow will travel to Strasbourg next month to ask the Commission to block the Government's plan by refusing to grant a 5 year exemption, the newspaper reports. |
