Rural peace could be shattered by new flight paths

National Air Traffic Control (Nats) has announced plans to reorganise the flight paths to the UK's airports – potentially shattering the tranquillity of some of the country's most picturesque properties.

Nats - which manages Britain's airspace - announced today it was launching a 13-week consultation with a view to making changes to Britain's overcrowded skies.

It is thought those in London and the Home Counties, which have a combined population of 12.5 million people, will be particularly hard hit.

The plans involve the creation of four new holding stacks – which will be used by aircraft circling to land – for the airports at Luton, Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow.

As a result, a large number of formerly idyllic villages may see the number of flights passing overhead increase.

The new stack system is likely to affect villages located in Essex, east of Saffron Walden, south and west of Bishop’s Stortford, along the Blackwater estuary and villages in Hertfordshire north of Berkhamsted, north of St Albans and south of Luton.

The changes to the Nats system are designed to alleviate bottlenecks in the present system, which was designed 30 years ago.

While only 701,000 thousands flights used the airports in question during 1975, this number had increased to 2.6 million in 2006.

According to Nats, some 20,000 fewer people will be affected by low flying aircraft as a result of the changes.

However, those in the countryside are likely to see noise increase.

As Nats explained in a statement: "Avoiding both densely populated areas and the surrounding countryside was not possible in airspace that is amongst the busiest in the world.

"As a result, requests for route changes tended to move routes away from centres of population to less populated countryside".

Questions are also being asked in some quarters over the location of the new holding stacks.

"The new routes mean aircraft would be flying over communities that have previously enjoyed relative tranquillity where overflying will make a greater impact because of the absence of other background noise," said Martin Peachey, chairman of Stop Stansted Expansion's noise committee.

"The question we are asking is why the holding stacks aren't being put to the east, over the sea. Given that most flights arrive from the east and the south, this would have far less impact on the population as a whole."

It is hoped to implement the new system in March next year.

More details of the proposals, as well as an opportunity to comment, can be found here.