Planes Over Herne Bay

We've moved house...

2010-10-27T00:22:00.001+01:00

All the blood, sweat and tears that are usually lavished on this blog are now being lavished (even more lavishly) over at:

www.NoNightFlights.info

It's newer, it's better,

and it's just a click away!

Hurrah for Bombardiers?

2010-03-11T18:17:00.002Z

I notice to my delight that the Bombardier Q400 FlyBe will be flying twixt Edinburgh and Manston is cleared for the 5.5° approach at London City. This is much steeper than the approach most planes use over Herne Bay.

Will Flybe be taking advantage of that when they land from the west at Manston? It would mean they’ll be flying far higher over the populated areas before starting their final descent and will therefore be less of a nuisance in terms of noise.

Alternatively, given that they’re not flying 747-400s and so don’t need a long, straight run up, they could be turning in from the sea over Reculver to intersect with the centreline of the runway rather than flying over the length of Herne Bay. Certainly, we weren’t plagued by EUJet flying directly straight over the town when they were in business and I’m sure Flybe will want to have as little negative impact as possible on local residents. Well, I can dream, can't I?

In the interests of balancing dreams with nightmares, here's a little dose of (historical) reality: 9th September 2007 an SAS Bombardier Q400 carrying 73 people caught fire after its right landing gear collapsed during an emergency landing at Aalborg’s airport in western Denmark. The plane skidded off the runway and five people were hurt during the evacuation.

Four days later, another SAS Bombardier Q400 attempted to land at Vilnius airport on its front and left landing gear, when the right set of wheels failed to extend. Passengers were ordered to move to the left side of the plane as it approached the runway, for fear that the right propeller might shred upon landing and send shards through the right side of the cabin, according to the Lithuanian Civil Aviation Administration.

It transpired that SAS management knew about the risk that the right landing gear could collapse during a landing. Nonetheless, it decided to: train the crew for emergency landings because there was a real probability that it could happen; and take the risk and continue having the plane in the air.

I assume the landing gear problems are all now resolved. I hope FlyBe are more responsible than SAS.

Crystal balls

2010-01-26T01:09:00.005Z

Matt Clarke (CEO of Kent International Airport a.k.a. Manston Airport) is returning, like a cheerful homing pigeon, to New Zealand. I spent a few hours with Matt at Manston recently and he struck me as being a likeable and decent guy, doing his best to make the best of a bad job. I wish him and his family well.

Spookily enough, it was foretold! Right here, over six months ago. Here it is, electronically shrunk:

Moving bullishly onto the next manic assertion that I shall shamelessly repackage as far-sightedness should it ever come to pass: no night flight/S106 consultation this side of the general election (May 6th being the current odds-on favourite). The rationale, such as it is, runs like this...

On the airport side, there may be a little more listless finger-drumming than usual in the limbo period until March when Matt hands the baton to Tom Wilson, the chief executive of Infratil Airports Europe. Tom will run the show for an interim period, "while a permanent replacement is sought". If the head-hunting goes smoothly, Manston may have its third CEO of the year in place by mid-summer. This level of boss-churn is not the ideal backdrop for re-negotiating your terms of operation. Infratil (and TDC) may prefer to wait for NewBoy to get his feet under the desk.

On the Council side, the collective attention is drawn ever more strongly to the forthcoming election, like iron filings to an approaching magnet. For all their talk of growth projections and strategic needs, Infratil haven't been in a rush to re-jig the S106, or even present adequate paperwork to apply for night flights, thereby demoting themselves in the councillors' attention rankings - losing magnetism, if you like. From the Council's point of view, nothing's immediately imperilled if the airport just carries on as it is - there's no urgency. The election is a different matter. It will trigger one of Nature's great spectacles as local politicians arise in a monomaniacal swarm to preen and bolster their Westminster brethren, in the hope of making mightier masters for themselves, a mighty master being 'a good thing' in the ramshackle network of neo-feudal patronage, fealty and group-think that is our beloved democracy. Grumble, grumble.

Anyway, the upshot is that the fliers and the liars will be too busy looking after themselves to be bothered with what anyone else thinks, so no consultation until Just-when-you-thought-it-couldn't-get-any-worse Day is over.

===

Sign the petition against night flights.

.:.

Public Consultation

2009-09-07T13:19:00.002+01:00

As with comedy, the secret of good consultation is... timing. I was wondering what had happened about the public consultation on night flights that TDC had promised, so I emailed Anona Somasundaram, the Democratic Services Officer in charge of the AWP:

==
Me:
On 19th August a news item appeared on the TDC website about Night Flight policy:

"The council will be engaging in a comprehensive public consultation process. Details of the process and how to be involved will be announced following a meeting of the council’s Airport Working Party."

As the AWP met on the 26th August, could you let me know what the process is for public consultation.
==
Anona's reply:
My understanding that a further meeting of the Working Party will be called for the purpose of agreeing a programme for public consultation. I hope to be able to confirm that shortly.
==
Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Two more questions:

does the public consultation period start when the programme is announced (or has it started BEFORE the public knows what the consultation process is)?
how long is the public consultation period (if it's already started, when did it start)?

==
I confirm, as stated in my earlier email, that the programme for public consultation will be finalised at the next meeting of the Airport Working Party.

I also confirm that public consultation has not commenced. Details have still to be publicly announced, and consultation will not commence until after announcement.

Public consultation will take place over a 12-week period.
==
You're being very helpful - sorry to trouble you again. When is the next AWP meeting? I've looked at the TDC online meetings calendar, and there's no scheduled meetings at all for the AWP for the next year (!).
==
No further meetings have been scheduled yet.

I'll make a note to let you know as soon as next meeting has been arranged.
==

So, at some point in the (near?) future the Airport Working Party will convene, ruminate and pronounce. When the public have been told how the public consultation will work, only then will the 12 week clock start ticking.

Glad that's cleared up.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

It's been said before...

2009-09-06T15:48:00.004+01:00

"There are people who are not sensitive to noise; but they are just the very people who are not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intellectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality."

from "On Noise" by Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

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Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Wiggins' routes

2009-08-10T23:42:00.003+01:00

A red letter day, dear reader. One of my undercover researchers (codename: Casey) has unearthed a map of the routes agreed between Wiggins and TDC many moons ago. Apparently one of the lead negotiators from the TDC side was Cllr Harrison. These 'people-friendly' routes didn't make it into the Section 106 Agreement due to an oversight by, er, Cllr Harrison. Shame.

These routes were mentioned at a meeting held at Manston, chaired by the omnipresent Cllr Harrison. I got the impression that these route maps had somehow wisped away to nothingness, lost forever to the eyes of mortals. I'm pleased to have sight of them at last. I expect Infratil and TDC will be thrilled, too. Now that they don't have to go through the rigmarole of (re)negotiating effective noise abatement routes, they can use the time they've saved to install fixed noise monitors under the newly agreed routes.

The carefully drawn coloured lines on the map are explained by the accompanying colour-coded key.

(Click it to big it.)

The red route labelled 1 is the standard westward instrument departure route: by the time the plane is doubling back on itself and heading south, it's supposed to be at 3,000 feet and climbing. Route 2 is the alternative westward route; route 3 is the standard eastward instrument departure route. All of the other lines and boxes are explained in the key.

(Click it to big it.)

What I find interesting about this is that it so clearly shows what is achievable. The planes can fly people-friendly routes. So what do you think the odds are of anything resembling this appearing in the next S106 Agreement?

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Related posts:
Altitude sickness: sub-standard aircraft monitoring at Manston
Before I die of rage: Infratil ignores residents
JFK vs KIA: planes can avoid flying over residential areas
YES WE CAN: Enjoy being awake

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Noisy nuisance neighbour

2009-08-03T00:27:00.004+01:00

Those nice people at the CPRE have produced some maps that are both pretty and informative. They show the distribution of "Tranquility" across our fine nation, and come with an explanation of how the CPRE assess tranquility.

Looking at the map of Kent (click it to big it) the cities and towns are easy to spot, as is the M20 running through Ashford to Folkestone, and the roads radiating out from Canterbury.

Looking more closely at North-east Kent, it's easy to spot Whitstable, Herne Bay, Birchington, Westgate, Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate and Canterbury.

But what's that red smudge of non-tranquility, just west of Ramsgate and south of Westgate? An all-night rave at Acol? Burning the candle at both ends in Minster? Innumerable painted lady butterflies smashing their wings together? Countless ladybirds clattering about like tiny scarlet castanets?

Nope. It's everyone's favourite neighbour: Kent International Airport at Manston. Even with the current ("unsustainable") low level of traffic, they have as much impact on the quality of life as a small town. By way of reminder, dear reader, the airport's strategy is to achieve 103,800 flights a year. Equivalent to one every 5 minutes, day and night, all year. You may as well fish out your favourite crimson lippy and colour in all the rest of Thanet a noisy red.

Or you could sign the petition against night flights.

===
Related posts:
Yes We Can: Sleep
Fact-o-matic: Noise

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Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Manston Parkway Station

2009-07-21T01:00:00.004+01:00

The proposed station is intended to link Kent International Airport (Manston) to the Southeastern High Speed rail service. Somehow. On the left is Southeastern Network's map of their routes (click it to big it).

The pale grey track that loops out from the existing Eutrostar route between Ebbsfleet and Ashford is the new high-speed rail link, taking in the Medway towns, the north Kent coast, Thanet and Canterbury. We are being promised shorter journey times from December 2009 - click for a list of forthcoming disappointments.

The map's legend has a symbol for Airport Interchange, notably missing from the Ramsgate area, for the simple reason that the Interchange or Parkway Station doesn't exist. Here's the high-speed link on a conventional map: the route is the blue line; the blue pins are stations; the red bits are explained later. Click here to see the full Google map.

Which brings us lumbering to the inevitable question: where will that little Airport Interchange symbol go? Where will Manston Parkway be built?

The strategy document is curiously non-committal, but suggests somewhere in the vicinity of the airport (sensible) and the Eurokent Business Park and Westwood (mad).

In this close-up of the earlier map, the red pins are the Manston Business Park (MBP) and Westwood, the red block the runway, the pink area around it the airport site, and the little yellow blob the Passenger Terminal.

Building the Parkway half way between MBP/Westwood and KIA will be a poor solution for both, offering only a marginal improvement over using the existing Ramsgate station.
If it's built at KIA, it will be as far from MBP/Westwood as the existing Ramsgate station, thus offering no advantage to MBP/Westwood.
If it's built at MBP/Westwood, it will be as far from KIA as the existing Ramsgate station, thus offering no advantage to KIA.

Introducing MBP/Westwood into the calculations is bonkers - it instantly creates more problems than it solves. Let's assume instead that the airport is the sole driver. Dear reader, if you ran the world, how would you get passengers from the airport onto the high-speed link?

a shuttle bus service from the Passenger Terminal, along the Manston Road to Ramsgate Station;
modify the Manston Road to make it straighter and faster, or just build a dedicated faster, straighter road;
nick a few miles of the Docklands Light Railway (or build your own) and some of those neat electric shuttle trains. This service could run straight into Ramgate Station, passengers then just walk across the platform onto the high-speed train to St Pancras, where they can then wrestle their luggage through the Tube network to get somewhere useful;
build a new station on the high-speed route, where the track is nearest the southern tip of the airport, with a bus service from the Passenger Terminal to the new station.

In terms of practicality:

you could start tomorrow for the cost of hiring or buying some coaches;
straightening the road would cause months of delays, and would need the agreement of many landowners (as would building a new road);
a light rail service would also need the agreement of many landowners, and would involve some major works at Ramsgate Station itself;
retro-fitting additional stations on the fastest stretch of the high-speed loop would be counter-productive. The train would have to crawl from Ramsgate to Parkway and wait for at least the minimum 2 minutes before restarting.

Whichever solution is chosen, there is still the problem of the cost of the train journey. Rail fares from Kent to London are (unreasonably) expensive, and the high-speed service will apparently be 10-20% dearer still. This doesn't sit easily with a business model based on high volume, low budget passenger traffic - the train ticket could be costing as much as the plane ticket.

Local tourists, drawn from the airport's catchment area, are more likely to drive to the relatively cheap car park at Manston. Foreign tourists heading for London can choose from other airports that have cheaper connections to the capital.

I don't see Manston Parkway Station being built. Do you?

===
Related posts:
Outer London: Manston Airport's in the wrong place
Seppuku Lite: Infratil's business model is corporate suicide
Manston's future: a suggestion

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Jet Carter

2009-07-16T00:07:00.003+01:00

Behold last week's pithy missive from Mrs. Earplugs to Paul Carter FC via his blog on the KCC website:

"You say you understand that Boris doesn't want a third runway at Heathrow and that you don't want an airport in the estuary. And then you say you want more use to be made of Manston. Of course, you live nowhere near it, so you will not be experiencing what we on the flight path will experience.

Also, you have demonstrated by your avoidance of the KIACC meetings how little attention you propose to pay to the views of those most affected by your dreams of seeing more flights at Manston. May I borrow the phrase you used of the Audit Commission and categorise this as "stunning hypocrisy" on your part?"

No reply yet, I expect he's busy. Maybe he doesn't agree with her analysis. Maybe you do.

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Related posts:
Paul Carter. How dare you.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Whisper who dares: TDC's covert planning

2009-07-14T17:29:00.003+01:00

Many thanks to the eagle-eyed Mr Child for alerting the world to a curiously hush-hush meeting. Membership, attendance, time and location are public knowledge. We can see the topics to be discussed. But that's it. The minutes from the only other meeting this year (in May) are restricted. The details of the topics to be discussed are restricted. Even the reasons for the restrictions aren't clear.

To pre-empt being patronised by the more world-weary amongst you, yes I do understand about commercial confidentiality - in the brief twinkle of my life to date I have been party to such things myself.

What makes me uneasy is that this is when the flaws that are inherent in democracy become magnified. Because of the first past the post system, and the shameful laziness of British voters, the winning party (at every tier of government) is almost always chosen by a minority of the eligible electorate. From amongst their own number, the winners select (or are presented with) a leader and leading team. That individual, and handful, then hold sway over the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands. It's a bad system, but not the worst.

The secret meeting mentioned above is the TDC Local Development Framework Working Party, which formulates the spatial strategy and plan for the District. The Working Party consists of a clerk, whatever professional Officers are needed, and 5 Councillors, split 3:2 between the majority and minority parties. Party politics being the disappointing thing that it is, the odds are that the 3 will vote as one, the 2 will vote as one, and that the two groups will often vote against each other.

Thus we find Cllrs Ezekial, Latchford and Gregory determining high-level long-term strategy on e.g. KIA and Westwood, with no public, no press, no minutes. At May's meeting they apparently decided to invite Matt Clarke of Infratil to the 22nd July meeting, presumably for the Agenda item "Airport Masterplan - Presentation and report".

Infratil released their Draft Masterplan at the end of last year, and not everyone was impressed. The CPRE said that it fell so far short of Government guidelines for Masterplans, and was so lacking in key information, that it should have been completely redrafted. This didn't happen, of course. I'm assuming that the "Airport Masterplan" referred to in the Agenda is the post-consultation (remember all that consultation?), refined and finalised Masterplan. Let's hope they don't keep it secret too long.

What little I've heard about the Three Framework Councillors ranges from disappointing to lurid. Matt Clarke is more driven, and possibly brighter, than the three combined. So we have the TDC leadership (reportedly of questionable judgement and Standards) planning the future with the local representative of Infratil (extremely wealthy and increasingly urgent in their need for results).

I expect Matt to deliver a competent presentation along the lines of: co-operation will lead to jobs aplenty; non-compliance or resistance will bring closure and redundancies. He'll be pushing at an open door: they want to believe that Manston can bring thousands of jobs. He'll run rings round them. It's Brian White's job to assess how realistic Infratil's forecasts are, whether there are better and/or quicker and/or more sustainable job creation plans, and the wisdom (in terms of eggs and baskets) of actively engineering a situation where so many local jobs depend on a single fragile and volatile industry. Unfortunately, none of us will ever see the minutes.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Fact-o-Matic: Noise

2009-07-12T16:38:00.007+01:00

Dear reader, your ears are astonishing. They have a subtle sensitivity that is beyond the skills of modern science to duplicate. And they're kinda cute. Millions of years of selective honing have produced a very capable system: consider what an extraordinary and useful skill it is to be able to tell when a politician is lying to you, even with your eyes shut.

Boffins try to deal with sound by analysing it as changes in air pressure (decibels), which turns out to be a rather crude system. Using decibels to describe sound is like trying to describe the ocean by measuring the height of the waves: it's definitely true and informative, but it's a long way from being the whole picture. Unfortunately, 'we are where we are' as the pointless phrase has it, so let's have a closer look at these clumsy decibels.

The way decibels are counted is a bit bonkers. Zero decibels (0 dB) is not silence. No, zero decibels is the softest sound a person with normal hearing can hear at least 50% of the time.

Worse still, decibels are measured on what is called a logarithmic scale. This means that if a sound is increased by 10 decibels, it actually doubles in loudness as we perceive it - it sounds twice as loud to us. If a sound is decreased by 10 decibels, it seems as if the volume has been halved.

You couldn't make it up.

Here are all the examples of decibel levels of everyday sounds that I could find, to give you a feel for how the scale works:

0 dB Threshold of hearing
10 dB Rustle of leaves
20 dB Water dripping
30 dB Soft whisper
40 dB Quiet radio in room, refrigerator
50 dB Normal conversation, moderate rainfall, light traffic
55 dB Quiet suburban neighborhood
60 dB Conversation, busy general office
70 dB Noisy restaurant, car at 40mph at 7 metres
75 dB Dishwasher, washing machine, vacuum cleaner
80 dB Alarm clock, blow dryer
85 dB Electric razor
90 dB Roar of sports crowd, lawn mower
95 dB Pneumatic drill at 7 metres
100 dB Snowmobile, chainsaw, power tools
102 dB Leaf blower
110 dB Stereo headset, rock music
115 dB Subway train screech
120 dB Rock concert, thunderclap, jet take-off at 300 metres
130 dB .22 caliber rifle
140 dB Firecracker, jet take-off at 50 metres, pain threshold
170 dB High-powered shotgun
180 dB Rocket launch

Around the 70 dB mark is the boundary between things that you might think of as quiet, and those that are loud. The logarithmic scale has the result that as the numbers increase over 70 dB, things start getting a lot louder. Coming soon (as if you hadn't guessed): the harm that noise can cause, and the noise from planes.

Facts™ "... I'm loving it!"

===
Related posts:
Yes We Can: Sleep

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Manston employee

2009-07-09T00:19:00.007+01:00

Well, I'm pleased to see that you get into work nice and early, but is this really what you're paid to do throughout your 'working' day?

(Click the picture to enlarge it.)

See the comments for an explanation of the arrows.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Manston's future: a suggestion

2009-07-06T09:31:00.006+01:00

Grab a hefty chunk of the TDC Regeneration budget. This is the prize money. The competition: affordable, quick-build, long-life, green housing. The location: Manston's runway, 2.7km of high performance concrete and tarmac - ready-made foundations for just about anything.

Established manufacturers can offer designs straight from their existing catalogues. Newcomers, green building groups, small design firms and the like will be more inventive. Large and small alike, all these people like the prestige of winning competitions, particularly if there's a cash prize.

The criteria for the competition can consist almost entirely of popular buzz-words like: zero carbon footprint; easy assembly; recycled/sustainable materials; reproducible; removable; practical; and flexible. A key condition is that each competitor puts up at least TWO identical copies of their buildings - one is to be used as the walk-around exhibit, the other(s) will house real people.

The TDC environmental people, aided and abetted by utility companies, Government departments, and so on, can pepper the inhabited houses with environmental and energy monitoring gadgets. The real people living in the new green houses can give a running commentary (video-blog?) on how live-in-able their homes are in practice. These two factors are added to the mix (cost, green-ness, impact on local economy, etc.) when choosing the winning design, which will receive a quarter of the prize pot.

If there are enough proposals of a high enough standard, one or two dozen designs could be chosen to be built. At a stroke, you have a green housing showcase, open air research lab and attention magnet rolled into one.

Re-run the competition at three month intervals. By the end of the year, you will have a green housing exhibition park with 50 to 100 different innovative green homes, on show and being lived in by real people. There's nothing like it anywhere in Kent, probably anywhere in the country. It will attract interest, visitors, businesses and investment.

Affordable housing will always be necessary. Green housing is increasingly popular. House-building is an established and proven way of generating local employment, and supports its own network of trades, suppliers and services.

As an alternative use of the Manston site, this ticks a lot of boxes. Agree?

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Related posts:
Regen Park: there are better ways of regenerating Thanet
Outer London: Manston Airport's in the wrong place
Rearrange Kent International Airport: possible uses for the Manston site
Controlled descent: Manston's uncertain future with Infrati l
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Sign the petition against night flights.

Fact-o-Matic: Freight

2009-07-04T18:12:00.009+01:00

Politicians have many disgusting habits, and twisting the truth with statistics is one of their dumbest. The constant drizzle of deceits and half-truths that politicians rain down upon us has clouded some of the finest minds in the country, leading them to believe that cherry-picking a supportive fact from a sea of counter-arguments equates to a slam-dunk victory.

In the interests of stamping out this weak-mindedness, I will be presenting you with some unvarnished truths, from which you can draw your own conclusions. First out of the Fact-o-Matic machine is the low-down on freight, taken from the CAA figures.

The CAA's definition of freight is "the weight of property carried on an aircraft including for example, the weight of vehicles, express baggage and diplomatic bags, but excluding mail and passengers' and crews' permitted baggage. Freight in transit through the airport on the same aircraft is excluded."

Facts™ "Don't know a little, know a lotto".

Freight flights make up a very small proportion of the air traffic in and out of Manston.
In 2008 there were 19,269 flights at Manston, of which 412 (2%) were freight.
25,673 tonnes of freight were shifted in those 412 flights.
22,607 tonnes (88%) were imports - "set down".
3,066 tonnes (12%) were exports - "pick up".
Those 25,673 tonnes put Manston 8th in the league table of British freight-carrying airports for 2008, with just over 1% of all freight carried (1.12%).
Infratil's goal of 500,000 tonnes of freight would have placed it 2nd in the 2008 league table, between Heathrow (1.4m tonnes) and East Midlands (260,000 tonnes).

Here's the monthly freight tonnage (and average) since the CAA started keeping track in January 1998:
Zooming in on the last few years, here's the monthly freight tonnage (and average) since Infratil bought Manston in August 2005:
Recent months clearly represent a year-on-year improvement over the previous year's trough.

Facts™ "... because you're worth it."

===
Related posts:
$124 million of 'Sorry': Manston's criminal customers
Nosey, picky: Infratil over-stating their freight figures
Stansted 1, Manston 0: the BA World Cargo contract
===
Sign the petition against night flights.

Paul Carter. How dare you.

2009-06-28T14:28:00.017+01:00

Carter pulled out at the last minute due to a 're-arranged family event'. However, a message from his personal assistant seemed a less than courteous way to do this. Mark Nottingham's blog
An unnecessarily gentle understatement there Mark. Try as I might, I cannot think of a pressing PRE-arranged family event that can be RE-arranged at a day's notice. Sounds very much like a 'dog ate my homework' excuse.

This meeting had been painstakingly and specifically arranged for Paul Carter's convenience, long in advance.
KIACC double-checked Carter's attendance with his office. Several times.
Then he pulls out, the day before.

That's shabby.

The cry went up (in mitigation) that Paul Carter has a 'Private Life'. And he has a Salary, and we are his Employers.

Paul Carter: selfish, slippery, salaried and contactable.

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Related posts:
Hours' worth of minutes: from the public meeting at Manston
Love letters straight from the heart: contacting your Councillors and MP
It's for your own good: public meeting at Manston
Telling it like it is: to the Chair of the Transport Committee at Westminster
Support act: MP wrongly claims support for expansion
Bigger than politics: cross-party support in Herne Bay
===
Sign the petition against night flights.

As you asked so nicely

2009-06-25T00:16:00.007+01:00

Here's a comment from Signatory 46 on the Petition Against Night Flights:

Why are you people always against any development at Manston. Do you really believe that there would be 103,800 flights a year! Perhaps you should get back to the real world and consider the reality of the position of the airport compared to Gatwick, Heathrow or Stanstead which are not stuck out on a limb like Manston. If you are so against any development at Manston which as you know has been there for many years, you should have given this consideration before moving into the area knowing that the airport was there. Surely one must realise that airports generate aircraft (after all thats what they are there for). I would be pleased to see this published for people to read and maybe generate some common sense in this matter.
Anon 19/6/2009

Who are these "you people" that I am being swept up with?
I'm not against "any development". This is a petition against night flights. End-of-life jumbo jets laden with vegetables roaring over Thanet Earth into the Garden of England in the small hours.
As stated in their Draft Master Plan, 103,800 flights a year is a commercial strategic goal for Infratil. Infratil pay their staff to deliver that strategy. Everyone at Manston will be working towards those numbers, because that's their job. Success = 103,800 flights a year. Here in the real world, that's a very ambitious target, some might say unrealistic or unachievable. Nonetheless, it's worth reflecting on the implications.
I have a clear picture of Manston's geography. Several, in fact. Obviously, it is well-placed to be a military airbase (being close to Europe) but poorly placed to be a commercial airport (being far from much of Britain). The significance of location, location, location has escaped every purchaser to date.
I'm not against "any development". Still.
I know Manston has been there for years. In all the time that Manston has existed, there has never been anything like the volume of traffic that Infratil are aiming for.
We all understand about airports and aircraft, just as we all understand about roads and cars. What Infratil are proposing to do at Manston is like turning a residential street into a motorway. It's still a road. It's still got cars on it - 'that's what roads are for'. But you'll notice the difference if you live anywhere near it.

I am happy to publish your comment, in the hope that common sense breaks out all over. Common Sense™ - I just love the stuff! Can't get enough of it.

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Sign the petition against night flights.

To: Chair of the Transport Committee

2009-06-24T13:47:00.005+01:00

Letter to Louise Ellman MP (chair of the Transport Committee) April 2009:

Julian Brazier has written to you claiming that there is widespread public support for more use to be made of Manston airport (Kent International Airport). There isn’t.

Thanet County Council supports the airport and so does Kent County Council. Canterbury City Council, who represents a large constituency under the flight path, has significant concerns about the way in which the airport is regulated and monitored now, let alone what the impact might be were it to expand. The last public consultation about Manston was carried out by MORI in Thanet in 2005. Focus groups included those most affected by the flight path, i.e. Ramsgate residents. Of those:

67% opposed airport expansion;
78% thought noise and air pollution would be big problems;
90% wanted night flying hours to be restricted.

Thanet District Council says more recent public consultation shows support for the airport. However, they have declined to release the report that would demonstrate this, even when requested to do so by the statutory body set up to lead consultation on Manston, i.e. the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee. Claims that there is widespread support can not be substantiated. Claims that there is widespread opposition can.

Roger Gale MP and Paul Carter (Leader of Kent County Council) are fond of saying that Manston has one of the longest runways in the UK (it hasn’t, thirteen other airports outstrip it) and that it is surrounded on three sides by sea so the impact on people is minimal. A quick look at the map will show you that the runway runs almost exactly East to West. Depending on the wind, planes come in on a straight line either over Ramsgate (pop. 39,600) or Herne Bay (pop. 35,200). That’s a lot of unhappy people on the flight path.

In a recent meeting of Herne Bay councillors, there was unanimous cross-party support for the proposal to get a more balanced debate going about the pros and cons of Manston and to prevent the impact of the airport on Herne Bay from getting worse. This agreement transcended the normal party political divide and can not in any way be described as support for Manston to expand. Local opposition is in response to a number of issues:

Manston operates in an unregulated and unmonitored way, with sub standard noise monitoring; a willingness to allow unscheduled flights to land any time day or night; and an unwillingness to levy fines for planes that land outside the S.106 agreement because the Chief Executive does not want the airport to get a reputation as being “difficult”. I can substantiate all this with emails from the airport itself should you need to see more
Neither Ramsgate nor Herne Bay is successful. They are both slightly shabby seaside towns whose most sustainable hope for a more prosperous future is tourism. Nobody will visit and spend money in a town or on a beach under a flight path
Manston’s PR machine talks about the hundreds to thousands of jobs that will be created if the airport expands. Close inspection shows the vast majority of these jobs to be indirect jobs – jobs that already exist elsewhere in the UK which Manston will notionally be supporting by purchasing fuel etc. The number of real jobs that could be created is tiny. So, we have an airport whose growth plans will blight many lives whilst possibly creating a small number of jobs. As an economic decision about the best thing to do for an area, the airport makes no sense
The airport is built right on top of an important aquifer. Whilst the Environment Agency has recognised how critical it is to preserve this aquifer (you will be aware that the South East is the UK area with the biggest mismatch between population size and available water), the airport’s owners have done nothing to ensure that the correct measures are in place to protect it from pollution. It is already contaminated and an expanded airport will worsen the situation considerably
None of the infrastructure exists to support expansion. A single carriageway road comes out of the airport and the nearest public transport is three miles’ drive away
The airport has been in private ownership for years. Two previous owners have failed to make a go of it. Infratil are still losing money there after four years of ownership. It’s just not a sensible place to have an airport.

So, there is no widespread local support for this airport. What you are hearing is the view of the few that have access to the media - MPs and the airport’s PR consultants. If you tap into the world to which ordinary members of the public have access - blogs; parish councils; local environmental groups – you will see massive opposition to the airport. I would love to see a more balanced debate on the airport’s future instead of being told by politicians who have not consulted the public that we all support the airport. Anything you can do to encourage this would be great.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.

In a nutshell

2009-06-22T07:07:00.013+01:00

The Draft Masterplan for KIA is indicative but insubstantial – it needs to be redrafted, and then put out to consultation properly.
The Section 106 Agreement should reflect the needs of everyone affected by the operation of the airport, not just Infratil and TDC.
There is absolutely no need or justification for night flights (other than emergency diversions).
Flight paths should avoid population centres by overflying the sea, or sparsely populated land.
If overflying towns is unavoidable, the planes could fly higher for longer, and then descend more steeply.
These ‘people-friendly’ routes should be agreed and implemented before flight volumes increase.
Infratil must demonstrate that the routes are being adhered to by recording and reporting what the planes actually do, by installing adequate noise and pollution monitoring equipment and ensuring it is used consistently.
The readings from all the monitoring equipment must be recorded consistently, and the recorded readings must be published frequently and regularly (e.g. on-line).
Failure to comply with the S106 agreement must be reported and fined. Any decisions not to fine must be explained.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.

What's it all about? New readers start here.

2009-06-20T17:49:00.003+01:00

Manston a.k.a. Kent International Airport is an ex-RAF base in north-east Kent, just west of Ramsgate. It passed from the RAF to Wiggins, then PlaneStation, owners of EUJet (a budget passenger airline). EUJet went bust, and in August 2005 the administrators sold Manston to Infratil, a New Zealand-based multi-national infrastructure investor.

The airport is mainly used for flying clubs, testing and training, and private planes. In 2008, less than 3% of the planes were freight or passenger flights. Infratil's growth plans for Manston are ambitious: 6 million passengers, ½ million tonnes of freight and 103,800 flights annually.

There is a "Section 106 Agreement" (S106) between Infratil and Thanet District Council (TDC) which describes what Infratil can, and can't, do at Manston. The scale of Infratil's planned growth is enough to require the S106 to be renegotiated. The existing S106 was drawn up in 2005, and needs to be renegotiated anyway as its 3 year lifespan has expired. There would be a statutory period of public consultation lasting 6 months. This consultation period has not started (as at: 22nd June 2009).

Due to the nature of airports and air travel, many more people have a stake in this than just Infratil and TDC. East Kent residents under the flightpaths, particularly in Ramsgate, but also in the Wantsum villages, Herne Bay, Whitstable and Canterbury will all be affected to some degree. Environmental groups, transport lobbies, government bodies, wildlife groups and others all have an interest. The non-partisan KIA Consultative Committee provides a valuable forum for all the interested parties to meet and discuss.

A key issue for local residents is noise. Obviously, the nearer a plane is (in both distance and height) the louder the noise; and if everything else is particularly quiet (at night) it will sound louder anyway. Which is why flightpaths, plane heights, flight times and monitoring matter so much to so many, and keep appearing on this site.

TDC have a duty to do their best to regenerate and energise Thanet, which includes some of the most deprived areas of Kent. Infratil have spent £30m on Manston so far, and have yet to make their shareholders a profit. All the East Kent residents would welcome something that benefits them. We need to find a win-win-win solution.

This is not a small decision, and the consequences will affect tens of thousands of people for years, if not decades. It's worth taking the trouble to get this one right. And everyone needs to think in the short, medium and long term.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.

Numbing numbers

2009-06-13T23:55:00.014+01:00

Infratil's Master Plan is a thought-provoking read. Pretty glum thoughts, many of them.

In 2008 they carried about 12,000 passengers and 25,000 tonnes of freight. They are aiming to grow to the point of carrying 6,000,000 passengers and 500,000 tonnes of freight. They are forecasting 103,800 flights per year.

If they are allowed night flights and fly round the clock, that amounts to one flight every 5 minutes, day and night, all year.

===
Related posts:
The Petition of your dreams: launch of the online petition
Before I die of rage: Infratil ignores residents
Something of the night: why night flights are bad
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

The Petition of your dreams

2009-06-12T09:20:00.005+01:00

It's New! It's Now! It's Online! For the greater good of everyone in East Kent and the wider world, I've set up an e-petition against night flights at Manston. CLICK to see the e-petition.

Please tell more people about it: email them the link below:

www.ipetitions.com/petition/nonightflights

You can still download the paper version of the petition if you prefer to have something you can sign with real ink. CLICK for the paper petition, news and background.

Everyone needs their kip: sign up to keep yours.

===
Related posts:
Numbing numbers: there's going to be an awful lot of planes
Something of the night: why night flights are bad
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Hours' worth of minutes

2009-06-08T16:08:00.019+01:00

Dear reader, this is how some of us frittered our lives. There's plenty to pick over here, all comments welcome.

I've added paragraph numbering for ease of reference and some comments (original version on TDC's website HERE). Council Officer in charge of the AWP: Charles Hungwe.

TDC Airport Working Party, Tuesday, 19th May

1. Flight routes, including noise abatement routes
1.1. Over time, noise abatement routes seem to have disappeared. Evidently.There was need for transparency regarding noise abatement routes, which should be clearly defined.
1.2. “Excuses”, which were often given by Airport Operator for non-adherence to proper routes (for example, captain on a training flight had given instruction to turn left instead of right) failed to satisfy residents. Understatement.
1.3. Planes taking off in a westerly direction were expected to take off 1.5 km from end of runway, and then make a turn towards Herne Bay and Birchington, achieving altitude over the sea. That, however, did not always happen. Instead, the aircraft would fly directly over the villages. I think this should be: after take-off, 1.5km from end of runway, turn right to avoid HB & Birchington.
1.4. Routes required to be revised, in order to minimise flying over sensitive areas and maximise the proportion of landing process which occurred over the sea.
1.5. The possibility of planes turning closer to the Airport when landing, than was currently the case, should be investigated. See LINK.
1.6. Planes taking off in a westerly direction were known to turn left, instead of right.
1.7. Originally, flight routes were not over the villages.
1.8. There was need for a second radar, thereby enabling the capability to monitor whether or not aircraft were on track.
1.9. It was explained by the Director of Regeneration that the noise abatement routes prescribed in the S.106 Agreement are adhered to by Infratil. Routes prepared by the previous Airport Owner had never been formally adopted and given legal standing. TDC failed to include them in the S106.
1.10. Recognised routes for aircraft movements were generally felt to be a good thing.

2. Noise factors and overflying
2.1. Low flights over Ramsgate were noisy and intrusive, even during the day. Funeral ceremonies had been known to come to a standstill because of overhead noise from aircraft.
2.2. Infratil should be requested obliged to provide a list of its noise mitigation measures;
2.3. The old “747”s, which were used to carry freight, were particularly noisy; True.
2.4. Owing to a large proportion of flights being freight, Manston Airport was much noisier than other airports; True.
2.5. In some cases, take-offs did not appear to be steep enough. Consequently, overflying of area was longer than necessary; True.
2.6. The public perception at Canterbury (where noise monitoring of aircraft was non-existent) was that planes were often flying very low; True.
2.7. It could be beneficial to carry out a Survey in order to gauge opinions of residents, particularly those most affected by noise from aircraft. I honestly don't think a survey is necessary, other than to establish the scale of annoyance and anger.
2.8. The majority of noise complaints concerned overflying, particularly over the villages. Inevitably, given that they're nearest, but HB and Ramsgate cop it too.

3. Noise Monitoring
3.1. Monitoring of noise could not be effective unless planes adhered to proper routes. On occasions, take off point was out of monitoring range;
3.2. MUCH More use should be made of the mobile noise monitoring equipment that had been purchased by the Council. A headmaster of one of the schools under a flight path had welcomed the positioning of monitoring equipment on the roof of the school. I suggest hospices, rest and care homes, hospitals and schools should all have noise monitoring at some point.
3.3. Without effective monitoring, noise levels could not be understood; No. We all understand noise. Without effective monitoring, Infratil can downplay noise pollution.

4. Runway rotation
4.1. A proper discussion needed to take place on balancing number of take offs to the west (potentially, affecting the villages) and those to the east, affecting Ramsgate;
4.2. The direction of take-off was dependent on wind direction, and although the current 70/30 West to East ratio could be flexed, it rarely fell below 50/50;
4.3. If stipulated times and routes were adhered to, runway rotation would not be a big issue. Exactly.

5. Penalties, controls and enforcement
5.1. Some enforcement mechanism needed to remain in place and be applied so that those who did not keep to prescribed routes would be aware of consequential penalties;
5.2. Steeper penalties should be imposed to reflect the unacceptability of landings well outside of prescribed hours; the existing escalating fines would be sufficient IF they were actually levied.
5.3. The Airport Operator needed to provide assurance that sanctions were in place and were effective in preventing recurrences of deviations from proper flight paths; Don't want assurance; want evidence.
5.4. The community should have confidence that any criteria laid down would be adhered to;
5.5. The current system of cumulative penalties was felt to be appropriate;
5.6. Allotment of penalties to a community fund should be continued;
5.7. If stringent constraints were imposed on noise, poorly maintained aircraft would be excluded from the Airport.

6. Environmental Impact
6.1. It was necessary to draw up in detail measures that would minimise the environmental impact of the Airport and, at the same time, enable it to be operative effectively and safely;
6.2. The Council should keep abreast of EU environmental laws and also look at papers prepared by DOT (Department of Transport) regarding effects of noise disturbance at night; Too much to expect Infratil to take any responsibility for this.
6.3. The problem of CO2 emissions were exacerbated by prolonged overflying of the area.
6.4. (EU papers on air quality were passed at the meeting to the Chairman of the Working Party)

7. Night flying and shoulder periods
7.1. Night flying disturbed people’s sleep True.
7.2. The issue of night landing permits should be looked at. The Department of Transport had reported that 181 night permits had been issued since 2006 for cargo flights from outside of Europe;
7.3. If night time landing was taking place without a permit, reasons should be established; and arses kicked.
7.4. Night landings were, on occasions, caused by delays in departures of flights from Africa;
7.5. Take-off times from foreign destinations should be monitored;
7.6. Residents of Dover & Sandwich would be opposed to any relaxation of night-time flying;
7.7. In Acol, residents were generally comfortable about day-time noise, but found noise at night unacceptable;
7.8. In exceptional circumstances, non-scheduled night-time flying was permissible (for example, emergency, Government flights) I think everyone has always accepted this.
7.9. A proper framework should be put in place to prevent the “nibbling effect” whereby shoulder periods became increasingly relaxed over a period of time. We're alreday being 'nibbled' by the influx of non-scheduled night flights.

8. Aborted night-time landings
8.1. Measures to penalise aborted landings, allegedly not confined to training exercises should be set in place and fully enforced.

9. Updating of S.106 Agreement
9.1. The Director of Regeneration, Brian White said that there are no proposals to amend the S.106 Agreement. He explained that a successor document would be attached to the next significant planning approval at the Airport. The Masterplan would set the scene for subsequent development. Hang on a minute, is this what he said? I thought S106 was tied to the usage of the facility, not specific planning applications. Can anyone give me chapter and verse on this?

10. Need for greater consultation
10.1. There was a fundamental problem with training flights in that some rules (e.g. time lapse between landing and subsequent take-off) had been removed without consultation with the local community; Disgracefully.
10.2. TDC & KIACC should be notified of any procedural changes; True.
10.3. Civil Aviation Notices were inadequately publicised or informative – the community required greater detail; True.
10.4. The introduction of changes without consultation had engendered a feeling of mistrust on the part of residents. True.

11. Complaints Handling
11.1. Complaints to Infratil regarding early morning freight flights had not appeared to have been taken seriously;
11.2. Infratil should be required to respond to complaints within a certain length of time, say, 20-30 days, just like complainants, who had to make their complaint within 15 days of time of incident;
11.3. The whole of complaints system needed to be reviewed – Infratil’s current system was unreliable; "Evasive" is my word of choice.
11.4. Infratil’s website was not always accessible;
11.5. There was a measure of duplication between complaints to Infratil and those to the Council. Brian White said that complaints made directly to the Council were received by the Council’s Environmental Health service;
11.6. It seemed desirable to have a shared website between Infratil and the Council for the purpose of capturing all complaints; If EITHER of them was adequate, it would be a leap forward.
11.7. The Chairman of the Airport Working Party, Councillor Harrison said that all the airports (with the exception of Bournemouth) which had been visited by the Working Party, dealt with complaints directly.

12. Social and economic benefits of night time flying
12.1. Job benefits as outlined in the Masterplan seemed unrealistically high; True.
12.2. The geography of the area did not lend itself to a significant enhancement of jobs; True.
12.3. In itself, an increase in night time operations would not impact on job creation; True.
12.4. The Council should provide an analysis of perceived benefits of night-time flying; No. Surely this is Infratil's responsibility?
12.5. Without some night flights, the Airport might be unsustainable; No. The airport should operate more profitably within the existing S106.
12.6. The Council needed to be robust in challenging employment figures associated with night-time flying;
12.7. Increased air traffic could have “knock-on” benefits for tourism; How?
12.8. Residents would probably accept an occasional night-time flight if overall benefits of the Airport were obvious. Quantify 'occasional' and then ask them.
12.9. Emergency flights were always to be considered separately. True.

13. Support for expansion
13.1. Monkton Parish Council was supportive of the Airport and hoped for development and creation of jobs. The operation must, however, be well controlled;
13.2. Canterbury supported the airport expansion, but only in a way that did not impact harshly on the community;
13.3. The airport presently operated at a loss. It should be provided with adequate scope to function in a commercial world. The 'scope' is called the free market economy.

At this juncture, the Chairman of the Working Party drew the meeting to a conclusion, by re-iterating a statement that the Airport should be allowed to become a successful commercial venture, but not at any price.

The Chairman also stated that an opportunity would be given to the public to express their views as part of a consultation exercise, if and when an application was received by the Council in relation to night-time flying.

There's worse places than Ramsgate

2009-06-07T01:21:00.013+01:00

It is often said that there's always someone worse off than yourself, and sometimes it's worth tracking them down and having a good laugh, just to cheer yourself up.

Maho Beach on the island of St Marteen in the Caribbean Dutch Antilles has all the standard ingredients: sun, sand, sea, semi-naked people. However, it also has a rather special extra something - an airport nearby. Very nearby.

Instead of the more familiar signs warning of sunburn or jellyfish, they have these:

And they're not kidding:

More pictures, videos and other holiday destinations at Vacation Ideas.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

After the fact

2009-06-05T00:08:00.006+01:00

The stridently sane blogger Stop The Loonies (who is snarky about "anons" but keeps his/her/their/its identity secret) has posted something that aroused my curiosity.

STL quotes Infratil's CEO as saying that they're committed to KIA and have no plans to sell it - this runs contrary to all his other recent quotes, including those I reported on a couple of weeks ago. I quoted from thisiskent.co.uk in my posting on 22nd May, leaving out only the (then) last paragraph about PlaneStation going bust in August 2005.

But the thisiskent.co.uk article I quoted from now has three new paragraphs at the end, which are what STL quotes. These paragraphs were not in the original article, and appear to contradict the gist of the rest of the article. They are not in the www.stuff.co.nz article that was the original source, they are not on the Infratil website, and a quick Google search doesn't find them quoted anywhere else.

How can this be? It looks as if these words appeared out of thin air and were airbrushed into the thisiskent article after publication. Puzzling. Suggestions?

Poster boy

2009-06-04T10:57:00.005+01:00

Yet another selfless public service: here's a copy of the 'poster' for the next KIACC meeting. Print one off and pin it on a politician.

Click HERE for the poster.

Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Think like an idiot

2009-06-03T10:13:00.018+01:00

Dear reader, I know thinking like an idiot is not one of your natural strengths, but I thought it would be helpful for you to see the world through different eyes. Dull, unfocussed, short-sighted eyes that see only a small part of whole. When you have read the article at the link below, it will be much easier for you to understand the dafter comments on this and other blogs.

Oh, no! It's making well-reasoned arguments backed with facts! Run!

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Thrice woe!

2009-06-03T00:13:00.012+01:00

Oh dear. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for Manston. BAWC slips through their fingers, dashing their hopes for significant cargo growth. Infratil announce they're so weary of this blood-sucking drain on finances that they'll sell a stake to anyone with a mallet. And now a gently damning snippet from one of the air transport industry websites, looking at employment prospects at Manston. They could so easily have been talking about the whole sad airport.

Open question: has anyone heard of so much as a hint of a Plan B for Manston from TDC?

Love letters straight from the heart

2009-05-28T23:40:00.011+01:00

The nice people at Airport Watch have introduced me to a cracking little site called WriteToThem. Just bash in your post code, and you get instant email links to all your District and County Councillors, MP, and MEPs. This makes it a doddle to congratulate your elected representatives on the skill and wisdom of their approach to anything...

Noise pollution, an ever-growing sound footprint, air pollution, constantly circling training flights, aquifer contamination, increased use of fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, failing to meet Kyoto targets, climate change acceleration, rising sea levels, disrupted school lessons, sleeplessness-induced hypertension, reduced quality of life, falling property prices, reduction in tourism, loss of jobs in the hospitality industries, increase in HGV road traffic, damage to local democracy, unseemly influence of trans-national businesses, inappropriate use of public funds, sub-standard monitoring, inadequate fines, unrealistic forecasts, broken promises, rushed and begrudging consultation...

Or you might not be writing about Manston.

===
Related posts:
Paul Carter. How dare you: conspicuous by his absence
Hours' worth of minutes: from the public meeting at Manston
It's for your own good: public meeting at Manston
Telling it like it is: to the Chair of the Transport Committee at Westminster
Support act: MP wrongly claims support for expansion
Bigger than politics: cross-party support in Herne Bay
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Out on a limbo

2009-05-27T00:22:00.005+01:00

An independent group set up to advise on the development of Manston airport has said no to more night flights. Kent International Airport Consultative Committee chairman Paul Twyman told a meeting of Thanet council’s airport working group that while there should be a balance of “economic and environmental interests”, he was against changing current night policy. An existing section 106 planning agreement restricts flying between 11pm and 7am. Although it expired in 2003 the agreement will remain in effect until a new one is signed by Thanet council and airport owners Infratil. thisiskent.co.uk

So the S106 'restricts' night flights - as far as I can fathom, it bans scheduled night flights, but allows late arrivals and other unscheduled flights. I've yet to find out who defines what is and isn't scheduled. With a world-weary sigh, I assume it's down to Infratil. What happens if Infratil says a plane is scheduled to arrive at 10:30pm, but it consistently arrives 1½ hours late? Nothing, I guess. Sigh.

Anyway, the S106 from yesteryear remains in force. The statutory consultation period is 6 months, and Cllr Harrison repeatedly told the assembled multitude at Manston on 19th May that Infratil has not yet triggered the start of consultations. So that means no increase in night flights for a while. Doesn't it?

===
Related posts:
Numbing numbers: there's going to be an awful lot of planes
The Petition of your dreams: launch of the online petition
It's for your own good, Part II: key issues for the meeting, and beyond
Before I die of rage: Infratil ignores residents
Something of the night: why night flights are bad
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

8 Hours of Peace and Quiet

2009-05-25T18:09:00.009+01:00

Here's a chance to make your voice heard. If you don't want night flights, sign the petition. If you really don't want night flights, get other people to sign it too.

Manston Airport is owned by a New Zealand-based company called Infratil.
Infratil have signed a 'Section 106 Agreement' (S106) with Thanet District Council (TDC) which regulates how Infratil can use Manston - they can't suddenly decide to turn it into a spaceport and launch satellites, for example.
The S106 states that Infratil isn't allowed to schedule any night flights, although a scheduled flight that arrives late can actually land.
A night flight is any take-off or landing in the 8 hours between 11pm and 7am.
Infratil have said they want more night flights.
If you think we should keep our 8 hours of peace and quiet please sign the petition.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

New Zealand sacrificial lamb steaks

2009-05-22T19:36:00.006+01:00

The chief executive of Infratil has not ruled out selling stakes in Manston airport if a buyer can be found, according to a business website.www.stuff.co.nz in an article prompted by the New Zealand based company posting big business losses.

The website reports that analysts said Infratil's European airports, including Kent International Airport and Glasgow Prestwick, and energy developments were the most likely assets to go on the block.

Infratil Airports Europe posted an $18.9m loss compared with $1.2m of earnings the previous year. it claimed, adding that Infratil's investments as a whole returned $356.3m compared with $315.9m the year before. Earnings were up at its three major investments, TrustPower, Infratil Energy Australia and Wellington Airport.

Mr Bogoievski is quoted as saying he did not rule out selling stakes in Manston and Glasgow Prestwick if buyers could be found adding: “In the meantime you do what you can control and that's the operating cost structures of those businesses.”
thisiskent.co.uk May 22nd 2009

Apart from the consistent mis-spelling of 'steak', the thrust of the message has a sad inevitability about it. Infratil over-reached themselves, expanding into foreign markets they didn't fully understand, which lead to them making poor buying choices. Manston is in the wrong place, and failed to make money for Infratil even in the recent air transport boom years.

Manston has gone from white elephant to lame duck to dead in the water, and Infratil are smiling hard and pointedly not holding their nose as they try to sell it, any of it, to anyone.

===
Related posts:
After the fact: someone's been tinkering with the news
$124 million of 'Sorry': Manston's criminal customers
Seppuku Lite: Infratil's business model is corporate suicide
No quarter? Manston's doom: Infratil selling off assets to meet debt
Controlled descent: Manston's uncertain future with Infratil
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Regen Park

2009-05-19T10:59:00.007+01:00

TDC's website says:

Regeneration work in Thanet includes improving buildings and public spaces in our towns, development of business parks and working with community groups to help bring their ideas to fruition to improve the area. The emphasis in regeneration is on working in partnership with a wide range of organizations, so that together we can make Thanet a quality place to live, an attractive location for investment and an enjoyable area to visit.

Manston is not a building or public space in a town. No community groups are pressing for expansion or night flights. A bustling cargo airport would not make Thanet an attractive place to live in, or visit. Any profits generated by the airport would be repatriated to New Zealand, to cover the tens of millions of dollars Infratil have already lost. Profits from freight transport would go to the hauliers, mostly national and international firms.

Airport expansion may be an eye-catching, high profile project, but it's more cost than benefit, and very little of value stays in Thanet. So why is TDC, and Brian White in particular, pushing it so hard?

Job creation keeps appearing in TDC's pro-Manston arguments. My problem with this is that Manston is a laughably inefficient means of job creation. On the edge of beautiful Herne Bay, just by the A299, a 50 bed Premier Inn motel and associated 50 table restaurant have just been built. This has created 50 jobs.

Two points here:

this is close to the 70-90 jobs Infratil keep promising, but using a lot less land and making a lot less noise, mess and inconvenience: this has to be a better bet;
a hotel and restaurant (by definition) encourage people to come and stay in Kent, and spend their money here: surely a more sustainable path to regeneration.

TDC's regeneration manifesto is pointing in the right direction. Investing money, time and effort in Manston is a wasteful diversion from that purpose. Rather than putting their eggs in one rather threadbare basket, TDC should be concentrating on actively promoting a multitude of small new businesses. If only there was some handy light industrial space to use as a regeneration business park...

===
Related posts:
Manston's future: a suggestion
Outer London: Manston Airport's in the wrong place
Rearrange Kent International Airport: possible uses for the Manston site
Controlled descent: Manston's uncertain future with Infratil
Ha, ha, ha, ha... Oh: Infratil's over-optimistic job forecasts
Airport expansion COSTS jobs: so says an independent study
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

It's for your own good, Part II

2009-05-18T10:12:00.012+01:00

There are then five main groups of issues to consider. These being;

Environmental impacts and measures including noise monitoring and reporting, air quality, complaint procedures and reporting etc.
Overflying issues specifically noise abatement routes and preferred runway usage etc.
The subject of how penalties and the Community Fund be addressed.
The social and economic advantages of enabling some night-time flying; creation of jobs etc.
The actual hours during which shoulder-periods etc. might be considered acceptable.

So says the Agenda for Tuesday's meeting.

A notable omission is whether anyone actually wants night flights. Anyone who isn't on the Infratil/TDC payroll, that is. I don't know whether anyone will get the opportunity to make this point. Anyway...

(1) Click here for my thoughts on monitoring. In a nutshell, showing a commitment to monitoring is a sign of good faith, and actually doing it and producing accurate and timely reports proves you're not taking the piss. Infratil have been dragging their feet - there is no excuse for this. Any agreement between Infratil and TDC must be monitored effectively, and any complaints dealt with efficiently.

(2) Overflying issues are most easily resolved by minimising the amount of overflying. Duh! Click here to see how easy it is for the air traffic in and out of Manston to avoid overflying built-up areas. Essentially, rather than taking the laziest/easiest option of a straight-line flight path, a slight curve would route the planes over the Wantsum Channel and the North Sea, causing a lot less bother for a lot more people.

(3) When I first saw the escalating scale of fines in the S106 agreement, I was impressed. I've always been of the opinion that if you're going to go to the trouble of squeezing a fine out of someone, it's got to hurt... them. However, looking at the numbers more closely, it becomes clear that few of the breaches are being fined. What the hell is going on? The simplest way of addressing the question of penalties is to apply them consistently.

(4) This is a cracker. Am I the only one who gets the impression that this is a foregone conclusion? Shouldn't we also be considering the disadvantages? Click here to find out how increasing air travel can cost jobs. Anyway, I will be listening carefully to learn about the clear benefits of night flights. In particular, I'm curious to discover whether night flights generate more jobs than day flights. The airport is idle through the night, and idle for much of the day. Why not start by getting the airport busy in the daytime before crashing through everyone's sleep?

(5) I laughed out loud when I first found out about 'shoulder periods'. These are simply a euphemism for changing the rules, moving the goalposts. Can you, dear reader, suggest any other deadline or time limit that has a shoulder period?

"Lovely Rita, meter maid, please don't give me a parking ticket or clamp my vehicle - I am clearly within the shoulder period on this parking meter."
"Oh, Mr Conveyancer, please don't let my house purchase fall through - the money was nearly on time."
"Dear Taxman, do not punish me - my tax return is only slightly late."
"Please do not fine my plane for failing to meet your terms of business."

No. Set the deadlines and stick to them.

===
Related posts:
Numbing numbers: there's going to be an awful lot of planes
Out on a limbo: waiting for a new Section 106 agreement
Before I die of rage: Infratil ignores residents
Something of the night: why night flights are bad
Regen Park: there are better ways of regenerating Thanet
Ha, ha, ha, ha... Oh: Infratil's over-optimistic job forecasts
Airport expansion COSTS jobs: so says an independent study
Whine press: how to complain
Altitude sickness: sub-standard aircraft monitoring at Manston
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

It's for your own good

2009-05-17T14:43:00.006+01:00

Dear reader, a golden opportunity presents itself. This Tuesday there will be a meeting of the great and the good and the rest to discuss the thorny topic of night flights.

The TDC Airport Working Party will be there. Infratil will be there. The Airport Consultative Committee will be there. The general public will be there. A rare chance to see them all in the same place at the same time. The mind boggles! There's even the possibility that something useful may come out of it.

If there is anything you want to say about night flights, or if you want to hear what everyone else has to say - BE THERE! You may not get another chance like it.

Tuesday, 19th May, 2009 at 7.00 pm
The Passenger Departure Lounge
Kent International Airport Terminal Building, Manston
Please use the car park opposite the Terminal building (not the staff car park!).

It's a public meeting - you're entitled to be there. Click here to link to the Agenda on the TDC website. If you'll be getting to Manston on wheels rather than wings, here's how:

(click the map to enlarge it)

For a quick refresher course on how we got to this point, click on each of the following:

Make it Work: a bit of common sense background and scene-setting.

Sleep: outlining some of the problems associated with night flights.

Something of the Night: a summary of how night flights are unnecessary, offer no economic benefit, damage health, and cost votes. (This last point will only be of interest to a tiny minority of Kent residents.)

===
Related posts:
Paul Carter. How dare you: conspicuous by his absence
Hours' worth of minutes: from the public meeting at Manston
Love letters straight from the heart: contacting your Councillors and MP
Telling it like it is: to the Chair of the Transport Committee at Westminster
Support act: MP wrongly claims support for expansion
Bigger than politics: cross-party support in Herne Bay
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

$124 million of 'Sorry'

2009-05-12T22:16:00.006+01:00

It appears that Infratil's best friends Cargolux are getting their arses kicked for their part in an international criminal conspiracy. Two conspiracies, in fact.

The US Department of Justice has accused several airlines of engaging in a conspiracy to eliminate competition by fixing the international cargo rates they charged, from at least 2001 through 2006. Three of the airlines have coughed up fines to avoid the presumably more expensive rigmarole of going through the courts. See Reuters for more grisly details. The red-handed three (and their guilt money) are:

Japan-based Nippon Cargo Airlines Co ($45 million)
Korea-based Asiana Airlines Inc ($50 million)
Luxembourg-based Cargolux Airlines International ($119 million)

Dear reader, your eyes do not deceive you: that's $119,000,000 worth of naughtiness. But they are contrite:

Cargolux Chairman Marc Hoffman said yesterday that his airline had "cooperated intensively with the DOJ and the other authorities throughout the investigation and will continue to do so." He added that the company had "reviewed and reinforced its competition compliance program." ATW Online

Meanwhile, in another part of the globe, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has also been investigating cargo price-fixing, and collusion on fuel surcharges, between 2003 and 2006. Once again, Cargolux have sought to save themselves some hefty legal bills and have offered the ACCC A$5 million worth of 'sorry'.

"Cargolux has cooperated intensively with the ACCC and the other authorities throughout the investigation and the legal proceedings and will continue to do so," Chairman Marc Hoffmann said. RoutesOnline

Familiar words.

As I typed this, and registered the fact that even the smaller fine is more money than Manston has ever made, I had a fleeting mental image of Infratil as an impressionable adolescent hanging out with crooks just because of the cash they can flash.

It's a dirty dead-end business guys, and you're in with a bad crowd.

===
Related posts:
Fact-o-Matic: Freight, the facts and figures
Nosey, picky: Infratil over-stating their freight figures
Stansted 1, Manston 0: the BA World Cargo contract
New Zealand sacrificial lamb steaks: Manston's uncertain future
Seppuku Lite: Infratil's business model is corporate suicide
No quarter? Manston's doom: Infratil selling off assets to meet debt
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Outer London

2009-05-06T23:34:00.015+01:00

Well, there are several airports that have leapt on the global branding bandwagon and smuggled the word 'London' into their name, with varying degrees of geographical accuracy.

(A special mention must go to "London Ashford Airport": 60 miles from London, 13 miles from Ashford, 1 mile from Lydd. It seems the greater the distance, the more prominent the billing - it's full title is actually "Jupiter Brazil London Ashford Airport".)

So, JBLA to one side, what are we left with? Well, starting from where London actually is, you can see that London City is pretty much a slam-dunk - 9/10 for accuracy. Spiralling out clockwise from the south, we have Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Stansted, Southend and Manston. Yes, folks, Manston's even further from London-land than the fantasists at Lydd.

'Location, location, location' does matter and this seems to be a persistent blind spot for many when it comes to discussing Manston's viability. It may have a lovely long runway, but it's in the wrong place.

Draw a circle with a 20, 30 or 50 mile radius around all the 'London' airports, and Manston's circle will have the least land in it - because it's on a peninsula. In terms of population within the catchment area, it may just nudge ahead of Lydd, but will always be well behind the others. It's not a great place for a high volume passenger airport. Not that great for freight either, being so far from the highest densities of people and industry.

On with your thinking cap, dear reader, for soon I will be asking for your best efforts on two topics: how would you make a sustainable success out of Manston as an airport; and how would you make a sustainable success out of the Manston site as a non-airport.

===
Related posts:
Manston's future: a suggestion
Regen Park: there are better ways of regenerating Thanet
Rearrange Kent International Airport: possible uses for the Manston site
Controlled descent: Manston's uncertain future with Infratil
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Whine press

2009-05-05T20:22:00.008+01:00

KIA may occasionally fall short of their own exacting standards, what with God acting up, forces being majeure and beyond control, and life unfair. All too frequently, the upshot of this is that planes end up in the wrong place at the wrong time; too low, too late and too loud. When this happens, you may feel the need to tell them what you're thinking. Here are two easy ways of contacting KIA at Manston right now:

1) Click here and you will magically materialise in the secret corner of their catacomb of a website that harbours their complaints screen. Be warned: if you want to complain about noise, you will find that there is NO checkbox next to the Noise option. Cunning.

I told them about this teensy-weensy oversight on 9th April, but I guess they've been busy. I applaud the brilliance of this ruse ("...well, we've had no complaints about noise"), but I do feel the execution lacks subtlety.

2) Click here to produce a part-completed email, pre-addressed to the only email addresses I have found that work (if you know of any others, do let me know). Give it a go now - it's a hoot.

Email a link to this page to anyone you know who may find it useful. Please let me know if you think of any improvements.

JFK vs KIA

2009-05-04T16:40:00.027+01:00

Through selfless and diligent research I unearth nuggets of pure fact, which I can hurl at half-truths, shattering them into a myriad harmless fiblets.

From time to time I have heard it said that planes (or more accurately, their pilots) like to have a long straight approach to the runway when landing. Dear reader, this may well be true. I have also heard it said that a long straight approach is a necessity. Dear reader, that is bollocks.

Far beyond the western borders of Kent, in Americashire, is the well-known city of New York. Its John F. Kennedy Airport is laughably busy, and is hard by one of the largest conurbations on earth - larger even than Ramsgate. Out of consideration for all the people on the ground, the planes do NOT take a long straight approach to the runway. Click here to link to the live radar tracking of incoming and outgoing flights.

I've drawn a pink smudge to indicate one of the approaches to JFK. The plane circled in red is just turning in to land. It is 1.75 miles from the end of the runway. This is, of course, a very much smaller number than the 7, 8, 10 and 12 miles that I have been told is the necessary and unavoidable run-up distance.

Translated into Kentish miles (or miles of Kent, I suppose) this equates to a landing plane turning in to its final straight-line approach roughly over the Monkton roundabout; actually over the junction of Seamark and Plumstone Roads. As you will see, this still leaves plenty of room for a leisurely swoop in completely avoiding Herne Bay and Ramsgate.

So the next time someone tells you that the planes MUST fly over the towns, just tell them to JFK off.

Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

By their logos shall ye know them

2009-05-02T13:44:00.009+01:00

A man running away from a mess on the ground labelled "Airport".

This is prescient, you mark my words.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Seppuku Lite

2009-05-02T01:15:00.010+01:00

As I mentioned recently, before getting revolted by Infratil’s selfishness, the pile of poo they presented to TDC was the carefully considered best efforts of a wealthy, globe-spanning organisation aiming to win support from a strategic partner at a key point in the development of its European operations.

It is a public declaration of commercial weakness; of ongoing and increasing failure; of a flawed business model; of narrow short-termism and strategic poverty.

“All airports across the country are significantly affected by recession”; passengers, freight, airport investment and employment are all down. Like it says in the small print ‘the value of your investments can go down as well as up’. As Newton said ‘what goes up must come down’. As my Gran said ‘all good things must come to an end’. So deal with it.

Guys, having a fixed cost base is nothing special – everyone from the United Nations to my local ice cream van has a fixed cost base. Why bother mentioning it? It in no way entitles you to any special treatment or sympathy.

We all know Manston’s losing some £4 million per year, and that this is unsustainable, and will lead to closure. Top tip: DO NOT BLEAT about your company going down the toilet in a public document. It does not inspire confidence, and puts you in an appalling negotiating position in the event of anyone showing an interest in using your airport.

And what’s this about wanting to be “able to compete equally for new business as shown by the BAWC tender”? As if you couldn’t! At the time of the bid, Infratil had already successfully bounced TDC into giving the all-clear for night flights, and night flights didn’t seem to feature in BAWC’s decision-making process:

Jude Winstanley, BAWC's head of network and freighters, said: “After careful evaluation and taking into account a number of factors including the need to provide the best product for our customers, cost effectiveness, service quality and speed of connection, Stansted remains the most attractive long haul freighter base for BA World Cargo and our customers.” Air Cargo News, 13th March 2009

Manston lost out to Stansted on at least FOUR key considerations, and night flying wasn’t even mentioned. The competition was unequal only inasmuch as Manston was a crappier proposition for BAWC.

In an earlier post, I pointed out that Infratil made Manston’s under-usage a selling point: lack of congestion, competitively priced aircraft parking, etc. There are at least two major problems with this: first, idle is good vs busy is bad isn't a great starting point for a business model; second, when all the other recession-hit airports are less congested anyway, you suddenly lose your selling point.

Infratil are labouring under the impression that they are competing for low cost passenger and long haul freight with Gatwick and Stansted. (Duh! Heathrow, London City, Lydd and Southend: recession-hit airports, just like Manston, and all hungry for business. Manston’s business would do fine. Ignoring them won’t make them go away.) Infratil are trying to hit the big time in a high volume, commoditised market, setting off from well behind the starting line in the toughest market for decades. I wouldn't start from here, guys. Strategically, making a selling point of lack of custom, whilst aiming for a high volume, low margin market sector is a rather messy form of suicide.

Before I die of rage....

2009-04-30T23:33:00.014+01:00

I should have known better. I should have been ready, but I was taken aback by the torrent of special pleading, contradictory arguments, anti-logic and selective perception of reality. Infratil's presentation to TDC (mentioned in thanetonline, and thoroughly bewailed by Brother Stephen at St. Opmanston's) is a leading contender for the crappiest piece of work this year.

Bear in mind, dear reader, that this is a presentation from a multi-million dollar enterprise to a strategic partner on whom it is pinning its future hopes. I'll take you on a guided tour of the particularly crappy bits later, but for the moment, try this: here are all the reasons that KIA spelled out to TDC as to why night flights are a bad thing...

No mention of the 40,000 people in Ramsgate, or the 35,000 in Herne Bay, or the 30,000 in Whitstable, or the 45,000 in Canterbury. The poor sods who will be living under the night-flying aircraft.

Thanks a million, Matt. Sleep tight.

.:.

YES WE CAN: Monitor

2009-04-29T22:40:00.004+01:00

Yes we can: the story so far… Infratil need Manston to be very busy; night flights are a bad thing; and the daytime flight paths must be designed to be as people-friendly as possible. So what happens next? Step aboard the time machine of your imagination, and gracefully swoop into the future…

Let’s suppose that Infratil have impressed everyone with their keenness to encourage clean and quiet planes to fly as cleanly and quietly as possible, at considerate times of day, where there are least people. Marvellous. I for one would be proud to brandish their commitment as an example to airport operators across the country. But how could I prove that their high ideals were the real deal?

This very question was addressed in the 2005 Alan Stratford & Associates report to Thanet District Council when they were reviewing the S106 agreement with PlaneStation:

To properly manage noise and environmental matters related to the operation and future growth of the airport, it will be essential to have in place a rigorous and comprehensive monitoring process. This needs to be adequately resourced, in terms of equipment and staff, and have in place clear and measurable targets and standards which have been mutually agreed, with related penalties for non-compliance. Demonstrable monitoring and enforcement is essential, also, in regard to the confidence within the surrounding communities that the airport’s activities are taking place under the influence and control of the Council.

Simply put, monitoring is the only way of being sure whether we are getting lots of dirt and noise, or little dirt and noise. Anyone who is not constantly working towards the latter needs to be taken out and flogged. In a constructive, educational and empowering way.

There are established and reliable technologies available for monitoring the presence and immediate environmental impacts of carbon dioxide and other gases, fumes, particulates, droplets, leakages and spillages. Given the towns at either end of the runway; the surrounding farmland; the underlying aquifers; the commercial sea fishing; the internationally important conservation areas; and the Isle of Thanet’s vulnerability to climate change, it’s in everyone’s interests that these monitoring systems should meet or exceed the highest statutory requirements. I don’t doubt for a moment that there would be no shortage of advice and support from Natural England, CPRE Kent, Kent Wildlife Trust, etc, etc. It’s all just there for the asking.

Noise and location are obviously closely linked. The Civil Aviation Authority has clear guidelines for what constitutes best practice for noise monitoring – at least two fixed microphones at each end of the runway, and at least one mobile microphone for measurements further from the airport. Historically, Manston’s noise monitoring has been sub-standard – as far as I know it’s still not up to scratch. Their radar has also been very basic, relying on a PSR system.

Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR) is akin to a bat’s echolocation: the transmitter emits a powerful pulse, some of which is reflected back – the reflection and the delay indicate the direction and distance of an object.

Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) is more like a conversation. The transmitter sends a question and a transponder on the plane replies with information gleaned from the cockpit instruments. Again, the delay in the answer arriving indicates the distance; the answer itself confirms the distance and identifies the aircraft, location, speed, bearing, height, etc.

To monitor adherence to agreed routes and altitudes, SSR is essential. An airport can buy its own SSR system, or hire SSR feeds from a third party. In a recent phone conversation, Matt Clarke of Infratil said that Manston currently rents SSR feeds from the MoD. However, TDC don’t seem to be aware of this:

TDC’s Airport Working Party’s recent minutes state “It was understood that at the outset of a new service featuring some night-time aircraft movements, the secondary radar capability necessary to operate web tracking would not be affordable. However, an appropriate threshold of business levels ought to be established for its introduction.”

Similarly, “Noise abatement routes can only be monitored if secondary radar capacity is provided. This represents a considerable investment which cannot be justified by current aircraft usage. A threshold of aircraft usage should be set for its introduction.”

The impression I get is that in their conversations with TDC, Infratil are quoting a figure of £2½ million for their own SSR system (probably accurate) and using this as an excuse for not getting it yet, and thereby being unable to monitor their planes. This is, at best, disingenuous. For low volumes of traffic, it makes sense to hire a feed; when volumes increase sufficiently, the cost/benefit equation will tip in favour of buying their own. It’s a straightforward commercial decision – this is the cost of doing business.

Infratil are doing themselves no favours by trying to avoid monitoring by hiding behind the largest quotable cost. They have a duty of care to everyone on the ground, and everyone in the aircraft, to know exactly where everything is in the airspace over East Kent. Quite frankly, if they’re even hinting at not taking this seriously, they’re not fit to run an airport.

So there we have another solid pillar for the S106 Agreement: the immediate provision and consistent use of excellent monitoring equipment. Common sense demands it. TDC are perfectly within in their rights to request it. If Infratil were shrewd, they would forestall the issue by taking advice from the relevant aviation and environmental bodies and installing top notch monitoring systems. It wouldn’t be hard for them to present it as evidence of a green conscience, willingness to be a good neighbour, etc. It could win them friends. Everyone needs friends.

Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

My favourite starfish

2009-04-28T22:12:00.010+01:00

In the interests of spreading our love and help far and wide we (Mrs Earplugs and I) met up with some of the Canterbury people who will be dealing with Thanet District Council over the next few months while Infratil’s Masterplan is being goggled at.

It turned out to be a useful and encouraging way to spend a morning. There was a big cheese from CCC’s Environmental Health bods, the top banana from their Regeneration department, and Cllr Mike Patterson, who is on the KIACC. (I couldn’t help wondering: if you snip bits off people from Regeneration, do they simply re-grow, like starfish? If so, it offers an easy way to ramp up the staffing levels.)

The plan was to provide them with enough armour, ammunition, sticks and carrots for them to be able to nudge Thanet away from a worst-of-all-possible-worlds outcome. The mighty wodge of words, numbers and pictures we gave them can be summarised thus:

The Draft Masterplan for KIA is indicative but insubstantial – it needs to be redrafted, and then put out to consultation properly.
The Section 106 Agreement should reflect the needs of everyone affected by the operation of the airport, not just Infratil and TDC.
There is absolutely no need or justification for night flights (other than emergency diversions).
Flight paths should avoid population centres by overflying the sea, or sparsely populated land.
If overflying towns is unavoidable, the planes could fly higher for longer, and then descend more steeply.
These ‘people-friendly’ routes should be agreed and implemented before flight volumes increase.
Infratil must demonstrate that the routes are being adhered to by recording and reporting what the planes actually do.
Infratil must install adequate noise and pollution monitoring equipment.
The noise monitoring equipment must be used consistently.
The readings from all the monitoring equipment must be recorded consistently.
The recorded readings must be published frequently and regularly (e.g. on-line).
Failure to comply with the S106 agreement must be reported and fined. Any decisions not to fine must be explained.

As you can see, all good reasonable stuff, and they seemed to buy into it. In all fairness, we all know that Canterbury are no more than consultees in this process, and have no effective Vulcan death-grip that they could apply, other than possibly dragging everything through the courts. In that respect they are about as powerless as a Thanet resident. Nonetheless, they are prepared to listen politely, pay attention and take notes – which puts them in my good books. It remains to be seen how much they can influence Thanet, but I shall keep fuelling them.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

No quarter? Manston's impending doom

2009-04-09T22:57:00.016+01:00

Infratil's sale of Fullers ferries is part of a retreat from under-performing businesses to repay debt.

The infrastructure investor yesterday announced that subsidiary NZ Bus is selling its interest in Fullers for $40 million to Souter Holdings, majority owned by Stagecoach co-founder Brian Souter. Infratil will retain its NZ Bus operations in Wellington, Hutt Valley, Auckland and Whangarei.

Infratil says the deal was part of a programme of divestments which would realise more than $100 million in this financial year. The money would be used to repay debt of about $1.2 billion including infrastructure bonds, perpetual bonds and bank debt. Infratil executive Tim Brown said the $100 million also included exercising the right to sell Lubeck Airport in Germany, worth about $60 million, and the sale of some bus depot properties in Auckland.

"In this environment we do have to look at recycling some capital and cut back on where you can't see them generating strong returns. The short term for us is going to be debt repayment but in the medium term there are various opportunities."

He would not comment directly on one analyst's suggestion that Infratil's other under-performing European airports could be next but said it was hard to run with a loss on a low-return asset in the current environment. Around 75% of Infratil's investments, including Wellington Airport and TrustPower, were performing well, Brown said. "You have to say to yourself, can you have 25% of the business not generating a return? In this type of environment you can't."
New Zealand Herald, 7th April 2009

..:\!i!/:..

Mr. Earplugs suspects that our local kerfuffle may soon be academic: Infratil withdraw, TDC look daft, and we all wonder what to do with 2.75km of runway. Out of curiosity, do any of my better informed readers have any idea what the current market value of Manston would be, either as a 'working' airport or as a generic light industrial site.

===
Related posts:
After the fact: someone's been tinkering with the news
New Zealand sacrificial lamb steaks: Manston's uncertain future
$124 million of 'Sorry': Manston's criminal customers
Seppuku Lite: Infratil's business model is corporate suicide
Controlled descent: Manston's uncertain future with Infratil
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

YES WE CAN: enjoy being awake

2009-04-09T18:27:00.012+01:00

Yes we can: the story so far... To be commercially viable (let alone successful), Manston will have to be very busy; and night flights are undesirable on a number of counts. Top marks to those of you who have leapt to the conclusion that there will be a lot of daytime flights.

During the day there's the advantage that fewer people will be woken from their sleep. For those already awake, the planes will be just as loud as at night, but the higher level of background noise means that the overall effect is less startling and disruptive.

It's worth remembering that the human body is designed to work best with a 'normal' background level of entirely natural noises - think in terms of the plains of Africa, Garden of Eden, Sherwood Forest, walking in wide open countryside, that sort of thing. Anything above and beyond that rapidly becomes stressful - just how stressful depends on the volume, pitch, repetition and so on. Even relatively small changes in the noise levels can have a significant effect. A brief digression for a quiet chat about decibels:

Sounds are measured in decibels. Zero (0) decibels is the softest sound a person with normal hearing can hear at least 50% of the time. The important thing to know about decibels is this: if a sound increases by 10 decibels, it doubles in loudness as we perceive it - it sounds twice as loud. Here are decibel levels of everyday sounds:
0 Decibels Threshold of hearing
10 Rustle of leaves
20 Water dripping
30 Whisper
40 Quiet radio in room
50 Moderate rainfall
60 Conversation, dishwasher
70 Busy traffic, vacuum cleaner
80 Alarm clock
90 Lawnmower
100 Snowmobile, chainsaw
110 Rock music
120 Jet plane takeoff

Now you know.

The point of telling you these things is to let you grasp the significance of this: a 5 decibel increase of noise during the day has been linked to primary school children being up to two months per year behind in their reading age. Five decibels is a relatively small increase in noise levels. Currently in Ramsgate there are primary schools operating what has been called "jet-pause teaching", where everything just comes to a halt until everyone can hear themselves think again. This is unacceptable. Nobody should have to put up with that, least of all our kids.

The obvious solution is to regulate and manage the flow of air traffic. This will inevitably involve trade-offs: for good practical reasons the planes like to have a long straight run-up to the runway when landing. An absolutely straight line may take them right over a town. We need to work together to see how much leeway there is, and how far the flight path can be curved away from town. It may be worth exploring trying to keep the planes higher for longer - we all know that some come in too low, too soon. We could look at the timings of flights - aircraft noise during the rush hour would seem less intrusive. We need imaginative solutions.

This should be one of the cornerstones of the S106 re-negotiations: avoid flying over built-up areas wherever and whenever possible - use the sea, or unpopulated/sparsely populated land instead. As I said before, it's not rocket science, just sense. Add your comments below, or email me.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

YES WE CAN: sleep

2009-04-09T00:25:00.008+01:00

Absolutely no night flights. Not scheduled flights. Not chartered flights. No night flights. Diversions from other airports (due to emergencies, bad weather and so on), humanitarian missions or national crisis are fine. Obviously. But otherwise... absolutely no night flights.

I hope that's clear.

A plane coming in to land makes a LOT of noise. At night, when everything else is that much quieter, the sound stands out against the reduced background noise, so seems louder, and is more disruptive. This much is self-evident.

Even modern planes are noisy, and even when they're relatively high up. An enquiry at Stansted in 2007 took evidence of noise complaints that came from a roughly rectangular area 35 miles by 60 miles around the airport. The sound footprint of each aircraft is large; the combined impact of all an airport's traffic taken together is huge.

The noise itself is stressful, as is the loss of sleep - a 10 decibel increase of noise at night raises the risk of hypertension by 14%. On health grounds for all those within earshot, night flights are a non-starter. From the point of view of quality of life, ditto.

Economics: the aviation group of the Local Government Association reports that “no evidence has been produced by the Government or the aviation industry to justify claims that night flights have an overall economic benefit”. That sentence is worth re-reading out loud and thinking about carefully. The LGA, which covers the whole country, but concentrates on local interests and priorities has a 'Strategic Aviation Special Interest Group'. They've done their homework, they've done their sums, and they've come to the conclusion that night flights don't make economic sense.

Matt Clarke (Infratil's Chief Exec) has said that Manston is operating at a fraction of its capacity. Surely there can be no need for them to operate night flights. As there's plenty of available daytime capacity, that should be used up first.

Night flights: unhealthy, uneconomic, unwanted and unnecessary.

===
Related posts:
Fact-o-Matic: Noise

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

YES WE CAN: make it work

2009-04-08T16:27:00.017+01:00

Profitable. Sustainable. Sound commercial proposition. Good corporate citizen. These are just some of the good things that happen when you work with, rather than against, those around you.

It's not rocket science. It's not even science. It's sense.

Infratil have paid a lot for Manston, and have spent a lot on it since. To see any kind of return on their investment, they need Manston to generate a steady and healthy profit from the air traffic it handles.

BAA, the country's largest airport operator was recently deemed to have a near-monopoly, and has been forced to sell off some of its airports in order to increase competition. The increased competition will bring prices down as airports fight for market share. There won't be any plump, lucrative contracts left - making money will rely on the sheer volume of traffic.

Basic business logic and a few simple facts from the real world lead us to the conclusion that there's going to be a lot more planes over East Kent. This is the time to get our heads together and figure how to manage this so that it works out as well as possible. Recently we had a bit of a mad flurry when Infratil thought they were going to get a cargo contract from BA - everything was done in a rush and nobody was very happy with it.

Thanet District Council are planning ahead for how to deal with night flight requests. Infratil have set out their MasterPlan for the airport. Any change in the pattern of use of the airport, or growth in traffic, will mean that the S106 agreement has to be re-negotiated. The S106 is a bilateral agreement thrashed out between a few dozen people (Thanet Councillors and the senior management of Infratil) but the consequences of the agreement will affect the lives of tens of thousands of people for years to come.

And this, dear reader, is where you come in.

Over the next few posts, I'll be running though some of the things that I want to see in the S106. I cordially invite each and every one of you to comment on the posts with your shrewd and wise thoughts and observations. I will gather together everything you send, and press it on anyone who'll listen. And some who won't.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Telling it like it is

2009-04-06T22:05:00.018+01:00

Following the horrifying revelation that one of our elected representatives has been misrepresenting us, I have unleashed the merciless Mrs Earplugs. Blessed with eternal youth, bionic implants and the ability to kick-box without scuffing her Manolo Blahnik's, Mrs E now has the bit firmly between her razor-sharp teeth. We're not at DefCon 5 (unbridled bloodlust), but she's getting that restless, questing look in her eyes.

As an antidote to the heavily skewed, unfounded and wishful PR prattle that the ever-supportive Brazier presented to Louise Ellman (chair of the Transport Committee), Mrs E sent her the following:

Julian Brazier has written to you claiming that there is widespread public support for more use to be made of Manston airport (Kent International Airport). There isn’t.

Thanet County Council supports the airport and so does Kent County Council. Canterbury City Council, who represents a large constituency under the flight path, has significant concerns about the way in which the airport is regulated and monitored now, let alone what the impact might be were it to expand. The last public consultation about Manston was carried out by MORI in Thanet in 2005. Focus groups included those most affected by the flight path, i.e. Ramsgate residents. Of those:
67% opposed airport expansion;
78% thought noise and air pollution would be big problems;
90% wanted night flying hours to be restricted.
Thanet District Council says more recent public consultation shows support for the airport. However, they have declined to release the report that would demonstrate this, even when requested to do so by the statutory body set up to lead consultation on Manston, i.e. the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee. Claims that there is widespread support can not be substantiated. Claims that there is widespread opposition can.

Roger Gale MP and Paul Carter (Leader of Kent County Council) are fond of saying that Manston has one of the longest runways in the UK (it hasn’t, thirteen other airports outstrip it) and that it is surrounded on three sides by sea so the impact on people is minimal. A quick look at the map will show you that the runway runs almost exactly East to West. Depending on the wind, planes come in on a straight line either over Ramsgate (pop. 39,600) or Herne Bay (pop. 35,200). That’s a lot of unhappy people on the flight path.

In a recent meeting of Herne Bay councillors, there was unanimous cross-party support for the proposal to get a more balanced debate going about the pros and cons of Manston and to prevent the impact of the airport on Herne Bay from getting worse. This agreement transcended the normal party political divide and can not in any way be described as support for Manston to expand. Local opposition is in response to a number of issues:
Manston operates in an unregulated and unmonitored way, with sub standard noise monitoring; a willingness to allow unscheduled flights to land any time day or night; and an unwillingness to levy fines for planes that land outside the S.106 agreement because the Chief Executive does not want the airport to get a reputation as being “difficult”. I can substantiate all this with emails from the airport itself should you need to see more
Neither Ramsgate nor Herne Bay is successful. They are both slightly shabby seaside towns whose most sustainable hope for a more prosperous future is tourism. Nobody will visit and spend money in a town or on a beach under a flight path
Manston’s PR machine talks about the hundreds to thousands of jobs that will be created if the airport expands. Close inspection shows the vast majority of these jobs to be indirect jobs – jobs that already exist elsewhere in the UK which Manston will notionally be supporting by purchasing fuel etc. The number of real jobs that could be created is tiny. So, we have an airport whose growth plans will blight many lives whilst possibly creating a small number of jobs. As an economic decision about the best thing to do for an area, the airport makes no sense
The airport is built right on top of an important aquifer. Whilst the Environment Agency has recognised how critical it is to preserve this aquifer (you will be aware that the South East is the UK area with the biggest mismatch between population size and available water), the airport’s owners have done nothing to ensure that the correct measures are in place to protect it from pollution. It is already contaminated and an expanded airport will worsen the situation considerably
None of the infrastructure exists to support expansion. A single carriageway road comes out of the airport and the nearest public transport is three miles’ drive away
The airport has been in private ownership for years. Two previous owners have failed to make a go of it. Infratil are still losing money there after four years of ownership. It’s just not a sensible place to have an airport.

So, there is no widespread local support for this airport. What you are hearing is the view of the few that have access to the media - MPs and the airport’s PR consultants. If you tap into the world to which ordinary members of the public have access - blogs; parish councils; local environmental groups – you will see massive opposition to the airport. I would love to see a more balanced debate on the airport’s future instead of being told by politicians who have not consulted the public that we all support the airport. Anything you can do to encourage this would be great.

Rearrange Kent International Airport

2009-04-05T23:16:00.009+01:00

Itinerant oriental pork ant. Ran into proletarian kitten. Anoint potential errant irk. Better still, turn it into something more useful than an anagram...

One of the commonest uses for an old airport is as the foundations for a new airport. Understandable, really. If it's in the right place, additional infrastructure grows up around an airport. The physical, economic, transport and communications facilities make the area particularly well suited as a location for a newer and/or bigger airport. Success breeds success. It becomes a self-reinforcing industrial ecosystem. Beyond a certain point, a kind of critical mass, it becomes a persistent and defining feature of its environment.

However, some airports just die. Being past their best-by date, or built too late, or in the wrong place, or for the wrong market, or some permutation of these and scores of other factors conspire to extinguish the last spark of commercial life. What then?

To be viable, even a small airport starts off with a sizable chunk of land, tarmac, buildings, infrastructure, transport links and lots of nice bright shiny lights. Which is pretty much what we have at Manston. It's mighty runway is 2,752 metres long and 61 metres wide; there's 20 hectares of land inside the perimeter fence, with a further 46 hectares available for development (1 hectare = 10,000 square metres).

My curiosity was piqued by news of a solar farm being built in Portugal - a large array of hefty panels generating megaWatts of juice, and coincidentally giving me up to date costings for large-scale renewable power production. Back-of-fag-packet maths says that one hectare plus £1million gets you enough hefty panels to produce about 0.2 megaWatts. That's enough clean, renewable energy for about 150 homes, forever. Well, nearly forever.

East Kent is one of the driest (i.e. least cloudy) parts of Britain, and Manston is flat and shadeless. It has the makings of a silent, low-rise, emission-free power station, easily meeting (and possibly exceeding) the needs of whatever development succeeds KIA.

A quick glance around the world reveals that recycling industrial sites is surprisingly popular and can be very successful. More on this another day. Brother Stephen from St. Opmanston's Priority is praying for:

light industry at the western end, nearer the Manston business park
housing, and more housing, and then maybe some extra housing
a new swimming pool
Canterbury University Eco-wing
expanding the air museum.

It could be a divine opportunity for TDC to make advantage from adversity: a showcase development of sustainable green housing and recreation mixed with employment-intensive workshops, all running off its own power. What's not to like?

Controlled descent...

2009-04-04T17:57:00.011+01:00

Down under. Going under?

The downward drifting squiggly line is Infratil's share price on the New Zealand stock market. Should we care? Definitely - it's time to plan ahead.
Infratil describe their strategic interest in airports thus:

The huge growth in the world’s population of people financially able to fly (both because of reducing air travel costs and increasing incomes) is increasing airport throughput. In Europe, hub airport congestion is presenting additional opportunities to “urban edge” airports.

I've heard Manston called many things, but 'urban edge' is a first. Infradig describe the advantages of Manston thus:

KIA's major advantage is its lack of slot congestion and its ability to provide prompt ground service, a significant advantage to customers over the principal London airports. KIA can take delayed or unscheduled services, which other airports struggle to fit into congested passenger service dominated schedules. KIA will also offer freight airlines competitively priced aircraft parking.

So its advantages centre on the fact that it's not very busy. Presumably this puts KIA in something of a bind: every time they get more business, they will be making themselves less attractive. Idle is good vs busy is bad isn't a great starting point for a business model. The aggregated figures for Infrapenny's Urban Edges must make dispiriting reading for any of their shareholders, and the footnotes suggest that the actual figures are even worse.

Infratil's founder supremo Lloyd Morrison is worth some NZ$70 million, and estimates his company's market capitalisation at NZ$1.2 billion. They bought Manston for £17 million and are happy to spend £10-20 million on it before pulling the plug, so from their point of view KIA is small but far from trivial.

Infratil's European airport investments are performing poorly. Infratil are big enough to take the hit by cross-subsidising, but not indefinitely. Their airport at Prestwick had to fire a quarter of the staff due to falls in freight and passenger traffic; Manston just lost out to Stansted on a freight contract that was big enough to be a tipping point. The global decline in air traffic due to economic slowdown and contraction won't be reversed quickly. The mad fluctuations in oil prices over the last couple of years have highlighted the vulnerability of budget holiday travel and air freight.

Infratil's portfolio covers a couple of airports and bus companies in New Zealand, property investments, a port and lots of power generation. Close to home, well understood and relatively successful, these ventures are a comfort to Infratil's shareholders. In their shoes, I would be looking askance at the European airports, and Manston in particular. It's bleeding cash at the rate of millions a year. Realistically, a lot of good news has to happen to Manston very soon. Realistically, it won't.

So, we come to the forward planning. Infratil pulls the plug and Matt flies home, presumably from another airport. Twice-failed Manston lies empty. What shall we do with it?

===
Related posts:
Manston's future: a suggestion
Regen Park: there are better ways of regenerating Thanet
Outer London: Manston Airport's in the wrong place
Rearrange Kent International Airport: possible uses for the Manston site
New Zealand sacrificial lamb steaks: Manston's uncertain future
$124 million of 'Sorry': Manston's criminal customers
Seppuku Lite: Infratil's business model is corporate suicide
No quarter? Manston's doom: Infratil selling off assets to meet debt
===

Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Support act

2009-04-03T17:48:00.009+01:00

"Brazier supports Kent International Airport" according to the politics.co.uk website. (Just as an aside, if I had grown up being teased for having a surname that sounds a bit like brassière, I would forbid the use of 'support' in the same sentence as my name. But I digress.) Julian Brazier is the Conservative MP for Canterbury and shadow minister for Transport - do check out this link to the excellent TheyWorkForYou website.

In his submission to the Transport Committee's review of the future of aviation in the UK, Julian wrote that "KIA has the benefit of strong local support for expansion. This local support expends [sic] to the Local Authority (Thanet District Council), the County Council (Kent County Council)." What makes him think that?

When the locals were asked in 2005 how they felt, it was the most local people who were most against, as shown in this graph from the MORI poll:

When the locals were asked in 2008, what was the result? Well, Thanet District Council would have us believe that opposition had transformed into support. Others aren't so sure.

Paul Twyman heads the statutory body (KIACC) that consults on all matters relating to airport developments at Manston. He was concerned enough about local opinion being misrepresented that he wrote to TDC:

A related matter concerns the reference by the Leader of the Council to MORI poll data on public attitudes to the airport. Would you please arrange for us to be supplied with the full MORI report and background data to which he referred. I should mention that having been a consultant to the Market Research Society in the past I know that they have strict rules about the way in which such information is released and subsequently used, to avoid selective "cherry picking" of market research.

As I have explained earlier, the much-trumpeted new jobs that are supposed to accompany airport expansion and seem to have bedazzled both Local and County Councillors are in fact tiny fractions of virtual jobs scattered the length and breadth of Britain. When this awful realisation sinks in, the Councillors need to find some other justification for supporting the airport expansion. It would be tactless to say it's just exciting for them to be involved in a big project. They need to be able to point to real benefits for their voters, benefits that outweigh the noise, pollution, congestion and risk.

The proposed expansion of Manston (quite apart from being a bad mistake on a number of counts) offers the people of East Kent pain without gain.

===
Related posts:
Paul Carter. How dare you: conspicuous by his absence
Hours' worth of minutes: from the public meeting at Manston
Love letters straight from the heart: contacting your Councillors and MP
It's for your own good: public meeting at Manston
Telling it like it is: to the Chair of the Transport Committee at Westminster
Bigger than politics: cross-party support in Herne Bay
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Altitude sickness

2009-04-01T22:51:00.015+01:00

In the Olden Days (2005), Manston’s radar wasn’t good enough to tell them exactly where their planes were. They couldn’t tell the exact height because they only had Primary Surveillance Radar.

In the Modern Age (2009) they also have Secondary Surveillance Radar (they buy a feed from the MoD) so they can now tell the height of planes as they pass over Herne Bay. And elsewhere, presumably.

But they don’t record it.

This is perplexing me. Given the aviation industry’s healthy obsession with safety statistics and analysis, I would have thought that recording the actual position, speed and direction of all aircraft within detectable range of any airport would be encouraged to the point of compulsion.

This begs a question: when someone (like me) complains to KIA about low, noisy, off-route planes (as I have), how can they possibly be so certain that the plane was at an appropriate height, given that they have no record of it?

Another question: for a presumably modest outlay, Infratil would be able to to publish clear, accurate information about flight patterns, like this example from Luton Airport. How can they resist? It's a very effective way of letting everyone know exactly what's happening.

Oops. Did I just answer my own question?

Something of the night

2009-03-24T23:32:00.009Z

They must be bats, wanting to fly in the dark. Not in the squeaky, blood-sucking sense. Just a bit nutso. Re-tune your ears and minds to human frequencies and I'll explain...

Quick bit of background for newcomers:

At the end of last year, Infratil published their draft MasterPlan, spelling out their hopes and dreams for the coming years. The projected growth in freight and passenger volumes is staggering. Both Thanet District Council and the CPRE were critical of the plan. The document will now rattle back and forth until an agreed final draft is produced, about September 2009.

In a separate but related development, Infratil (who were hoping to win a contract with BAWC) pushed TDC into changes to the Section 106 Agreement at very short notice. These changes would have allowed them a number of night flights to support the BAWC contract. This had the effect of drawing attention to the consequences of increased traffic through Manston. The BAWC deal fell through, and Thanet Council are now starting to draw up a pre-emptive night flying policy that will see them through until 2018.

With me so far? OK. But...

A lot of keen and clever people have spent a lot of time studying planes and airports. Much head-banging, hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing, midnight oil-burning... you get the picture. All this hard work has been condensed down into reports, analyses and presentations which we can all get hold of - we don't have to re-do all that slog.

The aviation group of the Local Government Association reports that “no evidence has been produced by the Government or the aviation industry to justify claims that night flights have an overall economic benefit”. That sentence is worth re-reading and thinking about. The LGA, which covers the whole country, but is focussed on local interests and priorities has a 'Strategic Aviation Special Interest Group'. They've done their homework, they've done their sums, and they've come to the conclusion that night flights don't make economic sense.

The World Health Organisation has found that people's health is damaged if their sleep is reduced or disrupted by noise. This wouldn't just affect those under the loudest part of the aircrafts' noise footprint - it would affect everyone within earshot.

In earlier applications for night flying, promises have been made that flights would be going in and out to the west of Manston, thus avoiding the more densely populated parts of east Kent. The key phrase in all those promises is "weather permitting".

Fact: most of the time the wind in Britain is westerly or south-westerly. Fact: for safety reasons, pilots prefer to land into the wind. So the most sincere of promises, made with the best of intentions, will come to nought if the wind's blowing in the wrong direction. The night flights would be coming in low over Ramsgate and Thanet to land at Manston. Lots of voters, waking up grumpy, needlessly.

Matt Clarke has said that Manston is operating at a fraction of its capacity, so there can be no need for them to operate night flights. There's plenty of available runway time throughout the daylight hours: surely it would make sense to use that up first.

No economic benefit; proven health cost; vote-loser; unnecessary. The Airport Working Group's recommendations on the proposed night-time flying operations from 2010-2018 should be pretty straightforward: don't.

Nosey, picky

2009-03-22T07:49:00.011Z

Infratil's silver-tongued spinners at Maxim PR told the world that Manston currently handled "33,000 tonnes of freight" when they trumpeted Infrapenny's MasterPlan (8th Oct 2008 link).

Oops.

Looks like an over-active optimism gland, or a misty-eyed remembrance of times past, or possibly even a typo. The last time Manston handled that much freight in a 12 month period was October 2003-September 2004. The closest they've got recently was May 2007-April 2008 with 32,061 tonnes. According to the CAA's figures.

And for the sake of completeness, monthly:

"KIA is currently operating at a fraction of its potential and is not a sustainable business at current traffic levels." Matt Clarke, Chief Executive Infratil, 5th February 2009

Ha, ha, ha, ha... Oh.

2009-03-21T10:40:00.014Z

Having been roped in to the shambolic shotgun-wedding-cum-phantom-pregnancy of Infratil's attempted seduction of BAWC, TDC have decided to have a bit of a think and Be Prepared. This will consist of producing a pre-emptive night flying policy, in the full expectation that it will need to modified later, pretty well regardless of who's flying.

Rather than saving their efforts until they know what's required, presumably.

Anyway, wisdom and sense to one side, TDC Airport Working Group's briefing papers (link) include Infratil's recent request for night flights, which contains their projected employment figures (link). This may be old news to many of you, but it's the first time I've seen them. Plug in your abacus, sharpen your pencil and screw in your monocle...

Infratil says:

The based aircraft operation would require the immediate employment/ relocation of;
*3 administration staff, 38 pilots, 8 freight forwarders along with a host of logistics, engineering, cleaning and catering staff required to support a based airline operation.
**Using examples from other UK airports it can be shown that the additional activity at the airport will generate indirect and induced employment opportunities for over 300 further full time employees. For example, East Midlands Airport reports that the Cargo operation of 300,000 tonnes per annum supports 2,100 indirect and induced jobs.
The influx of business relating to the new contract will also secure the future of the 150 staff already based at KIA.

The first slice of 57 jobs I understand. I think.

The next 55 jobs are made up of 49 specified posts and "a host of logistics, engineering, cleaning and catering staff" (this particular host amounts to six). These 55 jobs are to be filled by immediate employment/relocation. Not dissing Thanet, but I'm guessing that the 38 pilots will be relocations. Which brings us up to 57 + 3 + 8 = 68 new jobs for appropriately qualified and experienced people who live within commuting distance of Manston.

Ha, ha, ha, ha....

But now we get to the bit where you can throw away your abacus and monocle and stick your pencil up your nose. Infratil has more than 300 imaginary friends. It's OK though: they're not completely imaginary, because TDC believe in them too. But nobody wants to get bogged down in the humdrum, prosaic details of where these 300 might actually live and work in real life.

Oh.

I'm gob-smacked, horrified and despairing: TDC actually believed these unsubstantiated and wishful numbers. This, I finally realise, is the original source of TDC's oft-repeated claims of hundreds of jobs being created. They fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Guys, I realise that Thanet is hard-pressed and keen to attract employment. I understand that you have both a duty and a desire to do right by your electorate. But please don't fall for every shiny promise - you announce yourselves as prey for any smooth-talking salesman and do a disservice to the very people you serve.

gosh

2009-03-18T09:20:00.010Z

"Members suggested the need to communicate and establish a working relationship with the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee (KIACC)."

Thanet District Council's Airport Working Group minutes, 27th Feb 2009 (link).

Great idea, guys. It's never too late.

===

Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Carrying on...

2009-03-14T10:46:00.011Z

Just had a call from Cllr Vince McMahan (Conservative, West Bay). He's fully behind my earlier email and is therefore quite clearly intelligent, perceptive and right-thinking. He'll be showing the email to Roger Gale this morning to keep him in the loop.

He tells me that the March 24th meeting is public, so there's no reason why Paul Twyman (or I, or anyone) shouldn't turn up. The voices in my head say:

participating in the democratic process does actually make a difference
good to see this being escalated, though I'm not sure sure where Roger Gale stands on this
didn't know the meeting was public
even if it is public, Paul Twyman (as head of the relevant statutory body) should be invited as a matter of course, rather than just shuffling in from the rain with the rest of us bleating oiks. You know the sort of thing: his own chair, name card, coffee cup - the full works.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Airport expansion COSTS jobs

2009-03-13T18:50:00.009Z

Here's a press release from the nice people at AEF. (Aviation Environment Federation specialise in the wider environmental impacts and implications of air travel.) Click here for details and full report.

This is a cracker! Jobs created at and near airports are heavily outnumbered by jobs lost in the domestic tourism and hospitality industries due to everyone disappearing abroad for 50p with EasyRyan.

A new study of the employment provided by airports and airlines from the economist Brendon Sewill concludes that the Government should stop giving people false hopes about the number of jobs which would be created by the expansion of airports. The study, published today by the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), shows Government claims that airport expansion will help create thousands of new jobs to help the country through the recession to be based on unreliable statistics. In fact, it finds that if the expansion results in more UK tourists going abroad then the forecast growth in air travel is likely to lead to a net loss of jobs in this country.

Sewill shows that the old rule of thumb that 1 million extra passengers using an airport is likely to create 1,000 extra jobs is no longer valid. The efficiency of low-cost airlines means that far fewer jobs are created by airport expansion than in the past. The move towards low-cost airports, where modern technology replaces manual jobs, will accelerate that trend.

The study reveals that, between 1998 and 2004, when the number of passengers using UK airports rose by 30%, the number of people employed directly at airports went up by only 3%. Research by York Aviation, a consultancy close to the aviation industry, found that despite a predicted increase of 110% in passenger numbers at the country’s airports between 2004 and 2030 jobs would increase by only 21%.

Sewill argues that the York Aviation research takes no account of the number of jobs that will be lost to the UK if the number of Britons holidaying abroad continues to rise. Last year the UK’s aviation tourism deficit - the difference between what British air passengers spend abroad and visitors by air spend in the UK - was about £17 billion. That deficit is at present costing the country around 900,000 jobs.

The Sewill study concludes that, because most of the predicted expansion is to cater for UK citizens going abroad, the Government’s plans to double the amount of air travel is likely to lead to a further net loss of 860,000 jobs by 2030.

Brendon Sewill said: “The Government, aided by the aviation industry, is perpetrating a hoax that airport expansion is vital to the economy and will help us though the recession. Councillors and planning officers are being misled by exaggerated claims that the expansion of their local airports will create lots of extra jobs. For example, ten years ago Manchester Airport claimed that its second runway would create 50,000 extra jobs whereas in practice employment at the airport has increased by only 4,000. The Government should admit that - when spending abroad is taken into account - its airport expansion plans could actually produce a serious net loss of jobs”.

Keep calm and carry on

2009-03-12T23:44:00.004Z

I sent this to all the Herne Bay Councillors, in the hope of encouraging them to keep their collective eye on the ball.

Dear Councillor,

It is now public knowledge that BAWC have pulled out of their negotiations with Infratil.

PLEASE don't let the issue of planes over Herne Bay drop off your radar. It is as important as ever, just temporarily less urgent.

For their own (presumably good commercial) reasons, Infratil couldn't allow Thanet or Canterbury Councils enough time to give their proposed increase in air traffic the careful attention it deserves. I got the impression that everything became rather hasty and rushed.

This temporary setback in Infratil's growth plans gives us all a much-needed breathing space. It is essential that we all use this interlude to agree a robust framework which allows Infratil scope for commercial success, while maintaining the quality of life for the residents of Herne Bay. Rather than rushing into this half-cocked, we can work towards a sound and solid "win-win" solution.

At Tuesday's HBAMP meeting, I was delighted to see you all agreed that this issue transcends party boundaries. At the meeting with Infratil on the 24th March, I think it is essential that you have Paul Twyman and a flight path expert present. Only then can you be sure of establishing what is possible and what is practical in terms of flight paths, monitoring and policing. And that is how to get the best deal for Herne Bay.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Stansted 1, Manston 0

2009-03-12T18:22:00.008Z

...from thisiskent.co.uk:

MANSTON airport's chief executive has announced British Airways will not be using the airport for cargo flights. The airport applied for changes to the its legal agreement last month saying a "major global freight carrier", widely speculated to be British Airways, was set to move in.
But in a statement released today (Wednesday, March 11), an airport spokesman said British Airways World Cargo had decided to stay at Stansted airport in Essex.

Chief Executive Matt Clarke said:
“Like any business that bids for a new contract and is unsuccessful, we are obviously disappointed with this news. However, this negotiation was only one of several opportunities we have been pursuing and we are pleased with the level of interest shown by carriers in operating at KIA. We are committed to attracting further freight operators to the airport and ensuring the successful return of scheduled passenger services to a range of destinations in line with the development proposals outlined in our draft master plan.
“The fact that Kent International was considered alongside Stansted shows how far its reputation in the industry has progressed since Infratil acquired it in 2005 and this bodes well for future business. We have now established a solid base of regular freight customers and tonnage has bounced back after the temporary reduction associated with the administration of MK airlines."

So that's BAWC out of the picture. However, as Matt says, there may be others in the pipeline.

===
Related posts:
Fact-o-Matic: Freight, the facts and figures
$124 million of 'Sorry': Manston's criminal customers
Nosey, picky: Infratil over-stating their freight figures
===
Sign the petition against night flights.
.:.

Bigger than politics

2009-03-11T17:06:00.008Z

Herne Bay Area Members Panel, 10th March 2009

Well, we went, we saw, but I'm not sure we've conquered quite yet.

Everyone paid attention when we gave our speeches, no booing, no rotten tomatoes - excellent behaviour.

Canterbury City Council has a long-standing appointment to meet Infratil in a couple of weeks. Cllr Ron Flaherty (LibDem, Heron ward) called for cross-party, non-political support from all Herne Bay Councillors to press CCC to get an independent expert on flight paths to attend. This expert would be able to spot if/when Infratil dodge, duck, dive or fib.

Cllr Flaherty also pointed out that Paul Twyman (head of the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee, the statutory body overseeing Manston) should attend. I'm absolutely boggled that he isn't automatically invited to everything Manston-related (do any of you, dear readers, have any idea why he isn't?).

Motion carried unanimously.

Hopeful.

TDC Airport Working Party

2001-01-01T00:20:00.004Z

Purpose of Committee:

The Airport Working Party meets to understand and refer to previous Airport Working Party reports on the effectiveness of the Section 106 Agreement 2000, MORI consultation work and the final report to Council 2005.
Regarding public perception of the airport:-

To acquire knowledge of the airport sector and masterplans;
To visit Kent International Airport, its sister UK airport Prestwick and other English airports serving similar communities in Thanet;
To understand technical operation and meet local communities to understand socio-economic and environment factors in each particular case;
To interview key stakeholders in Kent International airport to hear their views.

Towards completion of its investigation, the Airport Working Party will through dialogue with the airport owner aim to inform and influence its draft masterplan.
A report will be produced in response to the release in the public domain of the Kent International Airport draft masterplan.

Contact:
Support officer: Charles Hungwe
e: charles.hungwe@thanet.gov.uk
a: Thanet District Council Democratic Services, Cecil Street, Margate, Kent CT9 1XZ
t: (01843) 577186
f: (01843) 290906

Working Party Membership:
Councillor Alasdair Bruce

Conservative, Birchington South Ward
email: cllr-alasdair.bruce@thanet.gov.uk
Home: 39 Foreland Avenue, Margate, Kent CT9 3NH

Councillor Mike J Harrison (Chair)

Labour, Newington Ward
email: cllr-mike.harrison@thanet.gov.uk
Home: 23 Holbrook Drive, Ramsgate, Kent CT12 6DY
Phone: (01843) 590119

Councillor Mark Nottingham

Labour, Northwood Ward
email: cllr-mark.nottingham@thanet.gov.uk
Phone: (01843) 850315

Councillor Jo Roberts

Conservative, Birchington South Ward
email: cllr-jo.roberts@thanet.gov.uk
Home: 10 Earlsmead Crescent, Cliffsend, Ramsgate, Kent CT12 5LQ
Phone: (01843) 595065

Councillor John Watkins

Labour, Margate Central Ward
email: cllr-john.watkins@thanet.gov.uk
Home: 8 Irvine Drive, Margate, Kent CT9 3XA
Phone: (01843) 228165

If you want to email them all, cut and paste the following into the address field of your email program:

cllr-alasdair.bruce@thanet.gov.uk,
cllr-mike.harrison@thanet.gov.uk,
cllr-mark.nottingham@thanet.gov.uk,
cllr-jo.roberts@thanet.gov.uk,
cllr-john.watkins@thanet.gov.uk

===
Sign the petition against night flights.

.:.

Naming names...

2001-01-01T00:10:00.012Z

Contact details for those you may wish to contact...

Kent International Airport

Chief Executive: Matt Clarke

a: PO Box 500, Manston, Kent CT12 5BP

t: (08707) 605755 - NB this appears to be a Premium Rate phone number!

e: customer.services@kia-m.com

w: www.kentinternationalairport-manston.com or www.london-manston.com

Click for the Online COMPLAINTS form

Executive Administrator, Customer Services: Elaine Tanner elaine.tanner@kia-m.com

Thanet District Council

a: Thanet District Council, Cecil Street, Margate, Kent, CT9 1XZ

t: (01843) 577000 main switchboard

f: (01843) 290906 general purpose, so mark your fax clearly

e: customer.services@thanet.gov.uk general purpose, so mark your email clearly

w: www.thanet.gov.uk

Thanet District Council Airport Working Party

Members of Parliament
See the TheyWorkForYou website - type in your post code to find your MP. Find out how they have voted on key issues, what they've said, what they cost, what expenses they've claimed, what interests they've declared, etc, etc.

===
Sign the petition against night flights.

.:.