R2OK!

iwarburton · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 2133 Location: Northumberland

Flight paths are to be redrawn, especially over Southern and Eastern England, and this will result in some of these being taken away from towns and diverted to rural areas.

This is to respond to an increased number of flights and concerns re carbon emissions.

It would be really horrible of me to suggest that this was being done to divert these from Labour-voting to Tory-voting areas.

Wouldn't it?

Ian.

RockitRon · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 7646

Well, I wouldn't put it past them, as there has been more than just a suspicion that such "gerrymandering" (which is nothing new, of course) is also behind the choice of hospitals and A & E facilities that are to be closed, and the accusation heard just this week that the only reason Northern Rock was saved was that it's in Labour's North East territory.

That said, I think the skies over South and Eastern England are generally crowded almost to saturation already, and since there's not much rural land left there anyway, there can't be that much room for manoeuvre. (It was interesting to look up into the cloudless sky that we enjoyed earlier this week and count the number of "live" vapour trails, quite apart from any traffic going in and out of East Midlands Airport. One doesn't think of this part of England as being on a major air route but at any one time there were at least ten clearly visible to the naked eye!)

As regards low-level flying over towns and residential areas, which is I suppose what troubles most householders, I presume this only happens on flights' final approaches to airports, so unless they are also going to move the runways I'm not sure how they can redraw the routes.
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Ron