London Luton Airport Stack

Luton Aircraft Stack will increase noise levels in St Neots, Abbotsley, Waresley and Gransden

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The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) has announced that they intend to create a new holding stack for London Luton Airport in the skies above Huntingdonshire, which will increase noise pollution levels in St Neots, Abbotselty, Waresly and Gransden.

Although framed as a “public consultation”, the choice offered is between two possible landing routes, both of which locate the new stack over the skies of Huntingdonshire, which appears to be presented as a foregone conclusion. 

Proposed new Luton Stack is located over St Neots

Luton Airport’s operation director acknowledges that the proposals will result in an increase to the noise levels experienced by local communities:

“Any airspace change can have impacts for a wide variety of people. Local communities may be affected by noise, airlines will see a change to the routes that they fly and local airspace users may see changes too.

“That’s why over the last 18 months we’ve been working hard with NATS, local community representatives, airlines and others to help develop the final proposals in this consultation. “It’s now really important that we hear from the wider community during the 15-week consultation.”

Neil Thompson, operations director at London Luton Airport

The consultation document describes noise levels of about 50dB for aircraft stacked at 8000 ft, a level which is known to induce fatigue at constant exposure. 50dB is equivalent to the sound of a “quiet suburb”, conversation at home, or a large electrical transformer at 100 feet.

Although those levels might not seem significant in terms of an urban environment such as the centre of St Neots, they have the potential to be much more noticeable over the suburban and rural communities in which many of us live.

It would be interesting to hear which community representatives that NATS have been working with for the past 18 months because there certainly has been no engagement will local councillors such as myself, or apparently even our MP.

NATS themselves admit that “holding stacks are incredibly useful, but they are also noisy, inflexible and mean aircraft burn more fuel at lower levels and emit more CO2” and have a stated intention to move towards more environmentally friendly methods of aircraft management in this blog: Is this the end of stack holding?

I will continue working with the Town Council, District Council and our MP to provide credible opposition to these plans.