Lords votes to retain limit on night flights

23rd March, 2006

On 8 March the House of Lords passed the ‘Night Flights’ amendment that AEF has been promoting at every stage of the Civil Aviation Bill.

On 8 March the House of Lords passed the ‘Night Flights’ amendment that AEF has been promoting at every stage of the Civil Aviation Bill.The amendment seeks simply to preserve the status quo, which requires the minister to set a limit on the number of night flights at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. This provides communities with some certainty on numbers of flights for residents near the three airports.The government wished to rely just on the ‘Night Noise Quota Count’ to constrain night noise.

See ‘Aviation and the environment – Noise – Noise briefing sheets – Night noise quota counts’ for an explanation of the noise quote system and its shortcomings.

For earlier article about the Civil Aviation vote in the House of Commons, see item dated 13/10/05 in ‘News – Publicity & Politics’.

The Government has informed AEF that it will seek to overturn the Lords’ decision when the Bill returns to the Commons.