Alex Cole-Hamilton, Christine Jardine and I met with representatives of the airport today. This included a discussion on the changes to flight paths which have been submitted to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for approval and involve a new departure route over Queensferry called D0.

This caused a lot of concern, with over 1,000 residents signing our petition in the space of just a few weeks.

Today’s discussion with the airport allowed us to get some additional important information;

1. The decision of the airport to change their plans and only use the D0 flight path 6-10am means they are limited to 7 flights a day near Queensferry. This is down from the 56 flights a day which the airport had initially proposed.
2. The airport will have to consult and, more importantly, get CAA approval if they want to increase this number in future.
3. The flight path will only be used when aircraft are departing to the west, approximately 70% of the time. For the other 30% of the time, there should be no flights routed over Queensferry.
4. Aircraft are to bank more steeply on departure, at 15 degrees, as opposed to the current 8 degrees. This will mean the aircraft which do fly near Queensferry will be much higher, at 5,000-6,000 feet up, helping to reduce noise.

To be clear, we continue to believe the airport should not be flying over Queensferry. This is what the initial consultation proposed. We will continue to make this argument.

However, thanks to community pressure, it is clear the noise impact of any change in operation will be massively reduced to what was feared.

Kevin