Edinburgh airport path changes just won’t fly – Alison Johnstone

Over the past few years, I’ve met with many constituents concerned by Edinburgh Airport’s plans to change flightpaths into and out of the airport with a view to increasing the total number of flights it handles.

Alison Johnstone is a Green MSP for Lothian

At the end of January, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced it had not approved Edinburgh ­Airport’s latest attempt to develop new flight paths due to a lack of engagement with local communities.

The airport does not have a good track record on consulting its neighbours. In October 2018, plans to change flight paths were rejected by the CAA because the final proposals were too different to those that the airport authorities consulted on. The CAA said people were not given the chance to respond to the final Airspace Change proposal, which included increased estimates of flight numbers.

In 2015, trials of new flight paths were abandoned several months early, having been launched without adequate consultation and leading to a massive expansion in the number of noise complaints from people in Fife, Edinburgh and Central Scotland.

Edinburgh Airport’s latest attempt to develop new flight paths was rejected by the CAA last month

Noise pollution from air traffic blights the lives of too many of my constituents. Flight noise can cause stress and sleeplessness, with all the negative knock-on impacts on physical and mental health.

In 1905, the Nobel Prize-winning doctor Robert Koch wrote that “the day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague.” How right he was. The British Medical Journal reports a clutch of studies have found links to hypertension, heart disease, heart failure and stroke. Several studies have also linked chronic exposure to aircraft noise to poor reading and learning outcomes in children.

All this is before considering that we have a grave climate emergency, declared by both the City of ­Edinburgh Council and the Scottish Government. The world’s climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years left for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C. Beyond that, a rise of even 0.5C will worsen the risk of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions around the globe.

What makes this worse is that this level of air traffic is unnecessary. Many of Edinburgh Airport’s top destinations are UK airports, easily reachable by lower-carbon methods, such as trains. Millions of passengers a year fly from Edinburgh to London airports, but many of these journeys could be done just as conveniently and quickly, if not more, down the East Coast Mainline.

In cringe-inducing management-ese, the 2040 Airport masterplan refers to the growth of the airport being dependent on Scotland continuing to be a “great product”. Aside from the fact that Scotland is far more than a ‘product’, Scotland’s image as a place to live, work, visit and do business won’t be improved if we have an air travel policy that doesn’t address the very real challenges we now face.

Edinburgh and Scotland need a national plan for aviation aimed at reducing the number of flights, particularly domestic ones. Along with more serious and genuine consultation, this can inform any future flight path changes Edinburgh Airport intends to resubmit.

Alison Johnstone is a Green MSP for Lothian.