Friday, February 29, 2008

Fight the Flights - Digs It's Heels In to Fight for the Communities


As many of you will have noticed in press reports: Fight the Flights has been taking legal advice since October 2007 on the current application by London City Airport to expand flights, being considered by Newham Council. We continue to take that legal advice.

We have all been carrying out a lot of work behind the scenes over the past few months as individuals (including prior to the coalition forming), but we can confirm that Fight the Flights has contacted a huge amount of decision makers regarding the application and the Newham consultation farce. We have also more recently: requested a meeting with the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and have contacted all MEPs, most GLA members and most neighbouring boroughs.

There has also been a door to door petition in the Royal Docks - which collected 500 signatures in objection and the ongoing online petition. Various leaflet drops have been delivered to households in the Royal Docks, North Woolwich, Silvertown, Custom House and Thamesmead areas, and even a newsletter.

It is important that we also mention that there are other objection groups across the boroughs affected whom are carrying out their own successful campaigns independently.


We continue to work closely with Friends of the Earth, Airport Watch and various other groups and indeed some of those groups are campaigning in their areas, in their own right, against London City Airport Expansion.

If you are regular readers of the blog you will also have noticed that John Austin MP for Erith and Thamesmead has called for a public inquiry, and Bexley Labour Group is also backing him on that. But in addition there are many other prominent objectors: Mayor Ken Livingstone, Darren Johnson, GLA Member, Sian Berry, Mayoral Candidate for the Green Party, Charles Secrett, GLA member, to name just a few. You might just spot a few more well known names on our online petition list or in articles on this blog site. The tide is rising and growing in objection to London City Airport's ridiculous expansion plans.

The team here, at Fight the Flights, are in this for the long term as we believe, and have research to support, that any expansion will harm us all and our communities. We believe that profit should NOT be put before the health and well-being of the communities. As the Mayor, Ken Livingstone said - residents must come first.