Thursday, October 30, 2008

LCA Breaks Operating Rules - Blame The Child

The Newham Recorder - otherwise known as the London City Airport Recorder, whoops we mean the Newham Recorder, has once again surpassed it's own standards of biased, misleading reporting in favour of LCA.

Can you spot the comments from residents in the article, or reference to the Section 106 operating conditions? No? Well you won't find them because the Editor Colin Grainger generally appears to encourage his reporters to write reports on LCA from only one source - LCA themselves (or Hill and Knowlton LCA's PR company).

So we see that Hill and Knowlton of tobacco advertising fame, have advised LCA to use the 'child' or family as a reason for breaking their legal obligations. Does that pull your heartstrings, H & K trying to make out that the airport shows compassion for human beings? We're glad they bought that issue up:
  • a jet taking off after 22:30 is NOT ALLOWED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
  • it is irrelevant who is on that flight

  • where they are going

  • what they are doing

But we wonder, are LCA saying that they would discriminate against sending a plane of thirty something businessmen off after allowed operating hours, but would, and did send a plane off out of hours because it had a family aboard who were going on holiday? Isn't that discrimination?

What Hill and Knowlton and LCA fail to acknowledge is that a 100 people on a plane taking off out of operating hours affected:

  • 100,000s of residents in their homes who are supposed to be protected by the section 106 - but have rarely been to date:

  • residents were not only disturbed in Newham but also across neighbouring boroughs

  • it disturbed the elderly, babies, children and the sick

But silly us, they aren't important are they? But compared to 100 paying passengers having their flight cancelled because by sending it would be a breach of operating conditions, and breaking the 'quiet time' the airport are supposed to allow us all overnight, - residents didn't matter and LCA let their 'flight of fancy' take place yet again

Trebles all round for Hill and Knowlton and LCA. Once again showing that profit comes first - residents come....well nowhere!