Are LCA Dicing With The Communities Safety?

Residents have been reporting into us this morning of the appalling weather conditions and alarming attempts of flights to land and take off.

With strong cross winds around London City Airport's runway - 4 flights were forced to abort landing in just 30 minutes of observation. Planes were visibly struggling at some height before approaching the runway with the cross winds.

Some were just feet above the runway and were felt to be at risk of over running the runway by observers - before the aircraft had to abort the landing and struggle to gain height over the A117 Woolwich Manor Way, with landing gear still visible.

Observers felt that they were about to witness an incident on more than one occasion and questioned 'why were LCA still allowing flights to take off and land in such conditions, wouldn't it have been better to have re-routed them to another airport if landing was proving so difficult'? 'Who takes that decision to allow flights to continue to land and take off in such dangerous conditions - and who are they accountable to'? the resident asked us. We suspect there may have been some very startled drivers on that road this morning, as well as startled air passengers.

It reminds us that there are a lot of people in the close vicinity of LCA and the public safety zone, and they were alarmed and scared by these sights. It brings home the reality of the dangers to the community of the airports close proximity to such high density residential areas, and busy roads and the difficult weather conditions that are experienced in the area. The strong winds are even stated in planning documents for housing and developers are often required to plant trees to help create some protection from wind in the exposed areas of East and South East London's former marshlands. LCA's location is clearly not a suitable place to expand flights at all and with 50% more flights (100% more flights in their dreams) - especially on days like today, the risk is too high to the safety of the surrounding communities.

Coming Soon: Videos of this mornings aborted and alarming landings.

One (well rather more) Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Residents have been reporting back to us for some time the high amount of planes that have aborted landings at London City Airport.

Residents notice these as the sound of a jet at low level less than a mile from the end of the runway firing back up into a climb at a steep angle is incredibly noisy over residential areas. They also worry that these events of firing off mean that more of those harmful emissions to humans are spurted over their homes.

We are also wondering if when there are aborted landings whether these count as one noise factored movement or two- even though the plane has to re-circle and attempt to land for the second time?? So in effect, residents experience such events as two movements. But the murky world of aviation statistic manipulation is bound to count it as one we suspect!

We don't have aborted landing figures from Heathrow but we suspect that the amount of landings aborted at LCA are relatively much higher due to the nature of the landings required and the exposed position to adverse weather conditions - another reason to suspect their ability to manage any more flights than they already have.