Scratching the Surface of Air Quality At London City Airport

The cat naughtily scratched the wall last night, missing his scratchpost by a few inches. He got a good telling off today. Sometimes rules just have to be followed and if you don't follow them, well you have to have the courage of your convictions and face the music.

However our friends at London City Airport seem incapable of facing the music without yet more spin, smoke and mirrors.

A few months ago the GMB workers union submitted a formal complaint to the Health and Safety Executive about the air quality in the airport terminal. This, allegedly was after many attempts by the union to see the air quality measurements from the airport. LCY apparently, and perhaps predictably declined to share the data according to the GMB:

London City Airport did hire monitoring equipment, which they located under air conditioning vents and operated themselves. The GMB has been denied access to the results and has serious doubts about this ‘in house’ monitoring and the lack of any independent control. As such any results from this exercise must be considered flawed.

Stephanie Attwood., GMB Organiser said, “GMB members working in the arrivals area report that the fumes get so bad that they experience signs of poisoning exposure such as: dry mouth, nose and throat, sore, itchy eyes, headaches and breathing difficulties. GMB Members working in this area have to vacate the room on a daily basis in order to escape having to breathe in the toxic air. Members of the travelling public who land at London City Airport have to use this area too as will competitors and visitors to the Olympics.

GMB is amazed at London City Airport’s refusal to agree to full independent monitoring to this potentially dangerous situation. If they had nothing to hide they would have done exactly that to reassure the travelling public. But no, instead they have botched up an in-house, off the cuff stab at monitoring that no one is allowed to the see the result of.

The reality of the situation is that London City Airport has chosen to sacrifice the health of their passengers and staff in order to line their pockets with high levels of profit. It is time for the airport to get real and clean up the situation finally putting their passengers’ and staff’s health first.”

Unfortunately FTF were not 'amazed' at all. After 8 years of the airport failing to carry out reliable noise and air readings, (all the readings in the expansion application were based on ESTIMATES because they had no data that they could use for the past 8 years!) it was not a surprise at all.

The HSE to our knowledge have yet to publish the report from their investigation, but you can't help but wonder why in that case, London City Airport has now decided to PAY Green Air Monitoring to come up with some data for them. No data is publicly available so far, but a certificate is, how wonderful! At least the staff member and passengers can perhaps check that out as their passing through, if it is displayed. Whether it gives them reassurance, or gets rid of the symptoms that the GMB describes is another story. Particularly if they knew what was outside the walls.

The data, apparently has given the airport a clean bill of health...but the 'press release' fails to mention the Health and Safety Executive report, or investigation which we assume to be ongoing. We all know that if HSE also find LCY having 'Green Air' inside the terminal, the spokesperson will suddenly be named, and the Newham Recorder will go into overdrive to report it. Incidently the Newham Recorder is going gung ho to report on the LCY paid consultants Green Air report this week. Just funny how the Newham Recorder FAILED to pick up on the story when the GMB press released it back in June. So keeping out the negatives is still priority there then!

Profits before people reign in East London, and it's quite clear where LCY's priorities lay.

Worse still is if we look beyond the walls of the airport terminal, that is where there is hard evidence that air quality is dangerous and in breach of EU regulations. We've written about that before and you can read it all here. But in addition don't forget the paid LCY consultant Dr Maggs. He seemed to think it was fine that flight expansion would push the air pollution ever further over the EU recommended levels. Bet he doesn't live in East London.

Amazing what you can buy today! Sadly, it's just a scratch at the surface of the issue of toxic air linked to London City Airport.

London City Airport Don't Know How Many Employees are Newham Residents

The Chief Executive of London City Airport has stated that out of just 406 directly employed London City Airport staff - he is apparently unable to say how many are Newham residents! Additionally he appears unwilling to state how many of those 406 employees are part time employees.

Source: Richard Gooding's response in a letter to a 'local' MP.

Well there's a surprise!! Seems a bit strange to base hugely wild claims of spin of how 'the airport' benefits the residents of Newham in employment matters when:

1) they don't know how many Newham residents they employ,

2) Newham residents are not mentioned in their customer statistics on LCACC,

3) they are using such spin in their application to try and bait the council on jobs for 'local' people,

4) section 106 agreement requires them to produce annual statistics of residency of their employees. Another breach of the agreement perhaps??

Just fancy that!

PR Employee Shows Contempt For Objecting Residents

Just in the last few days our attention was drawn to an extraordinary online blog article written by a self claimed PR employee of London City Airport (but who claims the blog is not endorsed by LCA), which attacks residents who dare to object to the LCA expansion application. It seems growing objectors have caused them considerable anxiety.

It is difficult to believe that the blog has not been written by somebody who is interested in doing PR on behalf of the airport. It comes across as a well-written piece of marketing for the airport. It makes no real attempt to respond to the arguments on this website. And it certainly doesn’t show any understanding of where local people are coming from.

They attack those that live or have moved into the area: Of course those of us who have moved into the area in recent years knew of the existence of the airport but there was no way we could have foreseen that the owners of the airport would want to go for such a huge increase in the number of flights. The impact on residents will be widespread. It will affect people living many miles from City Airport . Already there are people in South East London and parts of North London complaining about the growing impact of City Airport aircraft.

The economic impact of the airport is more complex than has been suggested. Investment is just about anything creates jobs but if the downsides of the development become so severe it can harm the attractiveness of an area to business.

We need an independent study to look at whether an expanded airport – with all that means in terms of noise and pollution – is really in the economic interest of the Thames Gateway area.

Whisper - We thought it was a chocolate bar - but its just more spin!

When London City Airport mentions 'whisper jet' in its documents of spin, which they occasionally prepare for a handful of residents,you can be sure that 'whisper' it won't be!

The 'whisper jet' LCA are referring to is in fact the BAe146. For those that live around the airport and under the flight path you will know that the term 'whisper' and this jet are not in any way related nor present at the same time. It's the sort of statement that the Advertising Standards Authority have been asked to look into before. You see it wouldn't be the first time that aviation bods have had their wrists slapped for making statements about planes being 'quieter' without any evidence to support the claim. Clearly LCA in turn like to bandy around these words of spin to try and con communities and residents into thinking these noisier jets won't be noisier at all! So what comparison makes these jets a 'whisper jet' - concorde? LCA really do think that residents will be swayed by such terms as 'whisper jets' , oh dear, do we need to tell them where they are going wrong again?

So the bad news for residents is that LCA are introducing more and more 'whisper jets' (along with other Category A jets - all of which are noisier than those in the past) and that is probably why the noise levels experienced in the areas have already noticeably increased. And just in case you want to know just how much these Whisper jets measure - here's NATs noise contour for this aircraft - says it all really. PAGE 15 indicates a nice whispering 80-90dbs.

Personally we'd rather have the chocolate bar.

LCA are now so discredited by their consistent feeding of inaccurate and misleading statements and of them being revealed without any great effort, that LCA must be becoming a real embarassment for their shareholders. Oh deary, deary. It's all such a mess.

The FTF Scholarship - Fight the Flights Educates LCA Staff

It has not passed us by that LCA still spend enormous amounts of time on our web blog and we take this as a personal compliment. At least we can keep them in work for some time at least.

In fact LCA appear to use the blog as a point of educational reference - our articles seeming to educate them in terms of our listing of the negative affects of aviation expansion and references to works which support our claims. Of course they probably weren't aware of most of it going by their application content as a lot of it certainly wasn't listed in there by RPS.

We've already seen that this has forced them to be slightly more creative (but not very) in producing a document of spin for the local long suffering residents in which they claimed to 'communicate honestly with the communities'. Let us get our breath back after nearly choking on that statement! Unfortunately it was still a load of spin apart from the admittance that noise will increase.

Well, all we can say is we are very much looking forward to seeing evidence of that 'honest communication' from LCA. But perhaps they count that occasion of finally admitting that there would be an increase in noise levels with more flights, after telling thousands of residents for many months that there wouldn't?

If anyone spots any instances of consistency in their attempt to be honest communicators, please do not hesitate to let us know and we will be honoured to give them a FTF diploma, but I suspect it won't be in our lifetimes!

Credit Suisse Values At Odds with London City Airport's?? or Question 1. Why would someone object to LCA expansion when we give them free food?

Credit Suisse is a major share holder in London City Airport, we thought you might be interested in their corporate responsibility statement:

Credit Suisse Group knows that the assumption of its responsibilities vis-à-vis its various stakeholders, as well as society and the environment, is one of the keys to long-term business success.

Commitment to Sustainability
We strive to take account of environmental and social issues in our business activities. The signing of international environmental and sustainability charters underscores our commitment.

Society
We cultivate an open dialog with the public, support humanitarian, cultural and charitable organizations and provide sponsorship in the fields of sports and culture.






Pictured left - River Thames - Gallions Reach - an area rich in wildlife and at the end of the east bound LCA runway.


Environment
We have pledged to take account of environmental issues in our business activities and to continuously improve our environmental performance.

That all sounds good....We find it interesting that the good values that Credit Suisse are committed to (and we commend those) are pretty absent from London City Airport's management of the consultation and in the application itself. Concern for the environment, health, pollution - no....not too much evidence of that at all. LCA are hardly doing a good job of even trying to uphold the good values that it's shareholder prescribes to.

Fight the Flights has been wondering recently just how much Credit Suisse knows about the methods which LCA use in their quest to bury the bad news to the local communities not only in Newham but beyond. They might get a good idea of some of the issues just from this blog.

Of course LCA will try and tell you that their 1/2 kilometer consultation, limited to Newham only, is representative and was 'extensive'. Funny how they didn't bother telling residents who would be in the new PSZ map area...or in the new, all encompassing and enlargened noise contour map if the application is approved.

It's all been about as representative as the appalling questionnaire they put together as part of the application which contained 'leading' questions which do not allow any negative answers to be given, only positive - so sorry to those residents who thought they'd get to express anything other than what LCA wanted to hear that day you partook in the questionnaire. Any professional researcher would identify this as being 'biased' and therefore not good practice and invalid. Such questionnaires lead researchers to question the validity and the motive of such a design.

We just call it coercive spin that cheats communities of a real voice.

Egg sandwich anyone?