Gatwick’s New Runway
Airspace above your home to the east and west of Gatwick Airport (including north and south) with or without a new runway.
CAGNE, the umbrella aviation community and environment group for Sussex, Surrey and Kent, hosted online events to help residents understand the airspace above where they live. Also to understand what airspace change may mean for them. The recording links can be found at www.cagne.org.
Gatwick Airport’s new runway is not a done deal - explaining how the established legal and expert team (funded by residents) has served a letter of intent to serve a judicial review on the Secretary of State for Transport after her approval. This event can also be found at www.cagne.org plus how to donate to our legal fund.
Aviation is a complex subject full of lines on maps hiding locations, heights that make no sense, Leq, Lmax and decibels, and acronyms of procedures.
The aim of the two events, one to the west and one to the east, was to enable residents to have a basic understanding of what they are looking at as when they are faced with airspace change (potentially second quarter of 2026) they will be able to comprehend better what it will mean for them with or without a new runway.
The new aviation government appointed body UKADS (UK Airspace Design Services) proceeds with the desires of Gatwick for maximum growth to the south assisted by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) which will control the CAP1616 seven stage consultation process and the conclusion on airspace change.
The northern airspace changes will have to wait a while as Heathrow’s airspace comes first in order of priority for capacity change.
Departure Noise Preferential Routes (NPR) are more or less ignored now as concentrated flight paths were introduced on all Gatwick departure routes in 2014. Ground based beacons are no more.
Concentration is to come for arrivals as currently they fly within a swathe of area. This is to be replaced by 3 or 4 concentrated flight paths to the final approach (instrument landing system - ILS - called as such as the beacon from the end of the runway guides in landing planes) joining at 8nm, 10nm, 10nm, 12nm and straight in at 14nm daytime.
What will modernisation of airspace bring, the above concentration on arrivals (using Performance Based Navigation), continuous climb operations (departures climbing higher quicker CCO), potential for new flight paths over new areas, holding stacks will go to free up airspace for more routes, time-based separation of arrivals (to reduce the time between arriving aircraft) and an increase in capacity for Gatwick.
What will the new runway mean? It will not necessarily fly north and will not have night movements from 11.30pm till 6.30am. It aims to add 101,000 flights a year from two departing runways with only the main runway accepting arrivals. We expect more go-arounds due to lack of ground operations and complexity of the traffic light holding system and the crossing of the new runway from the main runway to reach the terminals.
No increase in night flights with the summer schedule 11,200 flights and winter 3,250 plus dispensations given by the government (more flights). However, aviation continues to lobby for quotas to be used which will enable increases in night flights.
To join the CAGNE mailing list visit www.cagne.org