NOISE!

Night flights have been a growing issue since the mid 1990's. In an era when cocks are stopped from crowing and a butcher was prevented from doing his butchering before 8:00am it is bizarre that flights are allowed in the early morning. The 4:30 am flight over Wimbledon will probably have passed over Blackheath a few minutes earlier and this Monday was sufficiently loud to disturb me from my sleep. We are led to believe that sleep deprivation is a form of torture, but the powers that be seem more interested in residents of Guantamo Bay than South London. Has anybody evaluated the economic cost of such sleep deprivation - car accidents through lack of sleep; errors at work because of lapsed attention; children's poor learning etc. If the economic cost of such deprivation were factored into the calculations, Heathrow would probably be a liability.

There has been no mention as to the restriction of night flights in the context of the 3rd runway so it about time it was factored in. A ban on flights netween the hours of 10:00pm and 7:00am would mean that we might be able to get 9 hours sleep!"