Questions around night flying at Leeds Bradford Airport need answers - Yorkshire Post Letters

I’ve generally been supportive of the efforts of the management of Leeds Bradford Airport, over the years, to turn it into a viable regional airport of which the community at large can be proud.

I’m the first to admit, though, that I live far enough away from it not to be impacted personally by the downside of that. To that extent, if criticism is due, I accept it.

But I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the claim by the airport’s CEO (The Yorkshire Post, October 7) that the airport authorities have no power to stop airlines using the airport at night should they wish. ‘Pull the other one’ was my immediate reaction.

My suspicions aroused, I thought I’d take a detailed look about exactly what it was that was being applied for, in the current series of applications which the local residents describe as seeking approval for more night flights but which the airport insists are just seeking clarification of what the current rules mean.

If the latter was true, there would be little to take issue with. However, what I find is that two out of the current five applications are for far more than that.

They are, rather, asserting that the airport authorities have broken the time and noise restrictions of the existing planning permission so blatantly, so regularly, and for so long, that the Council through their own inaction are now legally unable, through lapse of time, to do anything about it.

So, embarrassing for the airport, in that they have been doing their best to camouflage what they are really asking. And, embarrassing for the Council, because if the claim is factually correct, then they have got a lot of explaining to do (as well as, quite possibly, a lot of compensation to be paying to affected residents once the ombudsman has had his say).

And it is particularly discouraging to read recently, on the Council’s Planning Portal, that the planning officer has asked the airport for chapter and verse to support their assertions, and that the airport’s solicitors’ answer is, effectively, “shan’t”. What a carry-on.