Well the government did give consideration to those under the flight path

But a balance has to made. Granted, I was a junior at the time, and what I saw was a bit depressing. i.e. government consultation was a bit of a joke as most decisions had already been made (i.e emissions trading was a given as the best approach and any tax wasn't even open for consideration - the Treasury TOLD us as much - we as the mere DfT had no say in fiscal matters, in fact the comparison between the taxation between modes of transport (i.e rail, road, air) was something not open to debate (as said by the all powerful Treasury).

The fact is, the government underwent a huge economic investigation into the benefits and costs of expanding aviation, and the concensus was to expand airports as the benefits to the UK as a whole outweighed the costs to those living locally. The environmental costs were factored into the analysis, although the methods used are fiercely debatable, the best avaiable methods were used (and are contraversial).

As a final note, the cost of noise is incredible difficult to quantify. The government undertook a research project to estimate it based on those living under Gatwick flight paths (I was involved) but the whole project was flawed, as people couldn't tell how many planes flew over them, or tell the difference between no flights and some flights. So the noise cost of a marginal flight couldn't be estimated. Airports were willing to compensate locals though for suffering noise. Whether this level of compensation is enough, no one knows.

Posted By: Poirot on January 28th 2007 at 21:39:37

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