City Airport faces battle for extra flights on early mornings and over weekend

The airport, within the Royal Docks, plans to ask Newham council for permission to extend the cap on annual passenger numbers from 6.5 million to 9 million, a determine it expects to achieve by 2031, and permit additional flying hours.

An growth of flying time would permit extra leisure flights and will pave the best way for a return of direct enterprise flights to New York.

However campaigners say hundreds of residents face shedding the quiet interval on the weekend when no flights function.

Approval would even be required from Mayor Sadiq Khan, whose new Metropolis Corridor sits below the flight path. The airport needs to permit flights up till 10pm on Saturdays — there’s presently a ban on flights between 12.30pm on Saturday till 12.30pm on Sunday — and permission for greater than 400 late departures or arrivals all through the week.

It additionally needs to double, from six to 12, the variety of flights allowed between 6.30am and 7am, Monday to Saturday, to allow extra connections with hub airports at Schipol in Amsterdam and Charles de Gaulle in Paris. The airport says solely cleaner, quieter plane — such because the 146-seat Embraer E195-E2 — can be allowed to make use of any new slots.

John Stewart, chairman of marketing campaign group Hacan East, mentioned: “These proposals are geared toward rising the leisure market… That’s the reason they wish to function flights throughout the entire of Saturday, which might be probably the most controversial of their proposals.”

The session paperwork predict that just about 41,000 residents can be affected by no less than 57 decibels of noise by 2031 — 10,000 fewer than below a “do nothing” state of affairs. Mr Stewart predicted that for many individuals dwelling below the flight path the discount in noise can be negligible. “For most individuals, they are going to be getting extra planes, they usually actually received’t discover the discount in noise,” he mentioned.

Liam McKay, director of company affairs at London Metropolis Airport, mentioned the present cap of 6.5 million passengers was more likely to be reached in 2026-27.

The airport presently connects with 36 locations. Mr McKay mentioned: “We’re rising the variety of passengers with out the identical quantity of progress in flights. That could be a development we anticipate to proceed.”

Plans to develop the terminal are unlikely to be restarted till half-way by the last decade. The session closes on September 9.