Dracula Returns he wants 24 hour flights at Heathrow

 

A Heathrow board member has said the airport should be open 24 hours a day, and that local residents under the flightpath would soon get used to the noise.

Akbar al-Baker, representing Qatar Holdings, which owns a 20% stake in the airport, said locals enjoyed excessive freedom and made too much fuss.

Speaking to journalists from the Times and the Telegraph in Doha, Baker, the chief executive of Qatar Airways, said: "If you live under the flightpath of an airport, I assure you, over a period of time you will not even hear the aircraft passing over your house.

"The thing that is impeding Europe's growth is that airports are locked up from 11 o'clock at night to 5.30 in the morning, which is a very, very critical time for east-west transfer. People [in Qatar] are not making as much fuss about noise as they are in Europe."

 

He said that objections to noise, which affects more people around Heathrow than anywhere else in Europe, should be overriden. "I know people require freedom, but I think this is too excessive. Sometimes the national interest must be considered."

Heathrow moved swiftly to distance itself from Baker's views. A spokesman said: "Mr al-Baker's views are his own and do not represent the views or policy of the Heathrow board or executive committee. We recognise that adding the flights Britain needs for growth must come hand in hand with reducing aircraft noise for residents. Round-the-clock flying from London is not an option. We take the concerns of local communities very seriously and have never argued for 24-hour flying."

Local campaigners, however, expressed deep concern. John Stewart, the chairman of Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (Hacan), said: "He wants to bring the Qatari version of democracy into west London, where the benighted residents under the flightpath will have no voice, no say and no rights. The big worry is that this is the second-biggest shareholder in Heathrow and whatever the airport says publicly, he must have a significant influence in developing company policy."

Heathrow noise is accepted to significantly disturb 250,000 people on standard measurements, more than its rival hubs elsewhere in Europe.

Protesters from across the continent descended on Frankfurt airport on Monday to join thousands of campaigners who have been occupying a terminal for 100 weeks since a new runway was opened. Residents claim they were misled over new flightpaths created over neighbourhoods that were previously unaffected by noise.

In the interviews, Baker also defended some of his airline's controversial employment policies. Qatar Airways bans female cabin crew from getting married in the first five years of their employment. He told the Telegraph: "We used to allow this and a lot of people started to get married and then two to three months later they were pregnant so we were losing a lot of trained people that we had then to stop them flying. We had to put a stop to this. But after five years they can get married to anybody they want."