12:27pm Friday 15th August 2008
RE: Last week's article which told how Susan Pratt of Lane End complained to the Civil Aviation Authority about planes doing aerobatics near her home. However, Wycombe Air Park in Booker said pilots would not have broken any rules.
REGARDING the noise from the aerobatics over Lane End, I sympathise with Mrs Pratt.
Many of us in this village heard the tedious droning of the offending planes, we too have also experienced our own noisy "air shows" close to our village.
If these were the only antisocial planes flying out of Wycombe Air Park I am sure most of us could let it pass. However this is absolutely not the case.
It is a sad fact that the significant air traffic generated by the Air Park has become a blight to many surrounding villages and districts, the majority of which lie within the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
With 100,000 movements a year, the air park provides an environmentally unfriendly, noisy leisure activity for a minority.
Years of constructive complaints, directed to the management of Wycombe Air Park from those of us who are detrimentally affected by the often incessant noise, have been routinely ignored. We live inside the "voluntary" Noise Abatement Zone (NAZ) as designated by Wycombe Air Park, a misnomer if ever there was one.
Via the Wycombe Air Park Action Group (WAPAG) web site we have already sent in over 130 formal complaints to the air park and Wycombe District Council environmental office in the last four months, mostly concerning errant flying of fixed wing planes inside the NAZ in our area. These are just a fraction of infringements we actually witness while we are in our garden and walking locally.
Surely when one of the aims of the Management Plan for the Chilterns AONB Conservation Board is to restore peace and quiet to the countryside, the time has come to ask Wycombe District Council as owner of the land used by the air park, to address this problem of antisocial noise not only for the sake of the people who live here but also for the sake of the thousands of visitors who come to this otherwise beautiful area.
Andy Chanter, Frieth
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