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Heathrow is one of the busiest two-runway airports in the world with about 1,300 combined take-offs and landings a day. Efforts to limit noise mean that fewer people are affected by noise today than at any time since the 1970s. However, noise remains an issue for people living near or under the various flight paths used for take-offs and landings at the airport.
On average there are around 650 departures from Heathrow each day. The first departure is around 6:00am and the last scheduled departure is at 10:50pm.
Departures
Departure routes
Aircraft taking off from Heathrow follow pre-defined routes, known as Standard Instrument Departures routes (SIDs). The choice of SID used is decided by the airline and is predominately dictated by the destination of the aircraft. Due to the fact that all aircraft perform differently and may be affected by weather conditions which can cause them to drift left or right, there will be some variation as to where different aircraft will fly relative to the centreline of the SID. For this reason, when the SIDs were designed in the 1960s by the Department for Transport (DfT), the Government set corridors, known as Noise Preferential Routes (NPRs), which extend 1.5 kilometres either side of the SID route centreline.
There are 6 NPRs on easterly and westerly operations:
View the easterly operations NPRs (264KB PDF)
View the westerly operations NPRs (235KB PDF)
Aircraft don’t have to follow the centreline of the SID precisely, they just have to be within the 3km wide NPR up to 4,000ft. Under government rules, once aircraft reach an altitude of 4,000ft, NATS air traffic controllers can direct planes off the departure route towards a more direct heading to their destination. This is known as vectoring.
Living beneath the flight path of Heathrow Airport UK #London #Heathrow #life