CAMPAIGNERS against the amount of air traffic over the borough have urged residents to complain to Civil Aviation Authority as it prepares to review the current flight path.

Wanstead is under one of the flight paths of planes using London City Airport, which residents say causes high levels of noise and disturbance to their daily lives.

Now the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has confirmed that a change to the path made on May 7 will be reviewed next year under its standard procedure.

Fight the Flights member Trevor Gordon, of Mansfield Road, Wanstead, has urged people to use this opportunity to register their complaints with the CAA about possible increases in flights over their home.

Mr Gordon said: “They might just be going through the motions with this review, which they are obliged to do around 12 months after any change to a flight path, but certainly now the time to get in touch with them. The more responses they get the more chance is that they will change it.

“It's up to people to let them know, and I certainly will be. If they get a deafening roar of complaints, perhaps they will scratch their heads, but they think they've got a way with it if there's not a squeak from anyone. It can only do good.

“At the moment flights are way down on previous year, such as in August when they were 31% down on the same month in 2008, but that's purely because of the recession. What we're saying to people is that if you don't like how it is now, when the economy starts to recover it'll just increase.

At a full council meeting last month, councillors from all parties came together to demand more scrutiny into Newham Council's decision to allow 50,000 flights to take off from the airport from next year, after Fight the Flights launched legal proceedings against the borough in October.

Mr Gordon said: “In August there were 4,548 movements in and out LCY, but with this new expanded cap of 120,000 per year, if they start to do better and sell all their flights it'll more than double to 10,000 per month.

”It's horrible what Newham have done, and people need to kick up a fuss and make sure it doesn't increase. The airport already has the capacity to make it far worse.”