Campaigners in dressing gowns and pyjamas made a racket outside Luton Town Hall this afternoon to show the impact of night flights on their sleep.
Protest groups campaigning against the growth of Luton Airport to 18 million passengers a year say night flights between 10pm and midnight are projected to double and increased sleep disturbance could damage the health of people living nearby.
Andrew Lambourne of Hertfordshire Against Luton Expansion (HALE) said: “We’ve had a fantastic turnout today, people have really got into the spirit of it. We’ve handed in a petition of 1,000 signatures from local people.
“A responsible council needs to put in planning controls to start to regulate the impact of night flights.
“We’re not anti-airport but we just want them to recognise that enough is enough and start taking the impact on people’s health seriously.”
A statement from Luton Airport called claims about night noise were “inaccurate”.
It said during the busy summer period, there were currently 25 aircraft movements between 10am and midnight, and that this would go up to 45 with the expansion, but would not be the “sustained rate of movements”.
In addition, new measures would be brought in to ban the noisiest types of aircraft from using the airport.