Well, naturally you’d expect people living near Heathrow to be the first ones to declare ‘we’re out’ – except of course that Heathrow employs vast numbers of people in the immediate vicinity.

To give a true assessment of neighbours attitudes, we’d have to look at Heathrow in comparison with other London airports. Here, Heathrow doesn’t fare so well, as aircraft usually approach over Central London, giving a much wider noise footprint  than any other London airport, when measured in terms of people disturbed per passenger carried. Of course, the quietest option would be an airport out in the Thames Estuary (aka Boris island), but before that idea gets Londoners running for their cheque books, one has to consider the costs involved, estimated last week at £40bn, or £4,000 per head, assuming a division between 10,000,000 people living in and near London.

As the main argument in favour of a Thames Estuary Airport (TEA) is one of nuisance minimisation, rather than the facilitation of growth per se, should the costs of such  a proposal be loaded onto the 400,000 or so people who are most affected by Heathrow’s current noise? If so, the cost moves up to £100,000 per head, so I think this idea gets thrown overboard very quickly when using this argument!

Verdict: Turkeys will never vote for Christmas, and airport neighbours will never vote for expansion. The first group to say “We’re out”.