Jim - I would dearly love you to actually think a little more - I live under a flight path aswell, but of course what you fail to mention or address is that T5 was supposed to be the end of growth, and that since the 1960s housing development and increased flights have meant that the volume of flights has impacted many more people and that there has been a 200% increase in flights! Ruth Kelly would have that situation double again and the simple logic is that more planes over London brings many types of risk we are just waking up to, accident risk, pollution risk (Noise pollution leads to many forms of stress related ill health) asthma rates for children are much higher near Heathrow, Terrorist inspired risk, environmental risk. Oh the economic arguement is a fabrication DoT says expansion is worth £5 billion per year, the truth is that the aviation industry gets £9 billion in subsidy as it does not pay aviation duty and as travellers on vacations we spend £18 billion abroad !

Christian, London, UK

I think you'll find that the expansion is creating a new flight path, straight over West and North London. That's a lot of people who bought a house 20+ miles from the airport, and who are about to get a nice surprise when the jets start flying overhead. Who would have predicted the creation of a new flightpath?

Frankly if a plane had almost landed on my house, I'd be deeply uneasy about the prospects of a lot more planes flying overhead.

Ow and 'A E', there are no benefits of living near an airport - unless you enjoy noisy planes taking off every 90 seconds. I'm sure the residents would swap with you if you fancied it...

Richard, London,

Heathrow has been there for over 60 years.....what the 'protestors' need to ask themselves is this "When I bought my house, did I know it was under the flightpath?"

If the answer is 'yes', then they have absolutely no grounds to complain. If the answer is 'no', then they only have themselves to blame for not researching their single biggest investment properly. Either way, using an accident to advance their 'argument' is at best flawed, and at worst offensive.

As far as aircraft noise 'undermining our mental health', I would suggest that if your mental health is that easily affected it was obviously not too robust to start off with.

Oh, and yes, I live right under the flightpath myself, but I knew that when I bought my house.

Jim Cuthbertson, Egham, Surrey