Living under a holding stack

Living or working under a holding stack and you hear planes waiting to come in to land

When airports are very busy there can be a build-up of planes waiting to land.

To make sure there is a safe gap between each plane landing, Air Traffic Control keeps these planes in a circling pattern until they can land: this is called a 'holding stack'. The holding stack’s minimum height starts at 7,000ft, so the planes are all still high up. This height means that the noise from the holding stack should not cause a nuisance.

Of course, this can’t always be the case, and people are sometimes disturbed. This happens more often when a holding stack is over the countryside, where there is little background noise, such as road traffic.

Every airport has several holding stacks, Stansted has two– Lorel and Abbot. The map below shows you how the holding stacks work.

NATS have launched a study which looks at the airspace arrangements associated with the existing runways in the north-east sector of London airspace (covering Luton, London city and BAA Stansted). Public consultation will follow towards the end of 2007 prior to any changes that may be implemented.

Any airspace changes required for a new runway at Stansted will be the subject of a later and separate consultation.