Anti-helicopters?  How can we be?  When we saw sturdy Sea Kings and their winchmen hauling the elderly and infirm from their flooded Gloucestershire homes in July 07, we could only applaud.  Truth is, these essential flights are a minority of rotary-winged movements.  If only they were silent.

Our website has been attracting registrations from helicopter noise-affected communities across the UK.

The roots of our Coalition were established in 2006 by angry residents living in the area of Wycombe Air Park in Buckinghamshire, UK.   Coalition founders quickly recognised that all they could expect to achieve by complaining about intrusive helicopter noise is the possible re-routing, and therefore merely moving their noise nuisance elsewhere, onto others.

No offers were made of any reduction in numbers of helicopter movements nor introduction of flight-free time slots at weekends.  There was nothing up for negotiation, and affected residents continued to feel the Air Park behaves as a bad neighbour.

Coalition members researched the helicopter noise problem and discovered that they were not alone, and many communites up and down the UK are affected.  Some are affected seriously.

Many communities that shared the Coalition's Aims, across the entire UK,  registered on this website.  We intend to provide factual details of the nuisance problems caused by helicopter flights to our politicians, to ensure they appreciate the severity of this nuisance. 

The Coalition intends to challenge the familiar excuses that "helicopters are good for business", or that the nuisance is exaggerated or that claims of distress caused by low helicopter flying is "anecdotal". 

The Helicopter Noise Coalition intends to become a national platform that campaigns for action against helicopter noise.  Everyone acknowledges that helicopter noise is a major problem for many thousands, if not millions, of people - and that it can have a deeply negative effect on communities.

If you suffer when repetitive helicopter training flights shatter the peace, when leisure flights buzz you, when maintenance pilots cut flight track corners, when business flights wake the family, when rotor noise disturbs the sleep of essential night-shift workers such as nurses, please get in touch with us.

Also if you are fed up with inadequate or unhelpful responses from Air Park or Heliport management, we would like to hear of your experiences.  Naturally, these company managers are paid to defend and promote their corporate business objectives.  It is certainly not our intention to demean them personally.

We have routinely received apologies for noise blasts on those balmy summer weekends when trainee helicopter pilots have repetitively flown at very low altitude and off-track, causing conversations to stop, church services to be interrupted, or horses to bolt.  But no actual offers to do anything to improve the situation.

Typically, at subsequent Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) meetings, individuals who may have finally lifted the phone to complain are described as "nimbys" or "serial complainers".  Then comes the management's Nuremberg Defence of following instructions, or terms of their lease, with the offer to talk the problem over to see what can be done.  Of course, without flight-free time slots, or reductions in flight movements, or sanctions with teeth to fine or ban errant pilots, we may guess where such chats may lead.  This is nice PR, but "status quo ante" and nothing changes.

The Coalition believes that what is needed is change in the law.  The balance of what goes on in the skies above us due to non-essential helicopter flights needs re-balancing in favour of affected residents, whether in city centres or rural locations.  At present the rights of residents come a poor second as opposed to the aviation / helicopter industries.

It seems incredible that, when serious discussion of man's stewardship of the environment is a major topic at the highest levels of government, there is no legal protection for communities adversely affected by intrusive helicopter noise.

The Helicopter Noise Coalition works with well-established groups such as AEF (www.aef.org.uk) and through them, UECNA (www.uecna.com).  Their range of activities deals with all aircraft types, fixed- as well as rotary-winged, and includes issues such as emissions in the context of the aviation industry.  Helicopters are an extraordinarily fuel-inefficient form of transport, with very high emissions per passenger per kilometer.

We want to bring our shared voice to the attention of our parliamentary representatives at Westminster and Brussels who alone can effect the changes we seek to the laws governing aviation. 

Check out our Aims.  If you sympathise with them, join us!