Half a million flights arrive and depart Heathrow each year, with the flightpath of many of them directly over Windsor.

Windsor has stood the test of time for close to a thousand years, with early Norman settlers establishing the town in the eleventh century. However, humanity is constantly evolving, seeking quicker and more efficient ways of doing things, and older infrastructure finds itself having to adapt.

Since the revolutionary invention of air travel and its perpetual refinement over the last century, people have become reliant on the ability to jet across the globe in just a few hours. 

London, one of the world’s key centres for business and most popular tourist destinations, quickly found itself needing a large airport hub, slightly out of the city but well connected to it, to handle the millions of people moving in and out, annually.

Heathrow was constructed as a small airfield in 1929 and began to facilitate larger passenger operations post-World War II. Today, the site – located 14 miles west of Central London and 5 miles east of Windsor – takes up over 3000 acres and operates two parallel runways close to 4km in length and spanning from east to west. 

Windsor’s location, directly west of the airport, puts it directly under the flightpath of arriving and departing aircraft, with planes flying very low above the town.  

The noise level of the average plane taking off to a bystander from the ground can exceed 100dB, equivalent to a hairdryer or a lawnmower.

This might seem innocuous but when you consider that Heathrow handles approximately 1300 aircraft per day, around half of which take-off and land in a direction directly over Windsor, the noise of an average of twenty-seven planes flying over the town per hour causes significant disturbance and a prolonged impact on people’s hearing.

Moreover, with Windsor positioned directly under the flightpath of low-flying planes, the town receives significant exposure to air pollution which significantly affects air quality and other components of the environment.

With the discussion concerning the prospect of a third runway being constructed at Heathrow, Slough and Windsor could be further affected by aircraft emissions and noise pollution.

Since a security threat in 2022, Windsor Castle itself was declared a ‘no-fly zone’ by the Civil Aviation Authority. However, all Heathrow traffic was exempt from this policy due to the position of the airport.

Heathrow cannot keep circling the issue as planes loop over Windsor and surrounding areas daily. The airport needs to consider the environmental impacts and physical disturbances of flying a large volume of air traffic over both Berkshire’s populated areas and its greenery, so that a touristic area rich in historical value can continue to thrive.