EDINBURGH Airport bosses have come under new pressure to cut back on plane noise as they pursue a consultation into a controversial new flight path.
Edinburgh Airport Watch is concerned that the airport has refused to concede that it has made airspace changes already over the last year.
The campaigners say that at a public meeting in Linlithgow, a clear majority of the people present indicated by a show of hands that, while they had no problem with noise before the 2015 TURTUR flight path trial started, they did have a problem with "new and unwanted aircraft noise now".
Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar, who was at the public meeting about current noise problems, heard Edinburgh Airport Watch call for changes it believes that have already been made to be reversed.
EAW says that since the trial ended, the noise has not stopped and they believe it is due to a 20-fold increased in plane traffic using an associated flight path.
The campaigners said the alleged changes are causing "so much daily suffering to people" across east central Scotland.
Helena Paul of Edinburgh Airport Watch said: "These people did not buy their homes in the expectation they would wake up one day to find themselves living under a busy flight path."
The Airspace Change Programme (ACP) consultation – to accommodate more flights – has been extended by a week to Monday, September 19 after the airport admitted it had lost nearly 200 responses. The airport said the blunder happened during a “planned upgrade” of the consultation website and “apologised wholeheartedly”.
But the campaigners said the "unnecessary and discredited " consultation process should be scrapped saying ig "cannot now have any validity" following the lost responses admission.
EAW added: "It remains unclear what criteria the airport will use to determine where the new flight paths will be, causing great uncertainty and risking blighting tens of thousands of homes.
"The airport says it needs new flight paths to grow yet is not operating any more planes now than it did 10 years ago – their passenger numbers are up, yet the numbers of take-offs and landings is down on the 2007 peak figures."
A spokesman for Edinburgh Airport said: "The meeting in Linlithgow - and each of 16 community engagement meetings we have spoken at in Fife, West Lothian, Falkirk and Edinburgh throughout the consultation - was extremely valuable for us, enabling us to meet and to listen to the views of community councils and local people.
"Our consultation is robust and clear and is gathering a good response. We'll use the thousands of responses to design options on how best to balance our growth with the views of the communities around the airport. Those options will be consulted on in the new year.
"Our flight paths have not changed since the runway was built in the mid Seventies and this consultation is the first step in modernising the skies above the airport."
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