RESIDENTS who claim their lives have been blighted by noise from a trial flightpath will tonight come face to face with Edinburgh Airport bosses for the first time.
The airport's chief executive, Gordon Dewar, will attend a meeting at St Nicholas RC School in Broxburn, West Lothian, to answer questions from householders affected by the extra aircraft route, which launched in June to increase the flow of planes in and out of Scotland's busiest hub.
It follows a debate in the Scottish Parliament last week, when a number of MSPs called for the six-month trial - due to end on Christmas Eve - to be cut short.
The airport has received around 2,200 complaints from people living beneath the new flightpath, which passes over communities including Bo'ness and Blackness and cuts between Prestonpans and Musselburgh.
Helena Paul, of Blackness near Linlithgow, said the noise had driven her and her husband to consider selling their home of four years and moving elsewhere.
She said: "I counted 68 flights on Friday alone. The airport tell us there should be no more than 20 to 30 per day. We had never been bothered by planes before this trial started. The flightpath is only a guide as well - the planes can fly a mile either side of it and even further afield if it's bad weather, it's just down to air traffic control.
"This is an idyllic place to live and to raise a family. I don't want to live anywhere else, I really don't, but last month the disturbance had become so bad that we actually started looking at other houses, and thinking of moving."
Green MSP for the Lothians, Alison Johnstone, said some of her constituents had been "reduced to tears" by stress and sleep deprivation caused by low-flying planes passing overhead from 5am to midnight daily.
Neil Findlay, the Labour MSP for Lothian who has organised tonight's meeting, also called for Edinburgh Airport to halt the trial immediately, and criticised a lack of public engagement prior to the launch.
However, the trial is in line with Civil Aviation guidelines which do not require UK airports to undertake a full public consultation prior to testing a new flightpath.
Campaigners are now appealing to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to put pressure on airport bosses to axe it early.
A spokesman for Edinburgh Airport said: "We've been engaging with the communities under our trial flight path and their representatives since the trial began and this meeting is part of that ongoing dialogue."
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