CLAIMS THAT pilots have been "cutting corners" has plunged Southampton Airport into a new row over noisy aircraft.

Howls of protest have come from Bishopstoke residents living at the northern end of the runway and from Bitterne Park, Southampton, in the south.

Today members of the Southampton International Airport Consultative Committee were being told that complaints had come as far afield as Colden Common, Chandler's Ford, Shawford, Twyford, parts of Winchester, the New Forest and Dibden. It also comes in the wake of soaraway passenger figures.

Years ago Eastleigh Council thrashed out with the airport authorities an agreement for aircraft to stick to certain routes to cut down on noise.

But a council chief says that some aircraft are "cutting the corner" on both arrival and departure routes which is creating unnecessary noise and disturbance to residents.

Eastleigh Council planning boss Cliff Bowden says: "There has been a significant increase in the number of complaints to the borough council about various aspects of operational activity at the airport over the last few months.

"Southampton City Council has similarly received an unusually large number of complaints recently."

The list covers a range of issues including the number of aircraft movements, size of aircraft, early morning and late evening flights and the altitude of aircraft approaching the airport.

But Mr Bowden says the single largest number of complaints have been linked to the routeing of aircraft arriving and departing.

He said: "It is apparent that some aircraft are cutting the corner on both arrival and departure routes giving rise to unnecessary noise, disturbance and concern to local residents, particularly in the Bitterne Park area to the south and in Bishopstoke to the north."

Mr Bowden said there was widespread feeling that operators were not keeping to the noise preferential scheme, agreed by the borough council and BAA Southampton, following extensive consultations some years ago.

The designated routes were aimed at concentrating aircraft movements in defined corridors where disturbance to residents would be minimised, primarily over the lower lying land in the river valleys to the north and south of the airport.

Mary Finch, of the Airport Pressure Group, said "It is not surprising so many complaints have been received. People right the way around the airport are complaining that the routes these aircraft are taking are not what was intended."

An airport spokesman said that at today's consultative committee meeting, the airport managing director David Cumming would be talking in more detail about a range of measures that had been put in place.