I HAVE always supported the runway extension plans, ever since I first became aware of them.

I purchased my house in Copsewood Road, Bitterne Park, knowing full well I was choosing to live a flight path of the airport.

And over the 16 years I've owned the house, neither the airport nor the airplanes have ever had a negative impact on my house, my land, my enjoyment of life.

I am aware neighbours of mine complain bitterly about lost roof tiles, debris, noise and air pollution.

Believe me, there is more noise and air pollution generated by the three or four cars per household in our road than there is from anything flying overhead.

And those people who believe this relatively short extension to allow more commercially viable routes to use Southampton Airport will cause such an uptake in pollution levels have likely not considered what the alternatives will be if the airport is no longer sustainable and closes.

The possible loss of that considerable land to yet another housing development will be so much more detrimental to the area in so many more ways, over and above pollution and as no one will ever commit to what the future might hold, it has to be at least considered as a possibility, if not a probability.

My family have lived in the area since the 1970s, my mother still lives in our family home in Desborough Road, Eastleigh.

I remember a childhood where industry boomed, my dad worked at the railway works, now nothing more than rusting sidings, all of that gone so many years ago.

My husband worked at Mr Kiplings, providing the country with their French Fancies for Sunday tea, that site closed and redeveloped to sell more cars to more households.

My daughter's godfather had a lifelong career at the Fords factory, now the bonnets of luxury Landrovers and Jaguars glint in the sun shining on the massive carpark created there. All such a shame.

The airport is pretty much all Eastleigh has left, offering so many people work and opportunity.

The moral responsibility of the airport to maintain its surrounding land only ever benefiting wildlife and the general public who like to enjoy it.

Keeping the Eastleigh, Swaythling and Mansbridge skyline free from towering, oppressive buildings and the local areas a little less congested with crammed in housing and jammed up, overused roads due to the modern way of overpopulating developed land (the Stoneham Lane land used to be affectionately named Donkey Farm and is now just more houses, with more cars parked outside them).

I was dismayed to read how many councils and other bodies had opposed this extension plan, only Bournemouth Airport having an actual reason, in my probably ignorant opinion, to object.

I cannot understand why people would not consider the extension, to evolve and improve the offering at Southampton Airport, a great idea to sustain the industry and employment in the area.

The airport really must survive and, hopefully, thrive once travel opens up to the world again. Please, before you vote, consider all the implications of what it means.

Not just now, whilst the airport is there, but after, if the plans are rejected and the airport cannot continue.

What would happen to that space, those many acres. How will the area attract money with no industry left?

Eastleigh was great when I was a girl and now it's in decline, save the airport and save Eastleigh!

Lorraine Gale

Copsewood Road, Southampton