JET aircraft are causing a nuisance to residents in Stevenage. Planes flying into London Luton Airport have been waking people up in the early hours of the morning. On Sunday, Keith White of Lonsdale Road said that planes were flying over his house every

JET aircraft are causing a nuisance to residents in Stevenage.

Planes flying into London Luton Airport have been waking people up in the early hours of the morning.

On Sunday, Keith White of Lonsdale Road said that planes were flying over his house every three minutes until 3am.

He said: "This always happens after a holiday period and as a result my family gets very little sleep.

"There's a continuous stream of planes every day but not usually at night because they are supposed to have a ban on night flying over Stevenage after 11pm. But it seems as if this is being ignored.

"I'm a physicist and I know that aircraft can go over the countryside and turn much later. There's 10 miles between us and Luton so they could turn five to seven miles from Luton so they don't have to come over Stevenage."

A spokesman for the environment department at Luton Airport said: "The airport has a 24-hour licence to fly into the airport. We have checked our monitoring system and can find no unusual flight activity that night to account for increased aircraft noise disturbance in the Stevenage area.

"The period in question coincided with westerly operations when Luton arrivals were on final approach over the Stevenage area, but this is not unusual and occurs on average 70 per cent of the time.

"One possible reason, however, may have been weather conditions on Sunday night. Our meteorological database identifies very strong winds from a westerly direction, with gusts up to 35mph with low cloud cover. This may well have exacerbated noise levels from airport operations in that area."

l Anyone with concerns relating to aircraft activity should contact the airfield environment office so that it can carry out a full investigation.

It can be contacted on 01582 395382 (24 hour voicemail), 01582 395500 (fax) or via e-mail at noise@ltn.aero