Edinburgh Airport flight path consultation responses lost

Flight areas being looked at in the consultation

Almost 200 responses in a public consultation into a new Edinburgh Airport flight path have been lost.

The airport said the blunder happened during a planned upgrade of the consultation website and it "apologised wholeheartedly".

The airport has now extended the consultation for an extra week until Monday 19 September and urged people to resubmit.

Campaigners against the new flight path said it was "shocking incompetence".

Officials are contacting 21 of the 199 people whose responses were lost, as they had included their email addresses.

Thousands of responses

Gordon Robertson, Edinburgh Airport's director of communications, said: "Edinburgh Airport has been conducting its Lets Go Further ACP consultation since June this year and has already had an excellent response with thousands of submissions.

"We have identified that responses submitted via the consultation website between 10:31 on Monday 29 August and 00:05 Friday 2 September did not save during a planned upgrade of the site.

"Although this is a relatively small number of responses in the context of the overall number of submissions, we are committed to ensuring that all who want to comment on our plans can.

"We apologise wholeheartedly for this and believe that this extension offers sufficient time for people to resubmit their input."

A spokesman for campaign group Edinburgh Airport Watch said: "This is simply shocking incompetence, even for Edinburgh Airport.

"Their consultation is fatally flawed, and for the sake of their reputation they must scrap this unnecessary and bungled ACP process now.

"We further call on the airport to reverse the changes they have already made to airspace without any consultation that are already causing misery to thousands across West Lothian, Falkirk and Fife, and to seriously rethink their deplorable approach to community engagement."

Flight areas being looked at in the consultation