Die Berichterstattung zu der geplanten fünfteiligen Fernsehdokumentation des Wissenschaftssenders Discovery über Fraport unter dem Motto „Frankfurts Flughafen, wie man ihn noch nie gesehen hat“  hat uns dazu veranlasst, uns direkt an die Londoner Produktionsfirma zu wenden, mit der Bitte bei der Dokumentation auch die Proteste gegen den Flughafenausbau und die seit 3 Jahren andauernden Montagsdemonstrationen mit aufzunehmen. Dem Wissenschaftssender Discovery muss unserer Meinung nach an einer objektiven und alle Seiten  berücksichtigenden  Berichterstattung und ausgewogenem Journalismus liegen, zumal er in seiner Presseerklärung darauf hinweist, dass auch außergewöhnliche Ereignisse und Vorkommnisse aus erster Hand miterlebt werden sollen. Und wenn etwas außergewöhnlich ist, seit drei Jahren und europaweit Beachtung findet, dann sind es wohl unsere Montagsdemonstrationen.

Lesen Sie den Brief an Vortage TV. Verfasste von unserem BIS-Mitglied Steve Collins.

Steve J. Collins

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p style=“text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;“>Ms. Liz Brach (exec. prod.)
Discovery House
Chiswick Park Building 2
566 Chiswick High Road
London – W4 5YB, England

Dear Ms. Liz Brach, My name is Steve Collins, I am a member of the group BIS (Citizen’s Initiative for Sachsenhausen), in whose name I am writing to you (as well as on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of noise victims around the Frankfurt airport) with an appeal to your sense of fairness and balanced journalism. Our protest is recognized and admired throughout Europe, and in the interest of balance we can only hope that this fact does not go under or get lost in your documentary about the airport. Our Monday demonstrations belong, without doubt, to the more extravagant and unusual events that viewers may enjoy watching within your future documentary. As an alliance of over 80 Citizens Initiatives in the Rhein-Main area (this fact alone reveals the extent of our protest ! ) we are in possession of visual & audio archive material which can be readily put at your disposal, and of course your camera teams, reporters and journalists would be more than welcome to experience our Monday demonstration at Terminal 1 for themselves. Please do not hesitate to get into contact with us.

It is maybe important at the outset for us to state that we are not against the airport itself; we accept that it has a legitimate right to operate and carry out it’s business and in fact many of us use it’s facilities and services for travelling abroad.

Our 80 Citizens Initiatives are actively involved in the campaign to stop the expansion of Frankfurt’s airport which would involve building a giant new Terminal within the protected forests that we use for our recreation, the intention being to double its passenger capacity and thereby raise it’s profits at the expense of the surrounding population and natural environment.

I can well understand that your young company is very pleased to have received the contract to create a programme about our airport and yet in order to do justice to the subject at hand, I would hope that you are able to take our legitimate worries and concerns on board.

It is an interesting fact that the airport makes little profit from flights themselves, but by building a shopping centre in the terminal for passengers in transit, Fraport (the company running this airport) is able to rent out space to top name shops. It is here that Fraport makes its main profits. In this sense it is not really a terminal at all, (passengers are merely waiting for their connecting flights), it will in fact be a shopping centre in which customers are flown in to do their shopping.

We have been demonstrating loudly every Monday evening in Terminal 1 from 6pm until 7 pm since Frankfurt’s airport opened it’s new North West runway nearly 3 years ago. It is a runway which has it’s flight path directly above parts of our city and the surrounding suburbs, and it has turned our lives upside down.

In October 2011 we suddenly found ourselves trying to live our normal lives under the deafening sound of airline jets, landing and taking off, over our homes. We are not talking about a few houses here, hundreds of thousands of normal, law-abiding citizens woke up suddenly one morning at 5 am to the ear-splitting noise of aircraft flying a few hundred feet above their homes every 2 minutes.

In the meantime sleeping before the hours of 11 at night or after 5 in the morning is not possible anymore and it means that our children and ourselves get at most 6 hours sleep each and every night including Sundays and Public Holidays.

Doctors and medical researchers have told us plainly and clearly that with these noise levels of 70 to 80 decibels, sometimes rising to 85 decibels, many people will become ill due to high blood pressure, and that this will lead to strokes and heart attacks in many cases. They explain that although we may try to sleep, our ears stay awake all the time, this causes adrenaline to flood through our blood circulation when an airplane flies by. This in turn hardens the arteries, significantly increasing our risk of illness.

During the day, our gardens are useless to us because of the thundering aircraft that we hear every 2 minutes passing overhead. Indoors or outdoors, it is impossible for us to relax. In the main cemetery in Sachsenhausen, due to the planes overhead, mourners have to interrupt their prayers during funerals every 2 minutes and I am told that our school teachers have to wait until planes have passed before continuing the lesson, meaning they have to interrupt their lessons every two minutes.

Those of us who own their own houses cannot move away easily because the value of their homes has dropped significantly. The owners are caught in a negative equity spiral, and one could truthfully say that the airports profits are in direct relation to the losses that the house owners have in the value of their properties, as well as the costs for the losses to their health which exceed any estimation of the airports profit margin.

I know it is hard for anyone to imagine the effect the noise an airline jet makes without experiencing it for oneself, but here in Germany we have a constitution which states that it is forbidden for anyone to take any action that causes physical harm to others. Fraport is doing real harm to thousands upon thousands of men, women and children in the state of Hessia, and our government here in Hessia is doing next to nothing to help us.

I respectfully request you to consider our case and do justice to this aspect of your documentary. I wish to thank you in anticipation.

yours faithfully

Steve J. Collins