Low-flying Heathrow planes ‘ruining Georgian manor house’

The owner of a £3 million Georgian mansion has claimed low-flying planes landing at Heathrow Airport are damaging his manor house.

Daljit Bhail, 54, says the planes are “extremely dangerous” for his 28-room Grade II-listed home in Hounslow, west London, which he rents out on AirBnb.

The 18th-century property sits next to Heathrow’s south runway, and Mr Bhail claims it has been damaged by large gusts of wind. He also believes it has been damaged by ice and frozen sewage from onboard toilets that has fallen from the planes, a claim the airport denies.

“It’s just madness how they treat a listed building, and the planes wake me and guests up at 3am,” the property investor said.

Mr Bhail alleges that low-flying aircraft have caused “vortex damage” to the roof of the mansion, which he bought for £600,000 in 2000.

“Sometimes there is less than a minute gap between planes flying overhead,” Mr Bhail said. “It’s not just the damage – it’s really loud and they shouldn’t be flying that low.

“If ice can fall off and go through a double screen window, which it has, what happens if someone is underneath? It’s extremely dangerous.”

Mr Bhail accused Heathrow of “abandoning” the house and said they initially agreed to fix the damage to his roof. The airport denies this.

It is understood the airport paid for a contractor to visit to do repair work for the vortex damage, but they were unable to continue because of a disagreement with him.

“It’s a stand-off,” he said. “They sent an assessor out who confirmed the house had been hit by a vortex strike, and said they would nail down the tiles, but then they said they couldn’t as it’s a listed building.”

Mr Bhail said Heathrow then sent a workman to secure the roof in April but claimed he did a “shoddy job”, left nails everywhere and put his foot through the ceiling. Pictures and videos show large nails sticking out of the walls in the loft.

Since then, Mr Bhail claims scaffolding has been left for five months and no one has been sent to finish the job, damaging his ability to attract guests. “The scaffolding now has ivy growing up it it’s been there so long,” he said.

A Heathrow spokesman said: “We have well-established programmes to protect local buildings from the impacts of airport operations, including preventative works and noise insulation.

“In the rare cases where a property is damaged, we work with specialist contractors who will assess the most suitable repair, at no cost to the resident.”