Fortunate to live in a fairly quiet part of Camden Town, my enjoyment of the sunshine on my balcony overlooking the Regent s Canal was somewhat spoiled on Sunday by a banner-towing helicopter, flying around over the area above Mornington Crescent for some

Fortunate to live in a fairly quiet part of Camden Town, my enjoyment of the sunshine on my balcony overlooking the Regent's Canal was somewhat spoiled on Sunday by a banner-towing helicopter, flying around over the area above Mornington Crescent for some time.

Whereas, of course, other aircraft, save for police and hospital helicopters, tend to be a transient noise, this infernal twin-engined machine, flying at some 1,000 feet, was a constant droning noise.

That it is an outrageous waste of fuel, and polluting the environment both with noise and fumes, was made all the worse as it was advertising a poker game online.

The whole concept of banner-towing advertising was novel at first but it does not bear close scrutiny - it is, indeed, plain daft. That an online poker company can afford to pay for such an expensive and environmentally unfriendly method of advertising should be a signal to those who play the game online - it's not the poker player who is making money!

Surely we Londoners are entitled to a bit of quiet - or at least as little ambient noise as possible. The Civil Aviation Authority should ban these aircraft altogether and, if that's not possible, ban them at weekends and on Bank Holidays.

Indeed, it is extraordinary that these useless, noisy flights are allowed by the CAA at all, yet they would not permit the Royal Navy Historic Flight, which includes a Swordfish biplane, to join the fly-past over HMS Illustrious at Greenwich last week.

I rather wished I had my own Aster surface-to-air missile for dealing with the intruder!

If the CAA won't do anything about banner-towing aircraft, let's hope that Camden Council will.

Lester May

Reachview Close, NW1

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