Campaigners are calling on Heathrow to put the interests of residents “central” to plans for a third runway.

These calls come as Heathrow is due to open a public consultation over the £14 billion airport expansion on January 8.

Heathrow wants to alter flight paths so each area of the capital would have no planes flying over their homes for part of the day.

Now John Stewart, chairman of HACAN, a group campaigning against the expansion on behalf of residents in Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead, said: “We are calling on Heathrow to put the interests of residents central to any changes they are making.”

“We want flight paths which will guarantee people respite from the noise.

“If people don’t get any respite they would be in despair because it would mean a huge increase in the number of planes coming over their homes.”

The consultation on the third runway will also look at when night flights at the runway should stop – currently there are no flights between 11.30pm and 4.30am.

But Mr Stewart says HACAN want no flights befire 6am and says the group will “continue to campaign” for that.

He said: “People are woken up regularly by the flights, they don’t need an alarm clock because the 4.30am flight is their alarm clock day after day.”

The airport will also consult on plans to increase the number of flights by 25,000 a year in the run up the opening of the third runway – Mr Stewart speculates this is to offset the cost of the third runway.

He said residents would be “very worried” about the possible impact of those extra flights.

He said: “It will just be more planes and more noise and so many people are already so stressed out about with the noise from the planes.

“We hope Heathrow will listen to what residents say and won’t go ahead with this.”

This consultation will be the first of two major consultations from Heathrow Airport this year- the second, about the airport’s environmental impact, will take place in June.