THE skies above Thurrock, which are usually crowded with aircraft, have been almost empty of late. Though today's cloud and drizzle (Tuesday, 28 April) has brought an end to the blue skies and sunshine of recent days, nevertheless the skies are still quiet.

Thurrock lies under the direct flight path for London City airport and it is usually common place to have planes descending at just a few thousand feet over the borough as they prepare to land at City airport.

But it has been closed for commercial operations since lockdown, and has announced it will not the reopening until the week beginning 11 May.

A statement from the airport says: "In liaison with government, regulators and our airlines, we will keep this under review with the aim of re-starting operations from the airport as soon as it is safe to do so.

"At this point in this fast-moving and unprecedented situation, we think this is the responsible thing to do for the safety and wellbeing of our staff, passengers and everyone associated with the airport."

Flights to and from Southend airport also regularly cross borough airspace and they too have ceased passenger flights, but are still operating cargo flights. A spokesperson for the airport, owned by the Eddie Stobbart logistics company, said: "We are currently not operating passenger flights but continue to support cargo operations with around 8 flights per day. Of course this is subject to change."

Southend and London City are not in the UK's top ten of busiest airports, but Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted are the top three in that list and planes using all three can be stacked over Thurrock or use its airspace as a through route for landing or departure.

They have shown a dramatic drop in traffic. Statistics provided by Flightradar24 show in the week ending 22 March Heathrow hosted 2,432 flights, Gatwick 1,335 and Stansted 829. In the past week those statistics read 464, 13, and 90.

You can track all flights in the air over Thurrock via this link.