AS a self-confessed NIMBY, but also a NIAEBYE (Not in Anybody Else's Back Yard Either), as far as Southampton Airport expansion is concerned, I feel I am entitled to join with Old Sotonian" (Letters, December 22) in taking P J. Jameson (Letters, December 9) to task for, seemingly, congratulating himself on being happy to locate his business under the airport flight path.

Old Sotonian didn't, however, raise the point that Mr Jameson admitted to living at Chilworth. A far cry from his place of work, and a very nice area of the city, which is most definitely not under the flight path.

One has to wonder, therefore, whether Mr Jameson would be quite so happy with the airport and its proposed expansion, if the situation were reversed and he ran his business from Chilworth and lived instead, where his business premises are currently located.

Could it be that part of the pleasure and advantage he derives from his present business location might be due to the fact that the aircraft noise his worker are subject to during (8?) working hours, effectively stifles any worker-to-worker conversations that heed rather they didn't indulge in?

Unfortunately, the thousands of us that do live under the flight path have to suffer stifled or abandoned altogether conversations (especially in our gardens during spring, summer and autumn months), day in and day out, for a nominal 16 plus hours a day.

Unlike Mr Jameson, we don't have a choice but to fight the expansion plans, because the airport's location and recent growth, has made house moving, economically non-viable - a loss of around £15,000 on average market value, at last count.

On a different tack; how's this for a sobering thought? In the post I received written notification of the result of a planning appeal, made by Southampton Airport, against an earlier Southampton City Council order, prohibiting them from having a tree in a Midanbury residents garden, cut down.

The original airport application and the grounds for appeal against refusal, were that the tree constituted a danger to incoming and outgoing aircraft.

The letter informed me and (I assume) other flight path residents, that the airport's appeal was successful and that the tree will have to be felled or severely lopped. So much for the myth that an Englishman's home, is his castle!

I wonder how Mr Jameson and all the other selfish 'unaffected by airport expansion' supporters would feel, were they to be made aware of the fact that a tree in their front garden, would be tall enough to be hit by a low flying aircraft? And that the airport authorities thought that this was such a real possibility, that they had to spend a great deal of money in seeking planning permission to have it removed - not once, but twice!

Well, I don't know about them, but the prospect of such a possibility (which will be trebled if the expansion goes ahead) would absolutely horrify me.

No, Mr Jameson. Apart from all the other, well recognised, global warming and environmental health issues, you and all the other supporters of treble the size', should have the common decency to recognise that a) Southampton Airport's runway is dangerously located, in relation to a large and vulnerable proportion of Southampton's citizens, and b) Rather than be expanded, it should revert back to, what we long standing, flight path residents were repeatedly told it was, and would remain - an economically enhancing business support airport.

You should then be prepared to concede that virtually all of the planned expansion will be geared to increasing outgoing tourism. This at a time when all the evidence shows, very clearly, that several billions more pounds of our currency is flowing (flying?) out of the country, through tourism, than is coming in from other countries, via the same source.

Expanding Southampton Airport will make that economically suicidal situation worse - not better!

DON ROBERTSON, Bitterne Park, Southampton.