The homes beneath Heathrow’s approach paths were not built with modern aviation in mind. Many predate the airport itself, and according to a Hounslow roofing business, that creates an unusual situation where an old roof, a passing aircraft and the question of responsibility can all become part of the same repair call.
There are few places where the age of a house and the movement of aircraft above it can intersect quite so literally. In parts of Cranford, a westbound wind brings a steady stream of aircraft overhead, sometimes roughly one a minute. They are approaching Heathrow only a couple of miles away, with the airport operating under a cap of 480,000 flights annually. Around seven days out of ten, aircraft arrivals pass over this part of west London.
Residents may barely notice them anymore. A roof with loose or missing tiles has a harder time ignoring them.
Older homes, older roofing systems
Hounslow’s housing stock expanded rapidly during the interwar period. The Great West Road opened in 1925, industry grew along the Golden Mile and residential streets followed. Many of the houses were completed before Heathrow began civilian operations in 1946.
Some of those original roofs remain in place today. Older tiles were commonly fixed to timber battens, often without a modern underlay. The construction was perfectly normal for its time, but those roofs have now spent decades exposed to wind, rain and general ageing.
For a roof approaching 90 years old, deterioration can be a much more straightforward explanation than anything happening in the sky.
“The planes get the attention, and fair enough, they’re the interesting bit,” says Charlie, from Watertight Roof Repairs Hounslow. “But most weeks what we’re actually looking at is a roof that’s older than the airport and has just had enough.”
The unusual role of wake vortices
Behind every aircraft are rotating areas of disturbed air known as wake vortices. They normally dissipate before reaching the ground, but aircraft close to runway level can occasionally leave a vortex with enough energy to affect a nearby roof.
When it happens, the damage can look surprisingly isolated. Tiles may be missing from one property while the neighbouring house has suffered nothing.
Individual incidents are uncommon, but the problem is established enough for Heathrow to have operated its Vortex Protection Scheme since 1993. Heathrow’s stated position is that airlines carry legal liability, while the airport funds verified repairs without charging homeowners. Properties in the areas closest to runway ends, where previous vortex incidents have been concentrated, can also receive blanket protection and preventative work.
The process depends on confirmation. Heathrow sends an assessor to establish whether the damage qualifies. Until that happens, the roofer may need to resist the instinct to simply replace everything that is broken.
“It’s about the only job I know where the best advice can be ‘don’t let us fix it yet’,” Charlie says. “If it’s a vortex strike, the airport pays. If somebody’s tidied it all away first, that money’s gone.”
One damaged roof, three possible explanations
A missing section of roof tiles does not automatically point to the same source of funding. A confirmed vortex strike falls under Heathrow’s arrangements. Storm damage may be covered by household insurance, depending on the policy and excess. A roof that has simply deteriorated through age is normally the homeowner’s responsibility.
The distinction matters. An insurance company can reject a claim where ordinary deterioration has been described as storm damage. At the same time, a homeowner who treats a vortex-related incident as routine maintenance could pay for something that would otherwise have been covered.
That makes the initial inspection particularly important.
“Sometimes the honest answer is that it’s the airport’s job, not ours, and we lose that work,” Charlie says. “But people round here talk over the fence. You tell next door the truth and it saves them a lot of money, and that tends to come back round.”
Why the first person at the door isn’t always the answer
Roof damage can create opportunities for another kind of trade too. Homeowners may encounter contractors who claim to have spotted a problem while passing by and offer to begin repairs immediately.
The long-standing advice from Trading Standards and Citizens Advice is to avoid making building decisions on the doorstep. Homeowners are encouraged to obtain several quotations and to be cautious about contractors who pressure them into agreeing to work immediately.
Watertight says it takes the opposite approach, offering free surveys, photographs of the roof, written quotations and a ten-year workmanship guarantee.
“None of that’s clever,” says Charlie. “It’s just what people ask for after they’ve had the other sort of visit.”
Expansion could change the roof-repair map
Heathrow’s proposed expansion remains part of the wider aviation debate. The government has backed expansion, while a draft Airports National Policy Statement has been before Parliament since June, with scrutiny continuing until 26 November. Heathrow has been working towards planning permission by 2029 and has indicated that a new runway would not be operating until approximately 2039.
For local roofing companies, the important detail is the potential change to aircraft routes.
A north-western runway could place additional neighbourhoods beneath lower approach paths, meaning some streets that currently experience aircraft at a distance could find themselves directly underneath them.
“If it goes ahead, there’ll be roads that go from never thinking about this to living with it,” says Charlie. “Fifteen years sounds a long way off. It isn’t, if you’re putting a roof on this year and expecting it to still be there.”
Current blanket protection zones are informed by historical vortex incidents. Newly affected streets would not necessarily have that same record, potentially leaving homeowners with roofs built before the new flight paths existed.
A local industry shaped by an airport
For much of Hounslow, Heathrow is simply part of the landscape. The airport provides jobs and supports businesses throughout the area, while aircraft noise has become familiar to generations of residents.
The housing beneath those aircraft is older than the aviation network overhead. Many of the roofs were designed for conventional weather conditions and have already survived several generations of use.
That means roofing work in this part of London occasionally involves a question that would be unusual elsewhere: is the roof simply old, has the weather damaged it, or has an aircraft played a part?
Most of the time, the answer is still straightforward. The roof has reached the end of its life. But when tiles land in a garden on a calm day and the house next door is untouched, the sensible first step may be a phone call to the airport rather than a ladder.
