The City Airport is meeting airlines to reduce delayed flights

Plans for late night flights at Belfast City Airport have been shelved, the BBC has learned.

Management have decided against asking for an extension to operating hours as part of a review of the facility's planning regime.

It comes as figures disclosed to the BBC revealed that more than 600 planes broke the night-time curfew last year.

Despite some demand from passengers, the airport decided not to ask for an extension to flying times, following extensive consultations in which local residents and politicians outlined their opposition.

If management had pursued their plan for an extension of operating hours, they would have entered a full-scale conflict with the local community Sir Reg Empey Ulster Unionist

BBC Northern Ireland Business Editor James Kerr said: "While the main airline concerned, BMI, would quite like a later flight, it has not joined the lobby in favour."

The airport said it had sought to maintain the "delicate" balance between growing its business and community interests.

Airport Chief Executive Brian Ambrose said: "We are an ambitious airport, we are trying to grow, but we have to recognise that we have an impact on the community around us."

The airport will also not ask for an increase in the total number of aircraft allowed to take off and land.

It wants to remove the ceiling on the number of seats for sale on flights in and out of the airport, which sought to limit the numbers going through the old terminal.

Sir Reg Empey, the Ulster Unionist Assembly member for East Belfast, said the decision on the night flights was "a victory for common sense".

He said: "If management had pursued their plan for an extension of operating hours, they would have entered a full-scale conflict with the local community".

Noise restriction

On Monday, the BBC learned that the problem of late arriving flights had almost doubled in recent years, despite an operating agreement that it should close at 2130 BST.

The curfew was set to restrict noise, but some residents living nearby said it was being widely abused by the airport and its main airlines, Flybe, British Midland and British Airways.

About 70% of flights in and out of the airport skirt the north Down coastline.

One residents' group based in Holywood claimed the airport had "not properly respected and conformed" with the curfew.

An agreement between the Department of the Environment and the airport, signed in 1997, allowed aircraft movements outside operating hours only in "exceptional circumstances".

In 2000 there were 334 air traffic movements after 2130 BST and in 2003 there were 648.

The City Airport, now owned by Spanish company Ferrovial, is also meeting airlines with the aim of reducing delayed flights.