EDINBURGH Airport bosses have come under new pressure to cut back on plane noise as they pursue a consultation into a controversial new flight path.

Edinburgh Airport Watch is concerned that the airport has refused to concede that it has made airspace changes already over the last year.

The campaigners say that at a public meeting in Linlithgow, a clear majority of the people present indicated by a show of hands that, while they had no problem with noise before the 2015 TURTUR flight path trial started, they did have a problem with "new and unwanted aircraft noise now".

Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar, who was at the public meeting about current noise problems, heard Edinburgh Airport Watch call for changes it believes that have already been made to be reversed.

EAW says that since the trial ended, the noise has not stopped and they believe it is due to a 20-fold increased in plane traffic using an associated flight path.

The campaigners said the alleged changes are causing "so much daily suffering to people" across east central Scotland.

Helena Paul of Edinburgh Airport Watch said: "These people did not buy their homes in the expectation they would wake up one day to find themselves living under a busy flight path."

The Airspace Change Programme (ACP) consultation – to accommodate more flights – has been extended by a week to Monday, September 19 after the airport admitted it had lost nearly 200 responses. The airport said the blunder happened during a “planned upgrade” of the consultation website and “apologised wholeheartedly”.

But the campaigners said the "unnecessary and discredited " consultation process should be scrapped saying ig "cannot now have any validity" following the lost responses admission.

EAW added: "It remains unclear what criteria the airport will use to determine wher the new flight paths will be, causing great uncertainty and risking blighting tens of thousands of homes.