A NORTH-EAST company is to play a vital role in ensuring that wind farms sited close to airports do not spark safety fears.

Flight Precision Limited, a specialist air safety company, is taking part in tests to determine how well airports can distinguish between incoming planes and wind farms.

The blades of a wind turbine can interfere with airports' radar systems, as they show up on air traffic controllers' displays looking like aeroplanes.

The trials are being carried out in association with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and BAE Systems, which is working to develop a method of overcoming the problem.

Flight Precision, based at Durham Tees Valley Airport, is aiding the research by providing a plane packed with electronic equipment to be used as a radar "target".

The aircraft can monitor and record its position to within a few feet. That reading is co-ordinated with ground radar figures to show whether the system can discriminate between the aircraft and the individual wind turbines.

Tests are also being run using a helicopter, which can hover in one place and allow alternative measurements to be taken over a longer period of time.

The company's marketing manager, Andy Radforth, said: "BAE Systems is one of a number of companies that thinks it might have a solution to the problem. We are helping it and the MoD to see how effective their system is.

"The problem with windfarms is that airport radars cannot reliably distinguish between the rotating blades of the wind turbines and aircraft.

"So, siting windfarms near airports poses significant operational problems if safety considerations are not to be compromised - and no one in the aviation industry is going to do that.

"What these trials are doing is to see whether that problem can be addressed."

The company already runs a fleet of specialist planes, which are used at locations throughout Britain and much of Europe.

Both Durham Tees Valley and Newcastle Airports recently had concerns about the issue after plans for five wind turbines in the village of Royal Oak, near Shildon, County Durham, were submitted.

Both airports later withdrew their complaints.