The efficiency of noise mitigation measures at European airports

Current studies predict that commercial air traffic will further grow rapidly in the next years. Consequently, airports are confronted with enormous challenges, not only in terms of optimized operations but also in terms of generated noise. In the last years the local population has become very noise-conscious and this noise awareness will be further intensified with the growing air traffic. The purpose of this paper is to identify whether the noise regulations have been fully applied by the airports with the goal to further reduce or mitigate the noise caused by aircraft. More precisely, we study the noise exposure level of six different airports namely Frankfurt, Heathrow, Zurich, Madrid, Barcelona, and Malaga during 2003 to 2013. In this regard, we present first a summary of noise measures and noise mitigation strategies applied by the different airports as well as give an overview of the current noise regulations which main goal to enforce a more stringent noise level limit to ensure that the latest noise reduction technology is incorporated into the aircraft design. Then we analyze in detail the noise exposure evolution and evaluate how the noise regulations affected each airport. Moreover, we demonstrate that several factors such as the crisis or the accident in 2011 have affected strongly on the aviation industry. The results of this study provide valuable information regarding noise regulation in airports as well as facts that demonstrate how the manufactures and airlines are concerned about noise level reduction.