Approach and Departure Procedure Variations to Reduce and Redistribute Noise

Abstract

Aircraft noise in the vicinity of airports and its impact on residents represents a growing problem due to the increasing air traffic density and an increasing environmental awareness. The application of newly designed noise abatement flight procedures could contribute to the reduction of the noise impact. Since every airport and the surrounding residential areas are different, beneficial procedures developed for one airport may be adverse for another. Because of that a procedure must be laid out individually for every specific airport and its individual surroundings. In this paper first attempts were made to investigate how small changes in established flight procedures would affect the noise distribution in the vicinity of an airport and their respective economic drawbacks. The results of the variation of the main parameters of today’s noise abatement procedures will be presented and discussed in this paper. For the existing procedures only little changes are possible respecting the capabilities of aircraft currently in operation. Thus no massive improvements can be expected but the implementation of the required changes to improve the noise situations at airports can rapidly be introduced in the very near future.