Monitoring luchtvaartgeluid. Trends in de geluidbelasting door luchtvaart

Abstract

From the early years of civil jet aviation in the sixties, airport noise from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AAS) has reduced considerably. Although the number of flights has grown vastly, improved jet engines now produce much less noise and have amply compensated for traffic growth. Further traffic growth of AAS is expected to be compensated by retirement of older airplanes. In particular this effect may be present in case of advanced phase out of the noisiest airplanes. In addition optimization flight paths could be used to reduce the noise impact. These measures are not only important for nearby dwellings, but are also advantageous for populated areas further away from the airport. Although the noise levels here are lower, more dwellings are involved that will profit from noise reduction. In order to measure the total noise of an airport, a group noise level Gden is introduced. This indicator is a measure of the accumulation of noise levels on all dwellings in the surroundings of an airport and can be used to compare different airports. As for other National airports, both civil and military, their joint group noise level is only a few decibels below the noise impact of AAS. Apart from AAS, the main contribution to the total airport noise dose in the Netherlands comes from low path military flying, Rotterdam Airport and the military airbases Geilenkirchen (Germany), Volkel and Leeuwarden.