Dieter Buchberger from the citizens’ initiative Citizens Against Aircraft Noise is no friend of Allgäu Airport: “Peak values of up to 90 decibels, and then there is also the approach time.” 90 decibels – that can be compared to a chamber concert. And with the peak value it is not enough, the plane first comes closer and then flies over you – that is not quite as loud, but a conversation in the garden is not possible, says Buchberger.
According to the plans of the Memmingen airport, however, it could get even louder for the residents in the future. Because the operators want the freight business to be expanded, and that means more noise because of the larger machines and more traffic. The situation at Memmingen Airport is complex. On the one hand, the symptoms increase if, for example, machines start too late. On the other hand, Allgäu Airport is constantly expanding its range. It was only in October that the airport announced an expansion of its travel destinations and opened the new baggage hall. Before the Corona crisis, the number of passengers was already approaching the limit of two million a year.
Ten additional flights a week
Flughafen Memmingen GmbH has now submitted an application to the Air Office in Southern Bavaria for the construction of a cargo handling hall and a multi-storey car park as well as the corresponding changes to the runway and airport roads. Around ten additional flights per week with air freight are to start from the Allgäu from 2028. According to the airport operator, there are currently only one or two cargo flights a month.
The additional ten flights a week could potentially go to Amazon’s account. This number emerges from discussions with the company, said Airport Managing Director Ralf Schmid Allgäuer newspaper. That in turn requires access to the runway. Amazon itself informed the BR and the SZ, however, that in the course of the project distribution center at Memmingen airport no cargo flights will be carried out: “In a distribution center we sort parcels that arrive by truck from our sorting and logistics centers for delivery to customers in the region with vans. “
According to Schmid, the shipping giant wants to rent the hall for 15 years. Originally, the airport wanted to sell a building site for a logistics hall to Amazon. But the owner, a limited liability company with municipal participation, turned down the deal. Now a subsidiary of the airport is to build the logistics center and then rent it to Amazon.
Criticism from the district committee
Also because of the traffic load, the district committee of the Unterallgäu district has clearly spoken out against the planned logistics center: Especially the routes to the south in the direction of Kempten could often lead through Memmingerberg or Memmingen themselves. The approval documents speak of 1200 truck journeys a day, plus the journeys made by employees.
Buchberger, who sits on the Memmingen city council for the Greens, says that some streets, and in particular the roundabout from which Flughafenstrasse branches off, are often congested. One solution would be a new motorway slip road with a driveway between the Memmingen Ost and Holzgünz exits, which, however, is a matter for the federal government.
The other point of criticism of the district committee is the noise: “Noise-intensive flight movements at low altitudes – especially over the Kneipp health resorts in the district – run counter to the principles of Kneipp health theory and are therefore rejected.”
Environmentalists announce resistance
The district committee cannot decide anything. Buchberger can tell a lot about aircraft types and knows which aircraft are used when and by whom. “Twice as loud,” he says when asked what freight traffic would mean in terms of noise pollution. Amazon uses, for example, the Boeing 767. Machines that cause significantly more noise than the passenger planes operated by Ryanair and Wizz Air.
Both a traffic report and an acoustic analysis are attached to the application from Flughafen GmbH. Both come to the conclusion that the additional traffic – whether in the air or on the ground – is reasonable. The Bund Naturschutz spoke of a “dam breach” and has announced resistance to the planned logistics center: “Transporting goods by plane is by far the most environmentally harmful form of freight transport,” said BN state chairman Richard Mergner. “If we want to achieve the Paris climate goals, we now have to shift freight traffic to rail and not to airplanes.”