Airport: “It gets louder and louder at night and there are more flights. – Munich

The Freising Citizens’ Association is committed to better protection for those living near the airport at night. “Noise is not a minor offence, it damages our health,” said Deputy Chairman Wolfgang Herrmann on Thursday at a press conference in Attaching. The most important demands of the association: no take-offs from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. and no scheduled landings between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. In addition, the annual noise quota – for more transparency – should be replaced by a daily number quota. Munich has the worst night flight regulations of all commercial airports in Germany, criticized Herrmann.

Effective protection against night noise is currently only available between midnight and five o’clock, explained Thomas Enghofer. But there are exceptions here too: during this core time, for example, postal flights and take-offs and landings approved by the Bavarian Ministry of Transport are permitted. The association would like information on the latter to be available on the Internet.

The previous core time for the night’s rest of five hours is not enough for the citizens’ association. Because restrictions apply before midnight, but they hardly work, according to the criticism. Intercontinental flights, for example, may be planned up to midnight in exceptional cases. At no other airport in Germany are they allowed to start so late, said Enghofer. Officially, the number of night flights between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. is limited to up to 28 scheduled flight movements. “That sounds positive.” But it doesn’t stop there, because there are many exceptions, for example for flights by airlines that have a maintenance focus at Munich Airport, such as Lufthansa, or for aircraft that are considered quiet.

The noise quota, which limits night flights within a year, has been a nuisance for airport critics for years. With a “usual aircraft mix” up to 105 flights per average night are possible, said Enghofer. Flughafen GmbH does not publish how the noise quota is calculated. Instead, the citizens’ association calls for a daily quota of numbers that “makes calculations superfluous” and creates transparency. In the 13 years before the slump in air traffic caused by the pandemic, the number of night flight movements at the airport increased by 27 percent, said Herrmann.

Other airports showed that there is another way. According to Enghofer, the core time for a night’s rest in Düsseldorf is seven hours. The latest example is Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. The number of flight movements there is to be reduced overall in the coming years.

“The mail flights should be abolished, as stipulated in the coalition agreement.”

According to the citizens’ association, improvements at Munich Airport would bring a core time that starts at 11 p.m. instead of midnight. “The ultimate goal would be an eight-hour ban on night flights,” said Enghofer. As stipulated in the coalition agreement, postal flights should be abolished. Exemptions should be visible on the Internet, and the individual noise levels for quieter aircraft should also be published, according to further demands.

Wolfgang Herrmann explained that night flight movements in the Corona years 2020 and 2021 had dropped significantly. But by 2022 they would have increased significantly again. While in 2018 and 2019 there were 78 and 76 flights respectively on an average night, in 2022 there were 51 again.

The citizens’ association called FMG’s annual night flight reports very poor. “All of this may be enough according to the letter of the law – those affected have nothing to gain from it,” criticized Wolfgang Herrmann. They could neither understand for whom or what they sacrifice their night’s sleep, nor whether there were or are avoidable night flights. “The measures propagated by FMG in nice words and colorful brochures obviously don’t help,” concluded Herrmann. “It gets louder and louder at night and there’s more flying, that’s a fact.”

source site