Only a few more hours of patience before hoping to be able to taste “a restorative sleep at last”. AT Saint-Aignan-de-Grand-Lieuone of the two municipalities neighboring the airport Nantes-Atlantic, this Friday, April 8 is eagerly awaited. It is on this day that the airport curfew officially comes into force. Concretely, in order to limit noise pollution, night flights (take-offs and landings) will be prohibited from midnight to 6 a.m. “Only a company that has unforeseen needs, beyond its control, will be able to fly”, specified in September Yoann Le Corte, project manager for the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC). In the event of a violation, the operator is liable to a fine of up to 40,000 euros.
The measure, demanded for a long time by residents and mayors of the municipalities most exposed to noise, will be reinforced by a ban on the noisiest planes from 10 p.m. “It will be a big progress, predicts Jean-Michel, a resident of the town center of Saint-Aignan. The planes, currently, we hear them until midnight. And they wake us sometimes as early as 5:30 in the morning. “” It’s getting worse and worse, says Danielle, at the town’s shopping center. We had got used to having less noise since the start of the Covid. But for a few months now it’s been coming back. “I can’t wait, confirms Emeline, a young mother. When a child wakes up at 5 a.m. because of a landing, it upsets the whole family. »
“We will be extremely vigilant”
the Coceta, a collective of residents exposed to air pollution, welcomes a curfew “snatched by forceps” against airlines and elected officials fearing for the attractiveness of the metropolis. But he does not claim victory for all that. “We would have liked the ban to be more ambitious and extend until 7 a.m. Sleeping from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. is not luxury. But there was a big resistance from the companies, ”underlines Paolo Ferreira, president of Coceta.
He also insists on the vagueness surrounding possible exceptions. “The major low-cost airlines have planes based in Nantes. Will they be allowed to land at night so they can find their base? The text is not clear on this point. »
Solicited, Airport Nuisance Control Authority (Acnusa) says much the same thing. It also issued an unfavorable opinion on the project, considering the definition of exceptions “legally imprecise”, at the risk of the airlines granting themselves some liberties.
The authority also points the finger at the method of calculating the noisiest planes, the State having chosen the method of the “acoustic margin” considered less restrictive for the companies than the method of “actual certified noise”. “We will be extremely vigilant in the coming weeks,” already warns the Coceta. In 2019, just before the health crisis, around ten night flights were recorded per day.
Worrying traffic forecasts
More generally, the group is concerned about traffic growth forecasts, which are counting on 11 million travelers by 2040 against 7.2 million in 2019. “The more we increase traffic, the more operators will concentrate flights at the limits of prohibition, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., or after 6 a.m. The noise could become infernal at these times,” fears Paolo Ferreira.
Jean-Michel, who lives in Saint-Aignan-de-Grand-Lieu, is not serene either. “I hope we won’t have a traffic jam at the end and beginning of the day. Especially on Sunday mornings,” worries this inhabitant of the town center.
In 2023, the curfew should be accompanied by other measures intended to try to reduce the noise exposure of the inhabitants: a lengthening of the runway by 400 m to the south to favor the residents of the north, as well as a new approach landing (with ILS guidance) above Nantes, coupled with the current offset approach.