Some silver lining. The Covid-19 had offered residents of Toulouse-Blagnac Airport (ATB) exposed to aircraft noise an enchanted and relaxing interlude. But it just closed. In particular for the “heart of the night”, the period between midnight and 6 a.m., for which the authorities and the airport platform committed ten years ago to make efforts to reduce traffic to mitigate the health impact. on the inhabitants.
“We are witnessing a return to the degraded night situation before Covid, it is still impossible to sleep under the air corridors”, deplores the Collective against air pollution in the Toulouse conurbation (CCNAAT) on reading the figures from the Cœur de nuit Observatory delivered on January 27 by the Directorate General for Civil Aviation and ATB for the summer 2022 (aeronautical) season which in fact runs from the beginning of March to the end of october.
“We are back at levels greater than or equal to 2019 for Toulouse and the densely populated south, even though there are fewer planes”, specifies Jérôme Favrel, the collective specialist, who points in particular to the use very noisy Boeing 787-800s.
Threading “planes like pearls”
For local residents, the season resulted in 569 flights between midnight and 6 a.m., or four on average, and as many awakenings per night, and around ten for large peaks. But there were also 463 so-called “tilting” flights, compared to 398 in 2018. These are flights supposed to take off between 10 p.m. and midnight but which fall behind in their rotation and ultimately take off in the middle of the night.
“We thread the planes like pearls on the beach from 10 p.m. to midnight and those of the low cost companies which are late but absolutely have to take off again – because their economic model is based on complete rotations – fly away in the middle of the night”, plague Chantal Asker, President of the CCNAAT. The anti-noise activist suggests “increased vigilance and more realistic programming” or even quite simply “a binding prefectural decree” for the 11:30 p.m.-midnight range which prohibits planes that are not on schedule from taking off again. Joined by 20 minutes on this point, ATB wishes to carry out a “further analysis of the figures” of the Observatory before expressing itself.
Effort but can do better
When she takes stock of a decade of the “Coeur de nuit” system, Chantal Asker concedes “a commendable effort” and recent for the early morning: now, planes really take off after six hours and no longer heat their reactors a quarter hour before. But, overall, it remains very severe. “The population subjected to nocturnal noise has increased by 72%, she assures, it is therefore a failure and the copy must be reviewed.
The collective solution is well known. It is to establish a moratorium authorizing only urgent or official flights in the middle of the night. Like at Orly for fifty years, at Basel-Mulhouse for a year (but where tilting flights seem to persist), or like at Montreal where the mayor just announced the measure for 2024. “And we must stop accusing us of wanting to bring down the Toulouse economy. In the summer of 2022, there were in all and for all two Airbus test flights”, anticipates the local resident.