Aircraft noise-abatement and mitigation strategies
Introduction
Factors such as economic growth and the deregulation of airline markets have been fueling ever-greater demand for air travel.2 With forecasts of future air travel pointing to demand that exceeds current airport capacity, expansion at existing airports and/or construction of new airports will likely be needed to accommodate growth. However, aircraft noise remains one of the greatest barriers to airport expansion and new airport construction around the world. The US General Accounting Office (GAO, 2000a) has reported noise as the greatest environmental concern for 29 of the 50 busiest US airports. Indeed, noise was at the heart of the powerful community opposition that prevented conversion of the decommissioned El Toro Marine Air Base into a second international airport for the Southern California region (Kranser, 2002). Japan has resorted to costly new airport construction on offshore islands, partly in response to noise concerns.3 And while European airports already impose some of the strictest measures to reduce the negative effects of noise on their communities, the trade organization Airports Council International – Europe, nevertheless identified noise as a prominent environmental issue facing capacity expansion efforts (Griffins, 2005).
Therefore, air transportation stakeholders continue to struggle with ways to balance air traffic growth against both local and global environmental concerns. Despite the combined efforts of airframe and engine manufacturers, airlines, airports and aviation policy-makers to substantially reduce the impact of noise on airport communities, the noise problem lingers.
Section snippets
Policy background
Early aviation noise policy focused on reducing noise at the source. Spurred by increasingly stringent noise certification standards, manufacturers incorporated progressively quieter technology into aircraft. Fig. 1 illustrates the downward trend in certification noise levels of commercial aircraft from 1958 to today. As an example of what this trend means, takeoff noise from a current-production Boeing 737–700 sounds less than one-third that of an equivalent 1965-technology aircraft.4
Noise limits and noise taxes
Social planners commonly use quantity controls or economic incentives as policy instruments to reduce incentives for producing a “bad”. Here we look at the per-aircraft and cumulative noise emission limits as well as the noise taxes (or discounts) that airlines face at different airports. Understandably, airlines are sensitive to the proliferation of such noise limits or taxes.
Other noise-abatement measures
In addition to the more obvious noise policy instruments described above, airports have adopted many other noise-abatement measures such as curfews, noise-abatement flight procedures and preferential runways, mandatory phaseout of noisier aircraft, other operational restrictions, and non-aircraft noise-abatement programs. While airlines might oppose the proliferation of noise limits or taxes, airlines are likely to view particular noise-abatement measures more favorably.
Concluding remarks
This paper has reviewed the diversity in the efforts by airports, airlines, aircraft manufacturers, national and international certification authorities, as well as local and national governments to address the aircraft noise problem. It is hoped that the paper's unified description of these efforts will be useful to policy-makers dealing with the noise issue.
Beyond, the paper raises a natural additional question: of the many choices available, what is the best way to mitigate the negative
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on the author's doctoral dissertation work at the University of California and represents the author's personal views and not those of the Federal Aviation Administration's. I thank Jan Brueckner and Kevin Burnside for helpful comments. Any errors, however, remain my responsibility.
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Present address: US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Office of Environment and Energy, 800 Independence Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20591, USA.