Operations at Edinburgh began to recover in the second Quarter of 2022, increasing as Scotland began to recover from the Covid 19 Pandemic.
A total of 11,261,873 people travelled through the airport in 2022, up from 3,031,140 in 2021. In 2019, the busiest ever year for a Scottish airport, Edinburgh Airport recorded 14.7 million passengers.
The number of aircraft movements, including Helicopter, Military Cargo, light aircraft and Passengerflights during 2022 totalled 98293 operations. During our busiest year to date 2019, our operations totaled 131717.
When the period of 2022 is looked at as a whole the number of enquiries received was 913, and the total number of complainants was 124 , however the top 5 complainants were responsible for 631 or 69.1% of the complaints received in 2022. One frequent complainant made 283 complaints which accounted for 30.9% of all complaints received during 2022.
The table below provides data on complaints v complainants per month over the preiod 2022. It provides you with an overview of the number of complainants contacting Edinburgh Airport over that period. As you can see from the graph below, complaints from our frequent complainants continued in a similar pattern to previous years.
During the summer months we saw an increase in complaints in July, in line with an increase in operations.
The above enquiries are made in relation to different causes including in enquireies on eligibility to our Insulation. The chart below provides clarity on the number of enquiries we receive where a specific cause or reason for contact is stated.
The number of complaints from individuals areas is often impacted by weather conditions and wind direction, with more enquiries being received enquiring if we have for example changed our flight paths when we change from usage of Runway 24 to Runway 06, The chart below provides information on the neighbourhoods where the above enquiries origionated.
As the Aviation sector starts to recover and air traffic movements increase slowly towards pre pandemic levels, we expect that noise enquiries will start to increase significantly, not only from regular or frequent complainers but also from other sources, and for a variety of reasons such as:
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- Householders who have moved to new areas and new builds during the Pandemic not realising they live below a current flight path for EDI
- Householders who are now working from home having previously worked in an office and were therefore not aware of daytime operations
- Those newly suffering from ill health may now be more sensitive to noise and notice an increase without realising this is a return to normal operations
- Householders who have become acclimatised to low back ground levels from all sources, road, rail and industrial noise, may find the addition of increasing noise levels from all sources including aviation as the straw that breaks the camels back, and complaints are likely
- The Airspace Change Programme (ACP) has restarted and I would expect that, as during the last ACP programme, complaints and enquiries will increase significantly as the public start to think about noise, changing flight paths and how it may impact them and their properties personall