Although we cannot eliminate aircraft noise completely, we are working to understand and minimise our community impact. We are also committed to explaining what you're hearing and why.
Whilst air travel provides us with many benefits, aircraft noise can impact people who live or work near airports and under flight paths. Noise from any source is often an emotive subject. Noise that has no effect on one person may be a disruption or nuisance to another.
Whilst there are many ways in which ‘sound’ can be measured, measuring ‘noise’ is more difficult. Sound is a measureable value, whereas noise is how you respond to a sound and is experienced differently by each person. Noise can be predicted through sound measurements and calculations, taking into account how likely a sound is to cause annoyance or disturbance. Attitudes to noise can vary. It can be dependent on the time of day, location and personal circumstances as well as background noise levels and the level of the sound experienced.
Although we cannot eliminate the noise caused by our operations completely, we aim to operate practical, responsible and realistic environmental controls to reduce the number of people impacted by aircraft noise. We have substantially invested in systems and equipment to enable us to understand our noise impact better, allowing us to work collectively with local communities, elected officials, Air Traffic Control and our airline partners to identify opportunities for improvement.