Growing Pains of Major European Airports

Abstract

The growing Air Transport sector shows some of its more ‘community unfriendly’ faces through an increase in noise and burned fuel emissions on and in the vicinity of an airport. Protests from the surrounding community have put pressure on airport operators to decrease ‘their’ part in the amount of noise produced. In many instances this has led the airport operator to implement a policy to discourage airlines with noisy aircraft to fly into their airport. ICAO Annex 16, Chapter two aircraft are increasingly becoming more unpopular to operate from an airline’s point of view because of these operating restrictions.However, community protest cannot ban all aircraft from an airport, not even in The Netherlands, but it can lead to constraints where it can virtually stop the possibility for airport growth. In the case of the main airport of The Netherlands, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, the government imposes constraints on noise produced, the number of aircraft movements, and the number of passengers it is allowed to handle in a particular year. These constraints are laid down in law!Without new operational ATC and flight procedures, the growth of Schiphol Airport would have come to a standstill within a few years. This paper describes the particular constraints Schiphol Airport has to live with, and the measures taken to overcome these constraints.