Airport Business

APR 2017

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NOISE ABATEMENT April 2017 airportbusiness 23 effectively with the public and complainants are driving new approaches, which are showing exciting results. A rethink on noise complaints is beginning to unlock a deeper understanding that looks likely to play a key role in reducing the threat from aircraft noise concerns through a focus on the central issue of community annoyance. Targeting not just the amount of noise that aviation puts into communities, but also the annoyance that this creates, has the potential to enable the industry to find new ways to better balance the concerns of local residents with the growth necessary to meet the rapidly increasing demand for air travel. YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US For decades, many airports have been com- mitted to operating complaint services, receiv- ing and recording contacts from community members expressing their concerns about the impact of airport operations. What was once focused on telephone calls and hand written letters has migrated online with emails, web forms and now app-based contacts becoming dominant channels. Back when volumes were manageable, airport staff spent time talking with residents to explain the limitations on the management of air traffic and the limits on being able to deal with the resultant noise. The best of the complaint responses went further by pursu- ing opportunities for change where this was possible. In this environment of limited opportunity to improve the level of aircraft noise, some res- idents pursued an approach of trying to make their concerns more prominent by making large numbers of approaches through the complaint channels. Most airports found that a handful of res- idents were responsible for the vast majority of contacts and that little, short of imposing a night curfew or even closing the airport, would satisfy them. Infrequent complainers could often be engaged in more rational dialog exploring what could and could not be done to address their concerns. DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD? Airport staff worked hard to build relationships and understand concerns, but often without complaint handling training and without the data systems and expertise to deliver effec- tive responses. Indeed systems and processes often encouraged unhelpful and unproductive engagement. Complaint handlers were often chosen for aviation expertise and often found themselves hampered by an industry vocabu- lary of aviation and acoustics terms incompre- hensible to most. Arguments about the facts were not uncom- mon; whether a particular plane had flown directly over a resident's home or whether air- space changes had or had not been implement- ed. It ran counter to building empathy with annoyed residents when they were told that they were not significantly affected by noise because they lived outside the noise contours or that new aircraft were significantly quieter than previous generations, despite increases in the average size and total number of aircraft. Airport staff would be reluctant to give the hard news; that what a resident wanted was not going to happen, instead leaving unrealistic hope alive and feeding annoyance. Each month airports diligently reported on complaints, counting total contacts received, the number of people complaining and the communities recording the highest numbers of contacts. Some communities would encourage their neighbors to complain, and some individ- uals pursued campaigns, to ensure that they reached the top of each month's list in the hope that this would give their concerns highest pri- ority. A perfect storm of major airspace chang- es and internet complaint channels has seen complaint volumes at some airports exceed 1 million annually. These dynamics have achieved very little, with airports swamped with contacts that tell them very little about the underlying concerns. Many communities remain angry that their complaints were not being acted upon. THERE'S MORE TO ANNOYANCE THAN JUST NOISE EXPOSURE These challenges have led an innovative and growing group of thinkers to reconceive airport noise annoyance. For more than four decades, aviation noise management strategies have been founded on the premise that community annoyance is directly linked to the level of noise exposure. In fact, almost all national aircraft noise legis- lation can be traced back to the 1978 Schultz study that brought together a wide range of research to describe the relationship between noise exposure and community annoyance. SCHULTZ CURVE – TRADITIONAL THINKING ON HOW NOISE DRIVES ANNOYANCE If the Schultz curve fully explained annoyance, we should have seen substantial reductions in community complaints at airports with shrink- ing noise contours. At London Heathrow, for example, the number of people exposed to more than a 57dB noise level has fallen by over 60 per- cent in the last 20 years, however it is hard to argue that community annoyance has reduced. If explaining disturbances were this simple Noise exposure is a major contributor to annoyance, but a growing body of experience shows that there are many other factors at play.

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