Issues of noise around Brussels Airport, especially during the night, have been ongoing for years, with residents in the neighbouring municipalities complaining about the disturbances they suffer from aircraft taking off or landing.
The Brussels city council voted in January 2023 to ban all non-emergency night flights at the airport. In July, Belgian Federal minister for Mobility, Georges Gilkinet, presented a draft ministerial decree that would also ban all night flights at Brussels Airport. Meanwhile, in May, the airport itself said it would be stricter with flights taking off or landing during the night without prior authorisation, which should have reduced the number of night flights by about 1,500 per year.
Now, almost one year later, the Belgian federal ombudsman found that over 1,500 night flights continued to operate at Brussels Airport without authorisation last year. Currently, 16,000 flights per year are allowed to use night slots, which is permission for take-off or landing between 11 pm and 6 am. However, if a flight outside this timeframe gets delayed for a valid reason, it is still allowed to arrive or depart during the night interval even if it was not allocated a night slot.
“An aircraft that goes onto the runway after 11 pm and doesn’t have a night slot will have to return to the gate and disembark the passengers”, Brussels Airport CEO Arnaud Feist said in May last year. The proposal for stricter enforcement of the night slots was sent to the Belgian Federal Government, but has yet to be approved.
According to Belga news agency, the number of complaints received by the ombudsman service last year was about the same as in 2022, a total of 28,893, but the number has increasing over the past few years. A study last year found that around 220,000 residents were “strongly inconvenienced by the noise of the airport, 109,000 having their sleep seriously disturbed. Each night flight could have an impact of roughly 36,000 euros in health damage, according to Belga.
Although Brussels Airport raised the fees for planes that pollute more, including noise pollution, not just emissions, it also submitted plans of expanding from 26 to 32 million annual passengers, which were seriously questioned by neighbouring municipalities last year. While recognising the economic importance of the airport, local authorities raised concerns over how side effects from the increased traffic were not presented in the 700-page document. Moreover, they questioned the viability of the environmental impact report (EIA), which failed to present clear forecasts and was based on “incomplete figures”.
