Brussels Airport CEO Arnaud Feist has announced plans of becoming stricter of which flights are allowed to take-off or land during the night.
Currently, 16,000 flights per year are allocated night slots for take-off or landing between 11 pm and 6 am at Brussels Airport. 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.
Arnaud Feist, Brussels AIrport CEO
The airport operator now proposes these flights either return to the gate and wait until the next day to depart or pay a fine if they need to unforeseeably land after 11 pm. According to the airport, this will reduce the night flights by about 10% since between 1,500 and 1,600 flights per year use night slots without actually being allocated one.
“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”, Arnaud said at a press conference on 24 May, clarifying that the number of night slots available will remain unchanged.
The airport has submitted this proposal to the Federal Transport Minister Georges Gilkinet, now awaiting a decision from the General Directorate for Aviation. The airport has come under a lot of scrutiny lately due to nuisance caused to residents and hopes this initiative will send “a strong signal to those living around the airport that we are taking into consideration their concerns”.
A study by the Flemish Federation for a Better Environment (Bond Beter Leefmilieu) has found that noise pollution around Brussels Airport is affecting 220,000 people, 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 news agency.
Earlier this year, the airports’ plans of expanding from 26 to 32 million annual passengers were seriously questioned by neighbouring municipalities. 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”.
The municipalities also find it hard to believe that, at the same time the airport plans to expand, it claims that current schedules, during the day and at night, as well as flight paths will remain unchanged. Moreover, they call attention to the disproportionate effect the airport has on Brussels residents, with those in the north suffering much more than the rest. “If the airport is of general interest, the nuisance it causes should be borne by as many shoulders as possible”, they said.
