Latest news with #nighttimeflights
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Planners just cannot win at Dublin Airport
Who'd be a planning commissioner – resigned forever to being pilloried by one side of an application or another? Or in some cases, as with Dublin Airport , both. A decision this week to allow 50 per cent more night-time flights in a shorter 'night-time' window at Dublin Airport alongside a new quota system for noise seemed tailor-made for airlines that have been concerned about maintaining current levels of service at the airport, never mind expansion. But no, they were not happy at all, at least not with the new, higher limit on flights, characterising it as a new, second, passenger cap. They are particularly concerned about limits on flights in the generally busy 5am-7am morning window. Airlines are already fighting a separate 32-million-a-year limit on the number of passengers than can use the airport. Both it and the now-modified night-time limit on flights date back to conditions on the original planning permission for the airport's new north runway. That permission dates back more than 15 years and yet in all that time no one, not the airport operator (the DAA ) nor any of the airlines – especially Ryanair and Aer Lingus for which it is a critical hub – conducted a concerted campaign to address what were always likely to be severely limiting conditions. Only when the runway opened was there any realistic effort to address the new realities of passenger and traffic numbers at the airport. And so here we are. For their part, residents around the airport – or at least one of the residents' associations – were also dissatisfied with the latest decision, saying it will only increase pollution and noise, making their lives more difficult. It's hard to see what would satisfy local residents. The airport authority is already investing millions of euro buying the worst-affected homes and funding increased noise insulation and is, in any case, restricted in its flight paths. And the truth remains that many, if not most, of those living under those flight paths have bought their homes long after the airport was well established as Ireland's big point of entry for air passengers. For now, everyone is threatening to challenge the latest decision in the courts. Meanwhile, in the absence of any political leadership n the issue, the reconstituted planning appeals board, An Coimisiún Pleanála , must resign itself to the view that whatever it decides, the whole mess will be its fault.
BBC News
6 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Dublin Airport increases night time flights
Dublin Airport has been granted planning permission to increase the number of night-time flights it can operate and extend the hours that it can use its second number of flights permitted at the airport as a whole has increased from an average of 65 a night to 95 between 23:00 and 07:00 local to now, flights were not allowed to take off or land on the second runway, known as the north runway, between those hours, but they can now use the runway up to midnight and from 06: it said a "Noise Quota Scheme" would apply on the north runway, meaning that the type of aircraft that use the runway in night time hours would be limited, depending on the noise they emit. Aircraft that go over a noise limit will not be able to take off or land at its decision, An Comisiún Pleanála (Ireland's national independent planning body) said it applied a restriction of 35,672 night-time flights over a 364 day to "protect residential amenity".It said the cap would allow for airport growth while providing an essential safeguard against excessive night-time Commission also said it had decided to apply both a cap and a noise quota as it believed a quota system alone "could permit an increase in the number of night-time flights, without adequately considering the cumulative impact of increased flight volume on surrounding communities and environment".
