Roaring Boeings, but also old, deafening Airbuses must be banned from Schiphol from now on. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is currently preparing an amendment to the law that will ban the biggest troublemakers at Schiphol. These are mainly heavily loaded freighter aircraft of the type Boeing 747, which with full power and sometimes in the middle of the night, wake up residents living near Schiphol. Yet last year there were ‘only’ 436 such flights.
Despite the relatively small number of 436 noisy take-offs and landings out of a total of almost 400,000 flights, both Schiphol and the outgoing cabinet want to get rid of these aircraft. The measure is one of eight points that Schiphol presented in April to improve the quality of life around the airport, in addition to, among other things banning private jets and night flightsand scrapping plans for an additional runway.
Before the ban comes into effect, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management will first offer local residents and stakeholders, such as airlines, the opportunity to respond to the initiative. That goes through one internet consultation, which is accessible to everyone. Also about the scrapping of the future second Kaag runway a consultation is still ongoing, while the knot has in fact already been made by the minister.
Smoking servers
Sometimes such an internet consultation runs a storm, such as when a consultation took place about the major, long-term maintenance of the Zwanenburgbaan. Then came as many as 2,233 objections inside the ministry. During the consultation on the noisiest devices, there are no smoking servers at outgoing minister Harbers: so far six responses have been registered.
0.1 percent
One of those six responses does provide food for thought. This submitter wonders what the effect of such a ban would be if only 436 of the total of 398,000 flights were to be banned. Ultimately, this concerns 0.1 percent of the flights. As far as this person is concerned, the category of noisy aircraft should be expanded considerably.
Even if it is only 0.1 percent, this ban will be embraced by some of the local residents anyway. Anyone who lives in the wider vicinity of Schiphol can almost set the clock by the fact that every evening a roaring Boeing 747 from KLM’s cargo company Martinair departs for Campinas, Miami, Nairobi or Johannesburg. Incidentally, those four very old Martinair 747s will be replaced by modern Airbus A350s from 2026.