Peter and SA’s Andy Jefferson met with Tim May (Noise Strategy & Policy, DfT) in early March. They had a good discussion on where Government is on noise policy at the moment. May has agreed to a 15-minute presentation from Sustainable Aviation at the next ANEG meeting to cover industry noise progress to date and emerging thoughts on opportunities/barrier to further noise reduction. May specifically asked if SA could show how the industry has performed against the SA Noise Road-Map chart published in 2013. Sustainable Aviation will be picking this up.
A couple of specific points of interest to airports on noise compensation came out of the discussion. May seemed to suggest Government and industry need to think more creatively, particularly where steep growth occurs at airports. There is some thinking emerging in DfT that the industry compensation provided needs to increase to reflect the increased impact. Andy and Peter both discussed the industry’s good performance to date in reducing noise, but May said that while this is good, it is insufficient to be felt to be ‘fair compensation’ for the extra impact (both by communities affected and increasingly local and national Government). He specifically said that while the