COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO A NEW RUNWAY: PRELIMINARY RESULTS

摘要

The operation of major Airports are affected by the acceptance and tolerance of the local community. The level of complaint provides a continuous measure of tolerance and rapid feedback on the level of community nuisance. The effect of a new runway (opened in 2001) at Manchester Airport (MA) on the local community was gauged by analyzing the number and pattern of complaints from residents and comparison with previous years. The new runway resulted in a trebling of complaints and complainants from 2,804 to 8,794 and 618 to 2,155 respectively. However, the air traffic movements only marginally increased from 193,527 to 197,180 and the new runway caused the noise footprints to move only slightly further south and west. There were increased complaints at night that was particularly interesting because as a condition of operating the new runway the Airport had agreed not to allow any night flights to use the new runway. Therefore, the increased annoyance must have been due to a sensitization process associated with the increased media coverage coupled with concern about the unknown potential impact of the new runway. Serial-complainers (residents who complained ＞50 per year) doubled in number after the opening of the new runway and showed more sensitivity at sleep onset and at the end of the night. However, apart from the monthly pattern of complaints, which was clearly affected, the day of the week and hour of the day patterns were similar to the results for previous years.