It is no longer enough to live near Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle or Orly airports to suffer from aircraft noise pollution. In fact, for several months, the inhabitants of inner Paris have also had their sleep regularly disturbed by the repeated passage of planes.
“It’s the conflict in Ukraine” which started it all, explains Catherine Bouvier, secretary of the Association for Defense against Air Nuisances (Advocnar). She assures that her association receives “for several months more and more complaints from Parisians” who rail against the noisy passage of aircraft in the middle of the night over the capital. The Airport Nuisance Control Authority (Acnusa) “confirms the increase in the number of complaints”.
Like this cargo flight from the Belgian subsidiary of the company ASL Airlines, which left shortly before 5:30 a.m., Thursday October 12, from Roissy to reach Porto (Portugal) and which woke up a good part of the east and north of the capital. According to Advocnar, to reduce their consumption of kerosene, the prices of which soared after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, airlines have given their pilots savings instructions. Particularly with the use of software, such as SITA OptiClimb, which, supported by artificial intelligence, aims to reduce the consumption of aircraft in their climb phase, that is to say mainly during takeoff.
” It’s wrong “, chokes an Air France pilot, who swears that the crew respects the procedures defined by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC). These provide in particular that the devices cannot fly over Paris below 6,000 feet, or 1,950 meters. “We can’t go any lower”defends this pilot.
No curfew in Roissy
In fact, rather than the war in Ukraine, it is work in Roissy which is the cause of the noise pollution in the Parisian sky. Since 2022, Groupe ADP has closed the two parallel runways, called doublets, to the north of the airport for work. The longer of the two is used for takeoff, so the planes are forced to fall back on the two runways located further south. “Sixty percent of the time,” noted Gilles Leblanc, president of Acnusa, the planes take off facing west. Afterwards, “those heading east, Geneva, Rome, Istanbul or Dubai, for example, will make their turn above Epinay-sur-Seine, before flying over the capital”continues the boss of the regulatory authority.
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