The aviation industry has seen progressive improvements in aircraft design and operational procedures. The benefits of these improvements can be seen in our annual noise contours.
The following maps show how our summer noise contours (57dB LAeq day and night) have varied over time. An LAeq Contour is a measure of average noise at a stated level (in this case 57dB) over a given time period which is the summer 92 days between 16th June and 15th September. The ‘day’ refers to the 16 hour time period between 07:00 and 23:00. The ‘night’ refers to the 8 hour time period between 07:00 and 23:00. Over this period, the number of aircraft movements have also changed. In particular, due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, daytime operations largely ceased. This accounts for the reduction in contour size in 2020 and 2021.
Day noise contours
Night noise contours
You can find out more by watching this video:
