Photo credit: albedo20 licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition, and Honorary Chair, Quiet American Skies
An airport engaging in an activity to reduce noise and air pollution by banning four-engine civilian aircraft! Really! Let me immediately state that this is not happening in the U.S. It is the Ben Gurion Airport in Israel that has made this announcement. Also, for the most part this ban will not be affecting major airlines because they generally employ two-engine planes. This ban will affect planes that carry freight and mail.
However, what was especially good to read in the Times of Israel article was the statement by the head of the Israeli Airports Authority, Hagai Topolansky:
I’ve instructed relevant entities in the authority to start carrying out actions meant to reduce the extent of noise at the airport in order to reduce environmental threats and ease the situation for surrounding towns affected by the activity at Ben Gurion Airport.
The article goes on to describe other changes at the airport that will reduce waiting times for passengers. These changes can take place because the authority allocated a large sum of money, over $15,000,000, to reduce “time-consuming procedures.”
I would hope that major airports in the U.S. would look to Topolansky’s words and acknowledge that noise reduction is key to reducing environmental threats to nearby residents. Then, one hopes, they will take the actions called for to reduce these threats.
