Aircrafts noise in London Heathrow

How the world’s busiest airport system stresses the overflown population

By Irene Benedicto

Why London

London is the world’s busiest megacity with the most flights taking off and landing each day, with an airport system of five airports (Gatwick, Heathrow, City Airport, Luton and Stansted). This potentially exposes Londoners to the loudest and most frequent aircraft noise in the world. And the UK regulations fall far short of what the World Health Organization recommends.

Why London Heathrow
London Heathrow (LHR) is the largest airport serving Greater London. It is currently the seventh single busiest airport in the world but before the halt in flights due to Covid-19, it was the busiest airport in Europe, and the second-busiest airport in the world, only behind Dubai, according to Airports Council International’s figures so we are expecting its numbers to be higher for 2022.

Where our data comes from
We obtained fresh official aircraft noise data, through UK’s Freedom of Information Act (FOI) and the Environment Information Request (EIR), from the Department of Transportation, who had only published such records until 2015. We obtained 2016-2021 data so we can also see the difference before and after the Covid-19 flight halt.

We also put that data in a map with population estimates data for mid-2020. Source: UK Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/lowersuperoutputareamidyearpopulationestimates

In the map, the darkest corresponds with the darker areas correspond to the most densely populated areas.

Findings of this project

This is a preliminary project that exposes the high levels of noise in the immediate surroundings of the LHR airport.

We used Leq (Equivalent Continuous Sound Level) to measure the noise conteurs. Leq is usually the preferred method to describe sound levels that vary over time, resulting in a single decibel value which takes into account the total sound energy over the period of time of interest. We calculated Leq day and Leq night separately.

The shortage of data proves the lack of accountability beyond 54 decibels, the maximum level recorded by UK authorities.

The UK regulations fall far short of what the World Health Organization recommends: the WHO has issued guidance showing that aircraft noise above 45 decibels on average is associated with adverse health effects, but UK government guidance is much less stringent, using a disturbance threshold of 54 decibels.

The visuals

These gifs show the progression of noise over a 7-year period of time (2015-2021), and how the noise levels increased before 2019 and only because of the global pandemic, decreased after 2020, only to start recuperating in 2021.