LBA December ACC meeting

LBA meeting December 5^th, 2024 14:00 to 17:00

Marketing and Communication – new appointment.

• LBA have recently appointed a new Head of Communications, a role previously undertaken by Grayling. The new head of communications has previously worked at Portaloo and Northern Rail.
• The new head of communications will be reaching out to local communities including Parish Councils at the ned of March. I’ll be liaising with Jocelyn to arrange dates here in Burley, if the Parish Council would like the opportunity to discuss Airspace Change Proposals and other matters with her.

UKACC – Airport Consultative Committee

The UKACC last met at LBA in 1997. This year the UKACC met at LBA on November 14^th and 15^th. 15 National and Regional airports attended the meeting. The keynote speaker was Abigail Grenfell of the CAA who discussed aviation sustainability. Topics covered included:

• Jet Zero – We have already seen real progress, with Phillips 66 producing and providing the first commercially produced sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the UK. We have committed £180 million of funding to support the development of a UK SAF industry, and our aim is to unlock further private financing to develop our very own SAF plants with a commitment to have at least five plants under construction by 2025. Finally, we want to demonstrate transatlantic flight powered solely by SAF, and we have launched a competition to help the aviation industry achieve that target. See http://ls297.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/aviation.pdf for further thoughts.

Whilst SAF reduces greenhouse gas by 80%, we need to bare in mid that SAF is made from Jet A (normal fuel) plus a 5% to 50% of fuel made from used cooking oil or 50% biofuel made from crops.

Aviation currently accounts for approximately 2 to 3% of global CO2 emissions, however, according to IATA projections air travel is going to double by 2040. See https://www.iata.org/contentassets/ed476ad1a80f4ec7949204e0d9e34a7f/fact-sheet-alternative-fuels.pdf

• Airspace Change Update.
• Noise and pollution – I’ll circle back to this later, as I’m currently in dialogue with scientists in the Nederland’s who are looking at health impacts of aviation at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
• Domestic and International Aviation.

Noise monitoring & Track keeping.

Track keeping from runway 32 remains an issue, and I’m told that this lack of track-keeping is dure to 2 carriers who operation the A320, Wizz Air and Easyjet. LBA are trying to establish cause.

It will come as no surprise that most departures 68% (Air Traffic Movements – ATMs) take place over Burley and Menston, and only 29% of arrivals. The prevailing wind determines the runway in use; however, I note that Leeds operates a preferential runway scheme, whereby the Westerly runway (32) will be used for take-off and landing in preference to the Easterly runway (14) when the tailwind component is no greater than 5kts and the surface is dry. The choice of runway remains that of the Tower controller.

Noise.

Noise at the airport has remained constant across the last several years, although some noise levels have and are expected to decline.

Current noise issues are created by the Boeing 737-300, operated by Jet 2 and Wizz Air. Both operators have been find for exceeding noise limits (£6,000).

The gaps in the above are due to a defective noise monitor in Horsforth.

Average Noise levels (Day)

Noise is not monitored as you might think, it is measure as:

• LAeqT– This is the Leq weighted for both human hearing and over a specified time period. The levels of individual noise events are useful for many purposes including aircraft certification, however to assess environmental noise exposure, it is necessary to consider and take into account the impact of many events over longer periods – days, months, years – living near an airport. These events will generally differ in magnitude; there will be different numbers in each hour or day; and they will occur at different times of day. Most indices for these assessments are Leq-based. Note here we are using Leq 16 hours, which aggregates the noise from the flights during the busy hours of the airport operation (07:00-23:00) and averages it over that period).
• A ’ Weighting – The human ear responds better to some tones better than to others, so you can hear somebody talking but cannot hear the very low tones of a car travelling in the distance or the very high tones made by a dog whistle or bat. To account for this a sound level meter is fitted with filters, the most common being “A” weighting which is similar to the response of the human ear. dBA – Decibels A weighted

Aircraft noise is composed of individual noise events, therefore L eq can be expressed in terms of the number of events N that occur during the measurement period T, and their logarithmic average Sound Exposure Level (SEL):

Graphical representation of Leq

Sound Exposure Level – SEL

The sound exposure level (SEL) of an aircraft noise event is the sound level, in dBA, of a one second burst of steady noise that contains the same total A-weighted sound energy as the whole event. In other words, it is the dBA value that would be measured if the entire event energy were uniformly compressed into a reference time of one second.

Graphical representation of SEL (above)

Night-time movements.

Once again, LBA have exceeded their night-time quota. There is further detail in the CEO report below.

Regeneration update.

The new terminal at LBA (Phase 1) will complete at the end of April and the new terminal will open in May. The existing terminal will then start to be updated, the process is anticipated to take up to 18 months.

 Chief Executive Update.

• Passenger numbers, it’s LBA’s busiest year with a 4.3 million PAX.

• Profit this year is £20.5 million EBITDA, £10 million pre-COVID.
• Customer satisfaction has improved and is up 59%.
• 2016-2023 noise impact is much reduced, affecting fewer people on the ground.
• Airport business rates rise by 600% from £750k to £4.5 million per annum but the wage bill remains the highest element of spending.

Sustainability.

• All airport light vehicles will be EV from next year. The airport is carrying out an HVO test for several larger vehicles, and if successful, this will be rolled out to all other vehicles operated at LBA.
• Gas is to be removed from all airport buildings, as LBA transition to Solar. There are plans to incorporate EV charging points at the airport.
• The airport aims to be Net zero (Scope 1 & 2) by 2030.

Night-time ATMs.

For the second year, LBA has breached its night-time flight quota, and the airport will be appealing against all 3 CLEUDs. For the avoidance of doubt, the definition of exemption from night-time ATMs are as follow:

• Delays to 1:30am
• Quota count of 0.25 aircraft. Each aircraft type is classified and awarded a quota count (QC) value depending on the amount of noise it generated under controlled certification conditions. The quieter the aircraft the smaller the QC value. Aircraft are classified separately for landing and take-off.

LBA take the case to the Planning Inspectorate.

The case is to be heard between March 11^th – March 14^th, 2025 at the Civic Hall in Leeds. A decision is expected by the end of June 2025 and will determine night-time flights.

If LBA feel that the decision can be challenged, they will do so, otherwise they will continue on the present basis.