An Bord Pleanála has ruled that night-time flights to and from Dublin Airport be dramatically cut from their current levels in a long-awaited decision regarding the airport’s newest north runway.
In a draft decision, the planning regulator said that night flights — those arriving and taking off between 11pm and 7am — should be restricted to just 13,000 ‘movements’ per annum, or 36 flights per night.
Under the original planning permission granted for the north runway in 2007, just 65 flights are permitted to land and take off at Dublin Airport each night.
However, at least 33,000 flights passed through the airport during night-time hours in 2023, or about 90 per night, while 98 made use of the airport last month during the same hours.
The decision, likely to face resistance from both airport administrator Daa and airlines, will now go out to a 14-week public consultation ending on December 23, before a final decision is handed down. Daa has been contacted for comment.
The draft decision by An Bord Pleanála concerns an application for a ‘relevant action’ on the part of Daa to fundamentally alter the planning permission restrictions placed on the airport when the new north runway entered use two years ago.
The relevant action, which would have seen the 65-flight night-time restriction removed in favour of a ‘night-time noise quota’ system, was initially approved by Fingal County Council, before being appealed to An Bord Pleanála by groups including the Friends of the Irish Environment in August 2022.
The action had also sought to reduce the hours in which use of the north runway was banned each night at the airport from 11pm-7am to 12am-6am.
The runway first went live in August of 2022, and caused a furore among local residents after planes began using take-off flight paths at odds with those required by the original planning permission. Those flight paths are not addressed in ABP’s draft decision however.
The new decision is likely to come as a surprise to all stakeholders. While An Bord Pleanála has broadly endorsed the initial decision by the local authority, it has also — via the 13,000 night flight stipulation — sought to apply flight movement restrictions to the airport, a common aspect of night-time regulations at other European airports, but not hitherto applied in Ireland.
The 13,000 limitation would be split unevenly between the ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ seasons at the airport, with 9,100 flights allowed in the former. However, even that uneven split would see summer night-time flights restricted to roughly 50 flights daily.
The 13,000 restriction is not the only notable aspect of the decision — the draft ruling also asserts that the north runway, which was previously banned from facilitating take-offs and landings between 11pm and 7am, shall now “be used for departure only” between the hours of 6am and 8am.
