New noise rules mean Schiphol can grow

Wednesday 01 October 2008

A plan allowing Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to expand to up to 510,000 flights a year by 2020 has been backed by the two main governing parties and the Liberal opposition, news agency ANP reports on Wednesday.

The plans are contained in a report which says that further growth should be absorbed by the regional airports at Lelystad and Eindhoven which should be used by charter flights.

Schiphol handled nearly 436,000 flights last year. In addition, the report recommends scraping the current noise monitoring system which sets strict legal limits on noise nuisance for residents.

Instead the 35 monitoring stations should be replaced by agreements between the airport authority and local residents.

The main recommendations of the report were leaked by the Volkskrant newspaper earlier this week. The paper said residents' groups had walked out of the talks because of the proposed changes to noise rules.

The talks also included airport and government officials and airline representatives.

© DutchNews.nl

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