Aircraft Noise Monitored

Local residents around the Barajas airport in Madrid can now raise direct alerts about aircraft noise disturbance, as Spanish Airport operator - AENA - has launched an interactive WebTrak service.

WebTrak is a software tool that displays live flight and noise data from 27 Noise Monitoring Terminals located around Madrid-Barajas airport. It’s freely available for public use, via the airport’s website and allows them to lodge complaints about individual flights. By utilising the same data that the airport has on its Noise and Flight Tracking System - SIRMA - WebTrak helps the airport to engage with local communities over aircraft noise.

As it is also part of the AENA’s Environmental Action Plan to reduce CO2 emissions and noise generated by operations at its airports throughout Spain, AENA expects to roll out similar services to other Spanish airports in the future.

Director of Environment for AENA, José Manuel Hesse Martin, said: ’’We are very proud to launch WebTrak; the positive response that we’ve had from the community is demonstrating to us that we are working in the right way to minimise noise affection and CO2 reduction. We see WebTrak as a key part of how we manage aircraft noise from our airports in the future’’.

Madrid is the 46th airport to launch WebTrak - and the first to implement Brüel and Kjær’s 7804 Noise and Flight Tracking System. This Flight Tracking Software enables the airport’s noise monitoring system to correlate aircraft movements with noise events - all of which is recorded via the Noise Motoring Terminals - and track any violations by aircraft or airlines.

The 7804 software also allows the user to analyse the recorded noise data in various ways, such as making a comparative study between two different airlines using similar aircrafts, in the same airport.