Mobilization for a study on the end of night flights in Toulouse
Several association leaders and elected officials are mobilizing in favor of an impact study on the end of night flights at Toulouse-Blagnac airport.
It is three o’clock in the morning, an Airbus 320 breaks through the silence of the night to land on one of the runways of Toulouse-Blagnac airport. The number of people affected by this type of situation has increased from 8,500 in 2010 to 14,500 in 2020.
The Collective against air pollution of the Toulouse conurbation (CCNAAT) has moreover launched a call for the study of the impact of the night curfew on Toulouse-Blagnac airport. “The term “curfew” is difficult to hear in Toulouse, especially since the confinements. However, it has existed in Nantes from midnight to six o’clock, ”notes Jérôme Favrel, the technical manager of the CCNAAT.
The societal interest VS the economic interest of night flights in Toulouse
” We believe that the societal interest will outweigh the economic cost of a curfew. There are few movements between midnight and six o’clock. But there is a societal cost for people woken up in the middle of the night,” notes Jérôme Favrel. Before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent collapse in air traffic, there were between 6,000 and 8,000 night aircraft movements per year at Toulouse-Blagnac.
” Today, only strict and proactive measures can make it possible to achieve the State’s new commitment, the return to less than 8,500 people subject to annual average nighttime noise above 50 decibels. To ignore the study of “night periods without aircraft” would be the guarantee of a new failure and the demonstration of the total bias of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, moreover recently denounced by the Council of “State”, estimates the CCNAAT in a press release.
A mobilization is thus organized on Friday April 22 from 12:30 p.m., in front of the Haute-Garonne prefecture, on Place Saint-Etienne in Toulouse. She is supported by several association leaders and elected officialsincluding municipal councilors from Toulouse, such as Hélène Cabanes, Isabelle Hardy, Jamal El Arch, or even François Piquemal.