Just as the USA was hoping to score a goal for its hushkit manufacturers by persuading the International Civil Aviation Organisation to confirm that its aircraft noise standards are global and immutable, ICAO is moving the goalposts.
The European Commission (EC) is confident that the September ICAO Assembly will approve a recommendation that regions or airports with special noise sensitivity should have the right to set more stringent limits than the minima.
The issue of whether ICAO environmental standards are non-negotiable and global has been vital in the USA's long-running hushkit war with the European Union. In 1998, Europe unilaterally decided to implement legislation that effectively prevented any aircraft hushkitted to Chapter 3standards which was not already on the European register from being allowed onto it; neither could airlines start new services into Europe using such types. The European Union's (EU) 15 member states - the ICAO's constitution does not, at present, allow it to negotiate with political or economic blocs - have argued that hushkitted aircraft only marginally qualify for Chapter 3 standards, and that they are no longer acceptable in an area which is four times as densely populated as the USA.
Noise attitudes
The EC argues that allowing further hushkitted aircraft into Europe is politically untenable when progressively more of the world's working fleet operates inside the Chapter 3 limits by significant margins, and the latest aircraft already complywith the 10dB absolute improvement demanded by the new Chapter 4 standard.
ICAO attitudes to the noise issue appear to be undergoing radical change. The organisation is beginning to realise that its credibility as a force for improvement in aviation environmental standards is threatened, and with it the credibility of the industry's protestations that it will do everything it reasonably can to reduce noise and pollution.
The EC points out that the Chapter 3 standard was first proposed in 1974, and it has taken 28 years for Chapter 2aircraft operations to be finally banned. Chapter 2 aircraft, unless they have a rare special dispensation, will be grounded from January next year.
Now, within a week of the adoption of the new Chapter 4 standards, with implementation flagged for approval by the ICAO Council in November this year, it should not take another quarter-century or so before the noisiest Chapter 3 aircraft are either grounded or upgraded.
The Commission points out that, for today's more environmentally aware society, one big jump in noise standards every 28 years is not good enough. More in harmony with today's thinking would be an evolutionary system that encourages continual technology improvement by manufacturers, with voluntary tighter regional or local noise limits spurring airlines to upgrade. Aircraft at the noisy end of the present ICAO band could be upgraded by hushkitting/re-engining to meet local demands, or traded to airlines operating in less noise-sensitive regions such as Africa or Asia.
ICAO president Assad Kotaite paints a picture of where noise standards are moving, referring to "the delicate question of operating restrictions on Chapter 3 aircraft". If the Council accepted such restrictions in concept, he says, several provisions would probably have to apply, among them: "States would not be obliged to apply operating restrictions on Chapter 3 aircraft.
Defining parameters
"Secondly, we would need to have provisions to take into account the circumstances of operators from developing countries," he says. Kotaite adds: "We may need to define some of the parameters of operating restrictions." He points out that the ICAO Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) has been charged with "exploring the possible technical options for the implementation of operating restrictions on Chapter 3 aircraft". So the CAEP has clearly been given instructions to think the unthinkable - or at least the uncomfortable.
This the CAEP has now done. Although its recommendations have not yet been published, the EU's unshakeable confidence that its 15 constituent states will soon be cleared to go ahead with local restrictions on noisier Chapter 3 aircraft appears to be based on the results of the CAEP's deliberations. The EC believes the ICAO Assembly will accept these in September. If the EC's predictions are borne out, the hushkit war will be over and the next casualties of local restrictions on marginal Chapter 3 aircraft will start to be defined.
Chapter 3 hushkitted aircraft already on the European register can expect local noise regulations to restrict payloads in the near future - if they do not already do so. According to the Airclaims CASE database, there are around 115 such aircraft operated by European airlines: Boeing 727s and737-200s, McDonnell Douglas DC-8s and DC-9s. A further 150 of these types are in operation and will either need to be hushkitted or grounded prior to the phase-out deadline which takes effect next year. The Boeing MD-80 is the most ubiquitous airliner that is only marginally Chapter 3 compliant in its "pure" unmodified form.
Restricting payloads
Other types in the firing line include older Boeing 747s and Airbus A300s, Lockheed TriStars and, far more contentiously because many of them are much younger, the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series. Around 1,180 MD-80s are in service worldwide, of which over 330 are flying with European carriers. The EC believes that airlines wishing to continue operating all those types will have to restrict payloads to stay within European regional or airport-specific noise regulations.
Source: Flight International
