Dublin Airport
North Runway
Letter Campaign Warning of State Failure and Growing Legal Risk Over Dublin Airport Operations
The North Runway Technical Group (NRTG) has launched a major public letter campaign targeting government departments, regulators, and public bodies over the State’s ongoing failure to enforce planning and environmental law at Dublin Airport.
A series of 14 formal letters—now available on the NRTG website—has been sent to the Minister for Transport, the Minister for Local Government and Planning, Fingal County Council, the Corporate Enforcement Authority, airlines, and other key stakeholders.
Dublin Airport Authority (daa) is operating unauthorized departure routes from the North Runway, in clear breach of its 2007 planning permission. Aircraft are now executing turns at only 400 feet above ground level, leading to a 335% increase in the number of people directly overflown—well beyond the areas originally assessed during the planning process.
While this site started out as a way to explain how the technical aviation problems with the North Runway could be fixed, it has become ever more apparent that the underlying problem is not technical.
The leadership of daa has decided they don’t want to fix the problem. The Civil Service officers and Ministers responsible for providing oversight have decided to allow the clear and obvious breach of planning permission to go on unchecked.
How to fix the problem
After 20 years of design, development, getting planning permission and building the runway, at the last minute DAA changed the departure track so 100% of departures fly over where 30,000 people live while climbing with full power and maximum noise. None of those people were involved in the planning process because the airplanes were never supposed to go there. DAA calls this people being “unexpectedly overflown”. They said “Ooops, sorry” and continue breaking the law with every single airplane that takes off from the North Runway.
There are 2 changes that DAA can make to the Runway 28R and 28L tracks that will fix the problem and result in the airport having capacity to increase the number of flights it can handle. This also has the benefit of complying with the existing planning permission. Scroll down for the non-technical explanation or read about it here …
Our Proposal in short
- Missed approach for 28L: straight ahead to DAP then turn 30 degrees left. Continuous climb to 4000ft then route east and back around – basically a variation on the 10L missed approach.
- Departures from 28R climb straight ahead 1.9 nautical miles, turn 10 degrees right and climb for 8 nautical miles before any turns.
By it’s nature the proposal includes plenty of aviation jargon. If you’re not an aviation nerd you may not recognize all the terminology or understand some of how runways work. Please have a look in the Aviation Technical section of Runway Information
What's the deal with the North Runway?
Aircraft Noise
"Aircraft are noisy ... you should expect noise if you live near the airport!" So how much is OK and what does "near the airport" mean to you?
Motorway in the Sky
"It's all very complicated" they say, well not really. Departure tracks are basically motorways in the sky: the big difference is you can change them without concrete and digging equipment ...
Planning Permission
It's all very boring until someone wants to build a pig farm next to your house. What's the deal with the planning permission for the North Runway?