Spring 2025 Update
Summary of the north runway fiasco as a new Transport Minister takes office
This is not a matter of Planning Permission (“we must wait for ABP”) or planning enforcement (“that’s up to Fingal Local Authority”). This is a matter of corporate governance and responsibility. The failure of Minister Jack Chambers and the officials in the Department of Transport, particularly Ethna Brogan (The Director General of Civil Aviation in Ireland) to provide any oversight to daa has allowed a culture of impunity to go unchecked and a campaign of Deny, Defer, Deflect to go unchallenged.
NRTG is not requesting the Minister to interfere in planning permission, although the Chair of daa wrote a letter to the Taoiseach asking for just that. NRTG is asking the Minister as the proxy owner of daa to show leadership and apply independent oversight and corporate governance to what has become a rogue entity.
· 2007 daa requests and receives planning permission to build and operate the north runway
o Daa requests 5 nautical miles straight ahead and minimum 3,000ft altitude before any turns as the only departure route (just like the south runway). This is the route for the entire Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and is referred to in industry as the Noise Preferential Route.
o Fingal rejects. ABP Inspector recommends rejection. ABP overrules and grants, with 34 conditions citing EIS. Still the ONLY permission in place
o Condition 1 – Do not deviate from the EIS
· 2016 daa realizes they want to operate different flight paths for CAPACITY reasons resulting in the first Relevant Action.
o Daa blames “safety requirements” for the change, citing requirements in ICAO 9643 published in 2004, so available during the original process.
o Public consultation carried out in Fingal only, despite over 90% of the departure disturbance occurs in Meath.
o ANCA formed and requires proper noise analysis as part of RA.
o Daa withdraws the application
· Aug 2022 Runway opens with a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) using routes fundamentally different from both 2007 planning and 2016 RA public consultation.
o Fingal threatens enforcement
o Daa tells Oireachtas they were “greatly surprised by the route the aircraft took” and the SIDs are nothing to do with daa, being “handled by the regulatory authorities”.
o IAA CEO informed the same Oireachtas committee that “everyone in the world of aviation knew the flight paths 2 months before the runway opened”
o DAA is legally the Aerodrome Operator and 100% responsible for the aerodrome and literally the only entity that can request approval from IAA to change the SIDs. No one else is responsible for the SIDs.
o Daa rapidly changes the SID (Feb 2023) to move the bulk of the departure noise from Fingal to Meath
o Since then, Fingal has refused to answer any questions regarding enforcement of Condition 1 and no such enforcement undertaken against daa, its largest ratepayer.
· July 2023 RTE Prime Time covers the flight path problem including interview with daa CEO Kenny Jacobs (KJ)
o Documentary evidence shows KJ repeatedly gave incorrect answers to questions about the north runway
o Ryanair berates RTE for airing the program, claiming KJ’s on camera misstatements answered their questions and they should have accepted that and withdrawn the program.
o Why would Ryanair have an iron in this fire? Did they request AirNav to design a shortcut flight path for daa?
o KJ later admits to Oireachtas Transport Committee that despite his obvious conflict of interests as CEO of daa, he owns stock in many of the airlines which benefit from the decisions he has made as daa CEO, including his former employer Ryanair.
o AirNav receives €21 million annually from airlines (via Eurocontrol) for Terminal Services provided at Dublin, Cork and Shannon, over 80% of which (€17.5 million) from Dublin. The Department refuses to explain why this has never been put out for tender in compliance with EU regulation. They erroneously claim that primary legislation requires that AirNav have exclusivity.
· Oct 2023 North Runway Technical Group meets daa KJ with AirNav staff present.
o Two of our group (an airline training captain and a qualified pilot / civil engineer) present a constructive proposal for the departure track to match the daa’s originally planned route while maximizing aerodrome capacity
o AirNav staff are visibly furious at our participation in the meeting and demonstrated to be factually wrong in their assertions
o KJ claims that the daa has no responsibility for the aerodrome, only the terminals, that IAA runs the airfield and handles the flying stuff. We show him the letter AirNav sent to the department contradicting this and blaming daa.
o AirNav writes to Minister Jack Chambers telling him they will put airplane noise into “never previously overflown area” in his constituency and that while they are not experts on noise and no noise consultation was carried out in Meath, a public consultation would be required in highly populated areas (of his constituency) if the south runway’s missed approach is altered.
o AirNav has no statutory role in designing the airport procedures (which define the flight paths). AirNav provides “Terminal Services” at Dublin airport, which amounts to manning the tower with air traffic controllers.
· April 2024 – 6 months later and after repeated questioning, including by Oireachtas Transport Committee, daa claims that AirNav has now examined the NRTG proposal and “reconfirmed that it is Complex and Regulated”.
o AirNav has NEVER stated that our (now several) proposals cannot be implemented, only that it would require work and involve multiple stakeholders. They blame daa for not initiating the process.
o AirNav wrote to the Department that they did not pay any attention to the route defined in the planning permission when designing the SID, and that planning matters are daa’s problem. This while they were operating for and on behalf of daa as a subcontractor to redesign the aerodrome, including the SIDs which are required to follow the planning permission to comply with Condition 1.
o Daa repeatedly claims in their new RA planning application that IAA required the changed flight path for safety reasons and that the new flight path was “designed in consultation with the IAA”.
o IAA disputes this and clarifies that IAA approved the only application they received for a SID from daa and only because they are required to approve the SID if they cannot show that it breaches minimum safety regulations.
o No report of their “analysis” of NRTG proposal from AirNav forwarded to NRTG despite requests. We doubt anyone at AirNav did a report, or even seriously examined the proposal.
o If something being “Regulated” means you can’t achieve it, you have no business in aviation – everything is regulated, literally down to the nuts and bolts!
o If something is “Complex” you hire qualified, competent, experienced engineers to solve the problem. AirNav is none of these.
o Daa continues to pass the buck to their subcontractor AirNav, who have none of the above listed required qualifications.
· Now
o ABP Inspector has confirmed in writing that the present SID is not following the daa-designed route approved in 2007 or the route daa requested and withdrew in 2016.
o daa claims they are engaged in a process to design a process that will consider input from third parties regarding the flight paths. They have not committed to actually doing anything to fix the problem on foot of such a process and have shown clear intent to retain the illegal SID route presently in use.
o Every planning application daa makes is immediately subject to scrutiny and objected to by hundreds of people who would never have been involved if daa stuck to the route they designed, requested and received permission to fly.
The Department of Transport has no one qualified or experienced with domain knowledge in aviation, engineering, procedure design, aerodrome management or infrastructure development. When queried regarding daa’s misconduct and AirNav’s ongoing failure, the Department puts the question to the daa and AirNav and forwards the misinformation or disinformation returned as their response. No third-party review or audit of the daa’s disinformation and AirNav’s spin is carried out. The Department officials have failed to provide oversight of the two state-owned companies at the heart of the north runway fiasco and Ministerial intervention is needed.