Campaigning to cut Newcastle Airport's noise, its impact on climate change and your health and wellbeing

What we want to achieve:

Stop the airport expanding
Stop more climate changing emissions and pollution
Stop more noise happening and share the noise we have already
Make the Airport accountable to the communities around it
Make the Airport be honest about what it does

Aviation expansion: the airport's big enough already
  • Newcastle Airport is proposing to almost double its passenger numbers by 2040. 
  • Aircraft emissions heat the planet
  • Increasing emissions as climate change is accellerating is crazy.
What does this mean?
  • Numbers of flights will have to grow massively.
  • Night flights may increase 
  • More noise, more climate change emissions. 
  • The proposed runway will allow bigger aircraft - the noise will reach out further than it does now.
What you need to know:
  • There are no limits on the time of day or night when the airport can fly planes
  • Aircraft noise is not a statutory nuisance. There is no legal redress however badly affected you are
What about the airport?
Newcastle is primarily a leisure airport. This means most people use it to take holidays, city breaks, weekend breaks, visit family and friends – any non-business related purpose. 

Our analysis of the airport's flight guide indicates that between 84% and 87% of passengers are flying for leisure. Other UK Airports are very much the same.

So, the Airport’s impact on climate change, the environment, noise and the economy arises almost wholly from leisure use by UK residents, including many from the North East.
The Airport and Net Zero
The Airport promotes its Net Zero credentials in its Masterplan and in other publicity. 

We acknowledge that it is doing a lot to reduce the environmental and climate change footprint of the airport as a facility. 

But what it says is effectively misleading the public and, we think, decision makers. 

Its NetZero improvements cover the Airport’s ground operations only, not the flights. But it’s the flights that are by far the greatest problem in terms of climate change, environmental impact and noise. The airport does not make this properly clear – it should. 

Climate change damage from flights transcends regional and national boundaries. 

Aircraft are sending dangerous and toxic emissions into a layer of the atmosphere which is delicate and vulnerable. 

Natural systems depend on balance and, once that balance is sufficiently disturbed or changed, then those systems become unstable as we now begin to see and experience.
More noise to come?
The Airport's Masterplan is about expansion, almost doubling passenger numbers by 2040. Which means a lot more flights.

And extending the runway to use larger aircraft.

All of which means more noise for more people, more climate change emissions, more pollution
The Airport: making complaining more difficult
At the same time as it's planning to expand - more flights, more noise - the Airport is making it more difficult to complain about that noise. It now forces you to use its online WebTrak system. It won't accept emailed complaints, written complaints, phone complaints. WebTrak is complicated, it's a barrier to complaining about the noise.

However, we make it easy...
When you complain - what happens?
Nothing much! The airport checks every complaint using its own internal protocol to assess risk. - not noise. In other words, it checks to see if the aircraft was flying safely or not, if it was where it was supposed to be at a correct altitude. And that's it. 

It then emails you to tell you that the aircraft was fine. There is never any attempt to address the noise issue by undertaking to make changes. 

“The main purpose of investigating a complaint at NIAL is to determine whether the corresponding aircraft movement(s) are compliant with CAA procedures or not. A complaint can’t be resolved if it isn’t breaching any operational regulations.”
(This from the airport's Noise Action Plan 2025 consultation responses, page 76)