Location comparison: every airport is different

A central element of the Quality of Life Study is the comparison of four airports in Germany. The scientists wanted to find out whether people living near Frankfurt, Cologne/Bonn und Stuttgart airports and around the planned Berlin-Brandenburg airport felt equally annoyed at similar noise levels. The four airports differ in several respects:

  • In Frankfurt there has been a curfew on scheduled take-offs and landings between 23:00 and 05:00 hrs since October 2011. In addition to this, the noise background changed in the same month because a new runway went into operation. This is why a change effect was expected here.
  • There are no flight movements as yet at Berlin-Brandenburg airport – at the time of the survey the only air traffic noise in the region came from Berlin's Schönefeld airport. But when the airport is opened there will be a change in the noise background in the region. This could lead to a change effect.
  • In Cologne/Bonn there are also take-offs and landings at night. There are no plans for expansion.
  • In Stuttgart there are no flights at night and, as in Cologne/Bonn, there are no plans for expansion.


The NORAH team asked several thousand people in the environs of the four airports how annoyed they felt on a five-point scale by the air traffic noise over the previous twelve months, and how they assessed their own quality of life and sleep quality. 1 stood for "absolutely no annoyance" and 5 for "extremely high annoyance". Acoustic experts also calculated the continuous sound level for the specific addresses of the study participants.

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