Easing the concept “Balanced Approach” to airports with densely busy surroundings – The case of Congonhas Airport

• High background noise minimizes aircraft noise annoyance.
• “Curfews” could be adopted without additional operation restrictions.
• Mitigation alternatives can only take effect with the help of permanent noise monitoring.
• Aircraft noise annoyance metrics do not consider background noise.

This paper presents the difficulties found in trying to apply the “Balanced Approach” concept of ICAO (UN-International Civil Aviation Organization) on the noise pollution mitigation at urban Brazilian airports using, as a case study, the Congonhas Airport. It has been discussed by means of alternative operating scenarios, how to make the concept more flexible, aiming to bring the benefit of any additional acoustic comfort, without diminishing the installed capacity and already limited for environmental reasons. The results show that there are conditions for improvement, since there are both awareness of all players involved and permanent and real-time noise monitoring, even if those mitigating measures are not reflected on the noise annoyance models currently adopted for the land use planning.