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This chapter considers time-differentiated airport noise surcharges that occur in addition to general noise fees at an airport. In practice, an essential problem of such surcharges may consist of setting the price for a social policy goal, such as airport noise reduction, by shifting a number of critical flights away from sensitive times-of-day in the presence of an additional, competing economic policy goal in terms of fostering the network hub function and connectivity of that airport. In such a case, additional noise surcharges aim at balancing the socioeconomic noise costs against economic prosperity, to achieve a net benefit for society by inducing a particular airline scheduling behavior, such as shifting non-hub-relevant flights only. As a result, they differ from the well-known economic concepts for the internalization of externalities. We address this problem by offering a shift from an economic welfare view to a business administration perspective with the airlines as stakeholders, in order to describe the different rationales that need to be accounted for when searching for a pricing scheme that achieves one of the distinct steering effects in terms of airline scheduling behavior. In addition, we offer a tentative, generic guideline to determine the appropriate dimension of time-differentiated noise surcharges depending on the steering effect.

This chapter addresses the political history of aircraft noise annoyance and its relationship to sustainability.

Using extensive case studies and secondary sources, the chapter shows how a particular approach to noise annoyance that emerged already accepted large-scale annoyance. The focus is directed towards the black boxing of political decisions with scientific knowledge.

This contribution demonstrates that noise annoyance policy has shaped citizens’ perceptions of aircraft sound and has intensified the associated annoyance. Finally, the discussion considers the significance of the participation of citizens and the political implications of these findings. Currently, participation is predominantly confined within a growth paradigm and reproduces tensions in ecological modernization policies. Participation and protest can inadvertently engage these tensions and question the participatory practices themselves. A moratorium on ‘growth’ might create the necessary space for fundamentally rethinking aviation and sustainability.

Airport noise is an undesirable consequence of arriving and departing flights. Much research effort has focused on how such noise affects the prices of houses located nearby and consistently finds that more noise is associated with lower housing prices.¹ On the other hand, few studies have examined the determinants of airport noise.

European air transport policy, emerged through the confluence of case law and legislation, in four broad areas: liberalization, safety and security, greening, and the external policy. Following the implementation of the single market for air transport, policy shifted to liberalizing and regulating associated services and in recent years to greening, the external aviation policy, and safety and security. Inclusion of air transport in the Environmental Trading Scheme of the European Union exemplifies the European Commission’s proactive stand on bringing the industry in line with emission reduction trajectories of other industries. However, the bid to include flights to third countries in the trading scheme pushed the EU into a controversial position, causing the Commission to halt implementation and to give ICAO time to seek a global multilateral agreement. The chapter also discusses how the nationality clauses in air services agreements breached the Treaty of Rome, and a court ruling to that effect enabled the EC to extend EU liberalization policies beyond the European Union, resulting in the Common Aviation Area with EU fringe countries and the Open Aviation Area with the USA. Another important area of progress was aviation safety, where the EU region is unsurpassed in the world, yet the Commission has pushed the boundary even further, by establishing the European Safety Agency to oversee the European Aviation Safety Management System. Another important area of regulatory development was aviation security, a major focus after the woeful events in 2001, but increasingly under industry scrutiny on costs and effectiveness. The chapter concludes by arguing that in the coming decade, the EU will strive to strengthen its position as a global countervailing power, symbolized in air transport by a leadership position in environmental policy and international market liberalization, exemplified in the EU’s external aviation policy.

This chapter examines the torsions and blind spots that structure the contemporary debate on the politics and policy of aviation. It also generates different scenarios for the future of air travel, which can help to unblock the current impasse about the perceived costs and benefits of aviation and its attendant infrastructural needs.

This chapter characterises and evaluates the competing frames that organise the contested realities of air transport. By mapping out the current fault lines of aviation politics and policy, the chapter is also able to delineate four main scenarios regarding the future of aviation, which we name the ‘post-carbon’, ‘high-modernist’, ‘market regulation’ and ‘demand management’ projections respectively.

The chapter problematises and criticises the existing literature, policy reports and stakeholder briefings that inform the contemporary standoff in UK aviation policy. It uses the definition of sustainable development as a heuristic device to map and identify the fault lines structuring contemporary debates on aviation futures. It then builds upon this analysis to delimit four different scenarios for the future of flying.

The chapter analyses the contested realities of aviation politics. It re-affirms the political nature of such divisions, which in turn structure the rival understandings of aviation. The analysis suggests that the identified fault lines are constantly reiterated by competing appeals to ambiguous and contradictory evidence-bases or policy frames. Ultimately, the chapter claims that any significant reframing of aviation policy and politics rests on the outcome of political negotiations and persuasion. But it also depends on the broader views of citizens and stakeholders about the future challenges facing society, as well as the way in which governments and affected agents put in place and coordinate the multiple arenas in which a dialogue over the future of aviation can be held. Aviation futures cannot be reduced to the narrow confines of the technical merits or claims surrounding the feasibility of policy instruments.