EASA Consolidates Leading Role in Flying Taxi Noise Standards

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) has con­firmed its lead­er­ship in set­ting stan­dards and lim­its for fly­ing taxi noise by announc­ing this week two fur­ther pub­li­ca­tions on this impor­tant sub­ject, reports a press release.

The pub­li­ca­tions con­firm that “air taxi noise must respect defined stan­dards and lim­its to ensure that dis­tur­bance to the pub­lic is min­imised, and to fos­ter cit­i­zens’ accep­tance of such oper­a­tions in or near pop­u­lat­ed areas.”

Luc Tyt­gat, EASA Act­ing Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, com­ment­ed, “The Agency con­duct­ed a large-scale study in 2021, in which noise was clear­ly high­light­ed as one of the top soci­etal con­cerns for this new mode of urban trans­port in the Euro­pean Union. The stan­dards we are set­ting reflect the public’s desire for min­imis­ing noise dis­tur­bance from Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.”

EASA pub­lished two sets of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Tech­ni­cal Spec­i­fi­ca­tions (EPTS) for air­craft capa­ble of Ver­ti­cal Take-off and Land­ing (VTOL).The release states, “The aim is to reach a high, uni­form lev­el of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and to pre­vent sig­nif­i­cant harm­ful effects of noise on human health in the Euro­pean Union, as man­dat­ed by the EASA Basic Reg­u­la­tion. Both doc­u­ments build on exist­ing inter­na­tion­al noise stan­dards for con­ven­tion­al air­craft, adjust­ed to accom­mo­date the char­ac­ter­is­tics of VTOL-capa­ble (VCA) air­craft.”

Luc Tyt­gat

It con­tin­ues, “In addi­tion to mea­sur­ing noise at approach, take-off and over­flight (ATOO), they also con­tain a hov­er noise assess­ment to help eval­u­ate the noise impact of oper­a­tions close to ver­ti­ports, the ground facil­i­ties from which such air­craft will oper­ate.”

The first EPTS doc­u­ment is the final ver­sion of the text applic­a­ble to VCA pow­ered by non-tilt­ing rotors. It expands on the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion phase, and takes account of around 200 com­ments from VCA man­u­fac­tur­ers, acad­e­mia, and nation­al avi­a­tion author­i­ties, mak­ing tech­ni­cal changes to bring sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and clar­i­ty. A typ­i­cal design falling under this scope would be the VoloC­i­ty man­u­fac­tured by Volo­copter.

The sec­ond EPTS doc­u­ment applies to VCA pow­ered by tilt­ing rotors and is pub­lished for con­sul­ta­tion. Although sim­i­lar in con­tent, the stan­dards in this doc­u­ment were based on the lega­cy inter­na­tion­al noise stan­dards for tilt rotors. The Lil­i­um Jet mod­el would fall under the applic­a­bil­i­ty of this EPTS doc­u­ment. The max­i­mum allow­able noise lev­els in ATOO phas­es are iden­ti­cal in both EPTS to ensure a lev­el play­ing field among VCA designs.

The doc­u­ment is open to pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion until Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2024. Com­ments can be sub­mit­ted through the Com­ment Response Tool (CRT).

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.easa.europa.eu/en

(Top image: Joby Avi­a­tion)