Dublin Airport to change flight path from new north runway

Dublin Airport is to change the flight path from its new north runway in February following consultation with aviation regulators.

The airport has also insulated 150 homes nearby for noise pollution.

Local residents had complained that the 1.69km runway,which opened in August of last year at a cost of €320m, had deviated from the flight path agreed during public consultation negotiations in the planning phase.

The Group Chief Financial Officer with Dublin Airport operator daa told the Oireachtas Transport Committee that the change in the flight path was a "surprise" to the daa.

Catherine Gubbins said they engaged with local residents in 2016 on the route when the runway was being designed.

"The determination of a new flight path is an incredibly regulated and complex thing," she said.

Sinn Féin's Darren O'Rourke asked if the public consultation undertaken in 2016 was a waste of time, given that the agreement with locals around Dublin Airport had to be changed.

However, Ms Gubbins said the fault does not lie with either party.

"We held engagements in 2016 and six years later the authorities were trying to determine the flight path," she said.

"The process was fit for purpose at that point in time."

Ms Gubbins said once the issues were raised by residents, they began their consultation immediately.

"We have been intensively engaged with all the relevant authorities to try and get this resolved as quickly as possible," she said.

"Thankfully we are now in a position to communicate to our neighbours that 23 February is when the flight path should revert to is something that is more closely aligned to what that we modeled originally.

"The IAA published details of that flight path earlier today."

The committee also heard that the daa has insulated 150 homes close to the airport for noise pollution.

Ms Gubbins said that arising from the change in the flight plan, which will take effect next month, they are going to try to understand if there are houses that will now be affected that had not previously been assessed.

"We will consider what mitigation measures we can make available to those houses," she said.

The airport operators are also engaged in a separate process with the noise regulator arising from complaints of excessive noise since the new runway became operational.

Daa said that process is ongoing and is "completely separate to the flight deviation issue".