General Noise

Most us experience a variety of sound on a daily basis. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, noise is defined as a sound that is unwanted, unpleasant, or loud.

Noise is not only about how loud the sound is. There are a complex set of factors that drive annoyance both based upon the noise itself and what that noise means to us. A dripping tap is mostly quiet, but it’s repetitive beat can be annoying. A mosquito’s buzzing is also quiet, yet it is high pitched.

Sounds rarely occur in isolation. It is when we build a combined picture of all of the day-today sounds such as traffic and wind, that we start to identify noise. Certain noises, such as a siren, can be easily heard above the day-to-day sound. Other noises may only be heard when the background level is lower, such as during the night. These principles also apply to aircraft. Whilst the sound level will vary depending on your location, what that sound means to us individuals will drive our response to the resulting noise.

London Stansted Airport Noise Data

To understand the noise impact on the local community, the airport has a number of fixed or temporary noise monitors deployed in the local area, generally under or near flight paths. The monitors detect and record the noise levels 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ANOMS.

A ‘noise event’ is created when the monitor detects noise exceeding the background or local noise level for a noticeable amount of time. This could be due to any number of factors, be it nearby birds, cars or an aircraft. By continuously monitoring the noise level and integrating data from Air Traffic Control (ATC) our systems work to determine if the noise event was generated by an aircraft, or another source. Only events reported as aircraft noise events are reported in our statistics.

The data collected by all of our fixed noise monitors is presented in the dashboard below.

Choose a noise monitor location in the top left hand corner to get started. See our ‘How we manage noise’ page (under the “What are we doing” heading) for more information about noisy aircraft penalties. A number of our noise monitors positioned directly below the flight path are used for fining aircraft on departure and the noise limits are calibrated with respect to the height and distance of the runway to the monitor location.

The dashboard is automatically updated every month and you can access data from previous months using the drop-down. A comprehensive list of aircraft types can be found here.