Montpellier Airport: incessant complaints about noise pollution due to the ballet of planes

Criticisms about noise pollution mainly concern the activity of leisure aviation, offered by flying clubs, but also training, with schools. Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART

The mayors of Lattes and Pérols display their annoyance at the noise, particularly from small aircraft. On the airport side, we do not hide a certain helplessness, while on the flying club and training school side we explain the efforts already made.

This is a subject on which they no longer hide their exasperation. Cyril Meunier and Jean-Pierre Rico, mayors of Lattes and Pérols respectively, are starting to get tired of having to manage the moods of their constituents living near the runways of Montpellier Méditerranée airport. The cause: the noise pollution generated by the ballet of planes. And especially the small ones, those used for training or for leisure.

"What bothers us is the small runway, the one used by flying clubs and training schools", says Jean-Pierre Rico, who recalls that the ballet of aircraft "impacts a perimeter of 40 000 people". "Even us, in town hall, we are sometimes flown over by small planes which fly at low altitude and which do not respect the corridors reserved for them to land". "The problem is small planes, insists Frédéric Vincent, vice-president of the association of cabaniers of Pérols. Csome days I count more than 80 flybys over my house.

"Commercial planes do not bypass by sea"

Among his Latvian neighbor, impatience is at its height. "I keep putting pressure on Emmanuel Brehmer(the chairman of the board of directors of the airport company, manager of the platform, editor's note)", says Cyril Meunier. According to him, today there are two types of nuisance. "The first is easy to characterize, these are commercial flights, planes which do not bypass by sea and which cut directly via departmental road 66 to save kerosene", the expressway that leads to the coast.

As for the second, "it’is the most important for us, because it impacts the territory of Boirargues". These are "small learning planes and flying clubs", adds the mayor of Lattes, even if he recognizes that the latter "have made a lot of progress with new noisy medium planes". But that is not enough "when you have members who are not always respectful, especially in the summer, when vacationers come to steal". And Jean-Pierre Rico puts his foot down: "the solution would be to relocate the activities of flying clubs and schools elsewhere"< /em>.