Budapest Airport invested EUR 1M in ground run-up enclosure project at Ferenc Liszt International Airport

2013-06-28 — /travelprnews.com/ — Budapest Airport completed a state-of-the-art ground run-up enclosure (engine testing site) at Ferenc Liszt International Airport investing about HUF 300 million. The structure assembled from special sound insulation and jet blast deflector panels was officially inaugurated today. The project – included in the noise protection program of Budapest Airport – had no precedent over the last decades in Hungary. The inauguration ceremony of the new facility was attended by Attila Ughy, mayor of district 18, Member of Parliament (FIDESZ) as well as other mayors and municipal representatives of several communities around the airport.

During maintenance of aircraft, engines are required to operate at partial or full capacity for short periods of time on the ground. This procedure is crucial for aviation safety, as it is only allowed to take off with aircraft with perfectly functioning engines. For this purpose, engine testing sites are necessary to operate, and since ground run-up of engines entails significant sound emission, the procedure is considered one of the components of airport ground noise. Professionals of Budapest Airport now completed a modern ground run-up enclosure which will – with the help of sound insulation and sound damping panels – significantly reduce the noise load generated by 150-200 engine testing procedures per year on average.

Ground run-up of engines represented an issue primarily for certain communities of Erzsébet-Bélatelep and Szemeretelep of district 18 and Rákoshegy of district 17 around the airport. As a result of the project, the quality of life of residents in all affected communities will be significantly improved as noise load on the environment is reduced. It is especially advantageous for the residents of district 17 that the location of the new engine testing site is now further removed from the residential area by an additional distance of two kilometers.

The 12-meter tall 107-meter long facility is built from 550 special sound damping panels. More than 4 000 bolts were used for assembly, and as much as 850 cubic meters of concrete was used for pouring its foundation. 41 tons of steel was built in, roughly equaling the dead weight of Boeing 737 and Airbus A 320 aircraft to be tested here. The modern noise protection facility was sourced by Budapest Airport from Blast Deflectors Inc. of the US, and it was erected by Weinberg’93 Kft.

“Budapest Airport is not planning to slow down its airport development efforts in spite of the fact that the collapse of Malév last year and the dramatically increased land tax put our company into a critical position financially,” said Budapest Airport CEO Jost Lammers at the opening ceremony. He added, “With similar responsible projects we would like to achieve that the residents in neighboring communities could enjoy the numerous advantages of the proximity of the airport including new jobs and the economic development of the South-Pest region.”

“We keep our word and continue to work on improving the quality of life around the airport,” underlined Gábor Szarvas, director of community relations, environmental protection, and operational safety of Budapest Airport. Before cutting the ribbon with municipal councilors, he pointed out that Budapest Airport just recently concluded its voluntary noise insulation program, in the framework of which passive noise protection systems (of a value of hundreds of thousands of HUF per apartment) were built in the homes of residents around the airport.

In the course of handover tests performed with certified measuring devices it was found that noise mitigation of the new facility significantly exceeds the required 12 dB, reaching as much as 20 dB. During the tests completed yesterday, the engines of a Boeing 737 were run at 90% capacity while the noise load on the other side of the noise protection wall measured by instruments was only 80 dB, the equivalent of the noise load observed on the sidewalks of Nagykörút during the evening peak. This noise load is swiftly diminishing further away from the wall, and so the residents in neighboring streets of district 18 did not perceive any noise generated by engine testing – while traffic on road 4 and the railway tracks next to it emitted a significantly higher noise load.

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