Flights that take off or land outside of official operating hours cause a stir at Innsbruck Airport. For example, seven aircraft that later used the airport were affected last Saturday.
Actually, no planes should take off in Innsbruck after 20:00 p.m. However, a whopping seven planes only took off after 20:00 p.m. A Tui machine, which only started at 22:58 p.m., really took off. It was flight BY6623 bound for Bristol. Incidentally, landings in Innsbruck are only permitted up to a maximum of 23 p.m. Starting after 00:20 p.m. is only allowed in exceptional cases. The fact that airlines presumably tend to make the exceptional case the norm is now also occupying city politics.
However, not all problems that lead to delayed take-offs and landings in Innsbruck are “homemade” by the airlines. At weekends in particular, there are repeated capacity limitations in the area of ACC Munich and thus forced slot allocations in the airspace. In concrete terms, this means that aircraft on the way to Innsbruck are only allowed to take off late at the airport of origin or that the take-off in Tyrol cannot keep to the schedule due to the "delay" ordered by ACC Munich. In Germany, a new iCAS system is currently being tested, which will result in the airspace capacity being reduced by around half, mainly at weekends. Innsbruck is also affected by this and at the same time this is a clever argument for the airlines that the applications for exceeding the operating hours are approved in an uncomplicated manner.
Due to the geographical location, aircraft noise has been a sensitive issue in the Tyrolean capital for many years. In the meantime, the first complaints from residents have been received, and they are not very recent, but as early as last year, local councilor Manfred Roner, who is also active in the Innsbruck Airport residents' protection association, submitted a request to Mayor Georg Willi. In this, the city tour had to explain extensively. In view of the fact that the number of times the operating times are exceeded has recently increased again, it would not be surprising if the municipal council soon had to deal with the issue of aircraft noise again and renewed protest actions were organized. The response of the mayor of Innsbruck is available for download under this link in PDF format.