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Why you must doubt every word from daa!

This is the daa’s answer to a resident in Ratoath. Every word of it is calculated to make you draw the wrong conclusion, to daa’s advantage.

TL;DR: The entire daa answer is disinformation and there is zero government or State oversight of aviation in Ireland.

  1. daa’s definition of Noise Preferential Route (NPR) or “Environmental Corridor” is made up by daa. The routes daa are using have not been approved for noise or environmental pollution by any agency or authority. The actual NPR was approved by An Bord Pleanala and is 5 nautical miles straight ahead climbing 3,000ft before turning.
  2. Noise Preferential Routes are not based on the SID. It’s the other way around, the SID must align with the approved Noise Preferential Route. Tracking adherence to a SID that doesn’t follow the NPR is utterly pointless.
  3. ANCA is the noise authority and their comment on NPR is: “ANCA was not involved in the design, naming or implementation of these corridors and has no information evidencing the significance, from a noise perspective, of the use of this term.”
  4. According to repeated statements from IAA they do not consider planning permission or environmental law when approving a flight path. They don’t care what’s on the ground and look only at air law and aviation regulations. Approval by IAA has NOTHING to do with noise or other environmental pollution.
  5. AirNav is a commercial air traffic control services company that daa hired to design the flight paths. AirNav is not an engineering practice or a design company. AirNav is not qualified or approved to design flight paths.
  6. AirNav have written they did not consider the planning permission when they did the flight path design work for daa
  7. Daa did not read the procedures they got back from AirNav or check the flight paths for compliance with the planning permission because they thought their contractor (AirNav) had done that. They simply submitted them to IAA (the regulator) for approval (see 3).
  8. At the time when AirNav did this work it was part of the IAA. So daa paid the IAA (its regulator) to design the flight paths, despite IAA not being a design practice. IAA then sent the design to daa who sent it to IAA who approved it.
  9. No one in senior management or on the board at daa has any qualification or experience in aviation or engineering or infrastructure development.
  10. Aircraft flying inside the daa’s fake NPR are deemed BY DAA and no one else to be flying on-track. That’s the excuse they use for ignoring the noise reports on their online system.

There is no State oversight of any of these three State-owned companies: AirNav, daa, and IAA. None of them are “government bodies”, they are all commercial companies, part of the aviation industry and just happen to be owned by the State.

The Department of Transport Aviation Section has admitted that they have no technical aviation expertise and are unable to provide oversight of aviation in Ireland. This was 7 years ago in the wake of the Rescue Helicopter crashing into the rock that was not in the database. There is no indication that this situation has changed. IAA is adamant that it does not have a general oversight role.

There is no one minding the store and Minister Eamon Ryan cannot discuss anything aviation because only Jack Chambers (update: Now James Lawless) is allowed to handle aviation matters.

Junior Transport Minister for Aviation Jack Chambers refused to meet or listen to anyone with actual technical knowledge repeatedly since taking on the post. He accepted only what daa, AirNav and the Department told him and did nothing to fix the problem.

Other than that, it’s all grand!

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