Aircraft noise complaints this year have already broken 2025 record

Last year’s record for aircraft noise complaints has been broken just four months into 2026, with more than 900 complaints reached by the end of April.

The complaints mainly come from the municipalities located under the much-discussed 07L flight path, according to environmental state secretary Ans Persoons (Vooruit.brussels).

Aircraft landing at Brussels Airport have been using the 07L route with increasing frequency since last summer.

As a result, landing aircraft fly in a straight line over densely populated neighbourhoods in the north of Brussels, disrupting the sleep of an estimated 60,000 Brussels residents.

The use of the runway was announced in summer 2025 as a temporary measure due to works on other runways, although the route appears to have been used with increasing frequency in recent months.

“Like many Brussels residents, I have observed that this ‘temporary’ situation is beginning to last a very long time, and that route 07L has been flown over more and more frequently in recent months,” Persoons said.

“This has a huge impact on the health, sleep and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of Brussels residents in the most densely populated neighbourhoods of our region.”

More than 5,140 aircraft used runway 07L in the first four months of this year - already as many as in the whole of 2025, and more than the 3,000 landings that used the 07L route in 2024.

“We regularly see more than 300 landings a day, from very early in the morning until very late in the evening, and often at night as well,” said Persoons.

The flight path mainly affects residents of the municipalities of Molenbeek, Koekelberg, Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Laeken (Brussels-City), Schaerbeek and Jette. A number of these municipalities have already taken legal action against the increased use of the controversial route.

Brussels MP Lotte Stoops (Groen) spoke of an “explosive increase” in aircraft noise pollution and Persoons cited an “exponential rise” in the number of complaints.

“This shows that something is happening that is affecting a great many people in Brussels,” said Persoons, adding that most complaints come from the municipalities located along the route.

Noise measurements by Brussels Environment show that 90 to 96% of aircraft on this route exceeded Brussels’ noise standards in February this year, especially at night.

“I can assure you that I take the massive and particularly concentrated overflights of the RPN 07L route extremely seriously and am doing everything in my power to put an end to this as soon as possible,” Persoons said.

Persoons is due to meet federal mobility minister Jean-Luc Crucke (Les Engagés) this week and has also scheduled consultations with the affected municipalities “to examine, together with the region’s legal team, what legal steps we can take”.

The state secretary has also scheduled further meetings with action groups such as Stop au Survol de Bruxelles Nord-Ouest and Free Air Brussels North.

Discussions are also under way with Flemish minister Jo Brouns (CD&V) in the run-up to the renewal of the airport’s environmental permit in 2029.

Persoons wants the Brussels region to be heard as a full partner and for population density to be included as a criterion for determining flight paths.

“I am following this up very closely, because change is needed very quickly,” said Persoons.

In the meantime, Brussels residents in the affected areas continue to complain about the impact this new flight path has had on their quality of life.

An estimated 104,298 people living in the wider vicinity of Brussels Airport had their sleep seriously disrupted by aircraft taking off and landing in 2025, with almost six in 10 of them living in the capital, according to the annual study on the airport’s noise impact.

This represents an increase of 2.5% compared to 2024, when the figure stood at about 101,750.

By way of comparison, the number of night-time (between midnight and 7.00) flight movements to and from Brussels Airport rose by 2.1% over the course of a year.

Most of those suffering from "severe sleep disturbance" live in the Brussels region: 60,000 people, or 58% of the total, according to the report.

The worst-affected municipalities are Brussels-City (including the boroughs of Laeken and Haren) with 16,643 affected residents, Schaerbeek (12,924), Molenbeek-Saint-Jean (10,596) and Evere (7,039). These are followed by the Flemish Brabant municipalities of Zaventem (6,770) and Vilvoorde (5,482).

Last year, there was a striking increase in the number of people suffering from "severe sleep disturbance" in Molenbeek (+54%) and Koekelberg (+47%). This is mainly due to the new landing procedure for arrivals on runway 07L.

Federal mobility minister Crucke is currently commissioning a study into possible alternatives to this landing approach and while this has not yet been completed, a number of options have already been identified.

These include greater use of the 01L route over the eastern outskirts, where fewer people live, maximising the use of runways 25L and 25R - meaning aircraft would not fly over Brussels, but would land or take off over Flemish Brabant - adjusting current wind standards which currently often require landings over the city and reducing the number of night flights.