Winnipeg International Airport, Manitoba

Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
Owner/Operator: Winnipeg Airports Authority

Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport, more commonly known as Winnipeg International Airport is the only international airport within the province of Manitoba. It is the eighth busiest airport in Canada by passenger traffic, serving just under 3.4 million passengers, and the 12th busiest airport by aircraft movements.

Airport Noise Local Community Complaints

In response to complaints about noise from a community approximately 10 km northeast of the International Airport, the Winnipeg Airport Authority retained HGC to assess the sound from air traffic movements, particularly with respect to other typical background sounds in that area. HGC  conducted extended sound level monitoring and recording over a number of weeks in order to correlate individual noise events with flight path data and aircraft type. The monitoring and analysis found that the sound levels of individual aircraft events were generally of similar level to other ambient sounds in the area – such as nearby road traffic and distant train whistles. On a longer-term sound-exposure basis, the periods including aircraft movements had sound levels only 3 to 4 decibels greater than the periods without aircraft activity, which is an imperceptible to barely-perceptible difference. Minor influences from meteorology and flight paths were also noted.

Acoustical consulting services delivered:

• Conducted automated monitoring of sound levels in the community to capture flyover events
• Correlated sound from flyover events with information about flight paths and aircraft type
• Identified sound events from unrelated flyovers such as military aircraft from an Air Force base co-located at the airport site