Dutch vote yes to kerosene tax

Yesterday Dutch parliament voted yes to have taxes on aviation fuel. Government is now obligated to research if it can get support from other countries united under the ICAO lobby club.

Aviation industry doesn’t pay any taxes on fuel following an international agreement stemming from 1944. The agreement was made to reconstruct aviation industry after WW2.

Earlier this year the Dutch confirmed to introduce a passenger airfare tax. Preferably in cooperation with other European countries, but if this support can not be found, they will introduce it nationally.

Aviation industry not paying taxes on fuel gives it an unfair advantage over other forms of transportation. Dutch parliament wants to end this preferential position. Read more >

‘Too much aviation noise in one third of Dutch houses’

Too much residents of The Netherlands experience noise nuisance, part of them from aviation. The reason is simple: one thirth of all houses is built on a noisy location, says research from Dutch news tv RTL Nieuws. Too much noise makes people ill.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has published new guidelines for environmental noise. Road traffic can produce a maximum of 53 decibels, trains 54 dB, but aviation noise may not exceed 45 decibels.

RTL Nieuws has compared the new guildelines with data from the Dutch health institute RIVM and from the governmental basic registration database for addresses and buildings. From this analyses they learned that 37 percent of houses experience a noise level of more than 55 dB. This counts up to 3 million houses. Read more >

About us

SchipholWatch – a group of residents that is fighting aviation noise around Amsterdam Schiphol Airport – wanted to have an app to register airplanes with the decibels that you have to cope with.

foto: Tookapic on Pexels.com

On Twitter they asked if someone wanted to build this app as a volunteer. Roelof Mejier responded positively to this question. Now after 4 months of work in spare hours in evenings and weekends , here it is!

We appreciate that we can use the OpenSky-database to identify the planes that are flying above your head.