Airport limitations for Northern Helicopters
Mar 08, 2012
The fast-growing flight school Northern Helicopters faces a setback as the Land and Environment Court of Appeal has decided not to grant a review of the earlier decision to ban local training flights with helicopters at Axamo Airport in Jönköping. Axamo is the main base for Northern Heli.
The dispute between the airport, the County Board and the Environment Office has been going on for years but the court's decision cannot be appealed, says the magazine jnytt.se. The disagreement, which was induced by complaints from neighbors, led to the decision to exclude the helicopter training from the term General Aviation locally, which made the training a violation against the airport’s environmental approval.
“The helicopter school is approved, but they are not allowed to hover around near the airport. The verdict says that the local training activities are prohibited at the airport, other than taking off and landing”, says Sten Norinder, CEO of Jönköping Airport, to jnytt. He further tells the magazine that the airport is disappointed of the situation and that they have made measurements that concludes that the activity is not extraordinarily noisy, and that the noise is within the limits.
“The airport can count on a powerful lawsuit”, says Northern Heli’s CEO Mikael Randheim to jnytt. “This causes the loss of several millions of SEK, so we want to be compensated. I still maintain that they cannot stop us, there are EU rules that stipulates this”. Northern Heli plans to report the municipality of Jönköping to the Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsmannen). The company has further announced that it is assessing the possibility to move to Torsvik industrial area from Axamo Airport in order to maintain its operations.
The Swedish Flight Planning Centre has issued a NOTAM (notice to airmen) regarding the limitation:
"AERODROME LIMITED, HELICOPTER SCHOOL FLT NOT PERMITTED FROM: 06 FEB 2012 11:42 TO: 07 MAY 2012 12:00 EST."
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