Abstract: Airport capacity has always been perceived in the
traditional sense as the number of aircraft operations during a
specified time corresponding to a tolerable level of average delay and
it mostly depends on the airside characteristics, on the fleet mix
variability and on the ATM. The adoption of the Directive
2002/30/EC in the EU countries drives the stakeholders to conceive
airport capacity in a different way though. Airport capacity in this
sense is fundamentally driven by environmental criteria, and since
acoustical externalities represent the most important factors, those are
the ones that could pose a serious threat to the growth of airports and
to aviation market itself in the short-medium term. The importance of
the regional airports in the deregulated market grew fast during the
last decade since they represent spokes for network carriers and a
preferential destination for low-fares carriers. Not only regional
airports have witnessed a fast and unexpected growth in traffic but
also a fast growth in the complaints for the nuisance by the people
living near those airports. In this paper the results of a study
conducted in cooperation with the airport of Bologna G. Marconi are
presented in order to investigate airport acoustical capacity as a defacto
constraint of airport growth.