Of all major EU hubs, CDG has relatively the largest number of night flights. This is due to loose regulation. As a consequence, night flights are used for purposes that are rare at other hubs, such as passenger flights with no obvious onward connections and freight, mail and express.
The report also contains a critical review of the ACI framework to assess the economic impacts of airports (and by implication, of changes in regulation such as night flight restrictions). This framework has major flaws as it only takes positive impacts into account (tourism receipts, for example), ignores negative economic impacts (tourism expenditures abroad), double counts impacts and completely ignores externalities. Using this framework, a French consultancy has claimed that an incredible 1.7% of French GDP depends on the Paris airports.
Linda Brinke
Martine Smit