Today, many airports require strict adherence to noise abatement procedures. However, noise complaints from nearby residential areas are a continuing concern to airport operators, and identifying the aircraft which caused such complaints is often difficult.

One of the early applications of multilateration was to perform this function. The system records the identification of every arriving and departing aircraft, along with its precise path over the ground, and can show the exact time it passed over any point on its path. The recorded data have already been accepted as legal evidence in certain jurisdictions.

As other environmental regulations come into effect, multilateration can provide airport management with an extremely effective and rapidly accessible source of information on noise, emissions and other flight operations data.