© 2016, German Acoustical Society (DEGA). All rights reserved. This paper explores the shielding properties of buildings exposed to aircraft noise by comparing sound levels near front and rear facades at two locations in the proximity of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The focus of the study lies on an experimental approach to measure the shielding capacity of airplanes as fast moving source passes, but primarily on how the urban environment might contribute to noise attenuation from air traffic. The paper therefore builds on studies about shielding effects of buildings seen from an architectural design perspective. In total three pilot studies 45 fly-overs were recorded by microphones in front and behind buildings. One pilot study focuses on ascending airplanes and two on landings. The shielding effect of the building was calculated by subtracting the OASPL (overall A-weighted sound pressure level) graphs of the microphones for the first four seconds of a stabilized sound peak evoked by the passing airplane. A spectral analysis for these time frames is added to study the shielding effects for octave bands between 31.5 and 4000 Hz. The results show that the two buildings have a mean shielding effect of around 11 dB(A) for landings and 14 dB(A) for ascending airplanes, when taking into account the moment sound levels peak at microphone due to a passing airplane. The results show a large variance between results of single flyovers, mainly at the octave bands between 31.5 and 4000 Hz. For instance, for landings the figures show a range between 0 and 7 dB for eight octave bands below 125 Hz while variance stretches between 8 and 14 dB above 125 Hz. For starts these results were respectively around 4 dB for octave bands below 125 Hz and ranges between 8 and 12 dB for bands between 125 and 4000 Hz.