Residents Near Airports Complain as Faster Flights Increase Noise
Erica Berardi November 13, 2015
Faster flights mean bigger noise – and residents under flights path are ready to rumble.
Faster flights are becoming common around the country and with them an increase in noise pollution to residents who live near airports. Now, residents are organizing to complain that they were not made fully aware of new flights paths.
According to a Wednesday report in The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is redrawing the paths flights follow as it switches from ground-based to accommodate new satellite navigation NextGen.
As the U.S. attempts to improve air transportation, increase capacity and speed up travel, the discord over noise pollution is a new challenge.
“The objectives are the right ones: significant track-mile cost savings, lower fuel burn and greenhouse gases,” Southwest Airlines chief executive Gary Kelly told the Journal. “There’s no easy answer. We have to continue to work with local communities and the FAA.”
Many communities around the country complain that they were not informed of or given a platform to weigh in on new flight paths.
In Washington, D.C., citizen advocacy groups have been lobbying the Federal Aviation Administration by expressing concern about airplane noise. On August 24, five D.C.-area associations filed together a petition for review before the U.S. Court of Appeals to complain about noise from airplanes at Reagan National Airport (DCA).
On June 1, the city of Phoenix filed a lawsuit against the FAA for its implantation of new flight paths without any avenue for input from the public.
Resident say the FAA created the new routes for the benefits of the airlines and their passengers without considering the lives of people who live in the flights’ paths. The groups are asking for environmental impact assessments. But, as The Wall Street Journal acknowledges, Congress exempted the FAA in 2012 from full environmental impact assessments if the FAA administrator determined new routes reduced fuel consumption and emissions and noise on a per-flight basis.
[Photo: Getty Images]
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As usual, Scott McCartney does a great job with this article from the Wall Street Journal concerning encroaching aircraft noise near airports - it's recommended reading. That aside, I live with the flight patterns of an international airport. It's a constant source of entertainment to see more and more houses being built closer to that airport on what had remained farmland. Then, the residents of that housing located within shouting distance of airport runways complain loudly about the aircraft noise! If you don't want to hear airport noise, don't move into a house located near an airport!