Button offers instant gratification for those plagued by airplane noise | Hacker News Reader

Button offers instant gratification for those plagued by airplane noise

washingtonpost.com

148 pointswallflower202 comments

> "Users sign up via the Airnoise website. With a free account, users can file up to 15 complaints a month; for $5 a month, they can file unlimited complaints."

Commercialized NIMBY, that's damn clever.

It's commercialized equal protection under law.

Has there ever been any other sort of equal protection? (Serious question.)

Airport security screening?

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/risa.12814

It's a bit of a Kamikaze effort, really. Enough NIMBY automation and future complaints will be as effective as no complaints at all.

Exactly, boiler plate duplicate spam complaints > boiler plate meaningless reply.

Even before this, researchers have noticed that a few people generate a disproportionate number of noise complaints (both links from 2016):

US: https://www.mercatus.org/publications/airport-noise-nimbyism

UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37803205 (half of the around 25,000 complaints were made by 10 people)

I wonder if these people are more susceptible to noise than others, or are simply more tolerant of / more incentivized to navigating bureaucracy to file complaints.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see how a "dash buttons" approach to filing complaints affects these numbers.

On the disproportionate number of noise complaints from a few people: I've noticed in my own case that there was a huge bar to making my first noise complaint (I don't live under a flight path, but across from a beach park where people like to party after hours and blast loud music). The first few times I suffered through it. Eventually it was so bad, I went out at 3am to ask, politely, for them to keep it down (the park closes at 10pm). I didn't want to be "that guy" that calls the cops on a bunch of kids just looking to have a good time. The guy who owned the car blasting the music was apologetic and immediately complied, but one of his friends got in my face about it. Another couple of incidents like that and, well, fuck it, I'm not going to risk bodily harm to try to be cool for some total strangers. I called the cops, who responded in minutes. Problem solved. Once I crossed that line, I hear music blasting after midnight, I call the cops without hesitation. Aside from my own peace of mind, I like to think I'm helping my neighbors who may be still be in the suffering stage. I have no doubt that I make many more noise complaints than they do.

Your story is a great illustration of how accurate data can lead people to wrong conclusions. There’s no substitute for a qualitative understanding of the phenomenon being studied.

I’ve always preferred quantitative data, though the pros and cons of each were explained to me by a physicist who was hardly non-biased.

All data has limitations and context which must be understood, or else one may reach wrong conclusions. I think the limitations of quantitative data are often not properly acknowledged. Of course, data can be still be very useful.

I heared that cops tend to respond very quickly and seriously to noise complaints as such situations have a tendency to get out of hand and turn into violence or worse.

Quick tip: one of simple ways of turning it into an out of hand situation is to go and try to solve the noise problem by yourself.

Funny I had the opposite experience in the UK (London). Some 50-ish cars doing a sort of illegal car tuning gathering under my windows in the middle of the night (midnight). It wasn't the first time and I knew it could last for a couple of hours. Making loud noise with their engines and sound systems. I first went to speak to them and asked them to move around (they were also obstructing the traffic). They just laughed. I then called the non emergency police line, talked to a very nice and courteous officer, whose job seemed to be providing reassuring words but did nothing about it.

Yeah, the non-emergency number seems to be a placebo to me - I've never heard of anyone getting any results by ringing it. I'm sure things were better when one used to be able to ring the local station direct.

100% this. We have had a spate of crime, muggings and drug-related issues around our area in the last 6 months or so, the local police & residents have met numerous times about it. Lots of words and "please call the non-emergency 101 number when you see these gatherings" - I then spent an entire HOUR on hold to the 101 before giving up. A couple were mugged later that evening by that very group...

In Los Angeles I’ve used the non emergency line a bunch due to homeless individuals causing issues, and in every case I’ve had a cop come within the hour. I know because they always give me a ring when they are at the location to just walk through what I saw.

My experience doesn’t seem to mirror everyone’s though in LA, so it may have just been the Wilshire division was all over it.

Be thankful you aren't in a country where three successive governments have been pushing "austerity" for a decade, then.

The current one has even had the temerity lately to outright deny that their public sector cuts, which include policing, are in any way related to the obvious rise in low-level crime and disorder here.

I’ve used the non-emergency number when students parties get a bit out of hand and are noisy at 2pm.

They don’t promise anything but ultimately a patrol car wanders by about 30-60 minutes later and quite often they park up and “investigate”.

This usually results in very much quieter parties for the duration of their tenancy.

The force in London is pretty busy, by all accounts. This would definitely be one for the emergency number in smaller towns.

Agree, which is why I would have never used the emergency number. But I am sure a single patrol car passing by and telling them to move on would have been sufficient.

The met typically doesn’t “investigate” unless there are drugs, knives, or “black youths” (I’m not kidding you) involved.

In the UK noise is the purview of councils, not the police.

The police only get involved if it's coupled with other behaviour like threats of violence.

If it's happening regularly you're probably better off going to your local councillor. Also your local area liaison police officer. Even better if you get a few of your neighbours involved.

Interestingly, you eventually became "that guy".

More like his neighbors became "those people"

There's an empty lot near our building and it gets occupied by students a lot. I just open my window and shout (I am the "Ruhe bitte guy"). From their perspective, someone is crazy enough to shout outside the window, so it works 100%. My next step would be calling the police but honestly never had to do this. Even if I did, the police in Germany are usually too kind to scare them :)

I don't feel like any sane person can reason with drunk people (worse, teenagers) who are making noise at 2 am - except when they are your neighbors or you know them somehow.

I think some people just have a lower threshold for some of this behavior by business that profits while making those around them uncomfortable.

Case in point: I absolutely despise the fact that I have to pick up after a company because they want to throw their free newspapers and advertisements on my lawn and entryway.

Someone even clipped a flyer to my window one wet morning, an it completely adhered to the glass.

Yet this behavior is literally permitted by my local government, which handed these outfits permits for their planned activities.

In 2016, Schiphol airport got about 200k complaints, 150k of which were made by 35 people.[0] That's 11 a day, every day, assuming they all made the same number of complaints, which I doubt.

[0]: https://airnoise.io/

It could well be 200 000 people if the process was as easy as pressing a button.

Perhaps, although it's a bit odd to discount complaints simply because someone didn't go through another frustrating process to make the complaint.

Optimistically this might allow people to complain that otherwise wouldn't have bothered, and while it might be possible to explain away an increase in the number of complaints if it comes from a few people it becomes harder to ignore when these complaints come from a large group of people.

We used to have a system where excessive complaints by an individual would be considered an offense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_scold

Just wondering if these devices are only issued to people who had houses in that area before the airport was built. IMO if you knowingly purchase a residence under a flight path, you lose any privilege of complaining about the noise.

Modern aviation is already far quieter, and there are plenty of regulations in place to minimise the noise footprint (e.g. modern fanjet engines are far quieter than the older turbojets, most airports have curfew hours to prevent late night/early morning noise, plus I know at our local airport, aircraft cannot use reverse thrust braking when landing in the early morning hours etc.).

IMO if you knowingly purchase a residence under a flight path, you lose any privilege of complaining about the noise.

It's not just about knowingly purchasing a home under a flight path, it's also about the commitments made by airports and airlines. For example, an excessive noise event may be caused by a pilot not following a proper noise abatement procedure. And while airplanes have gotten quieter over the last 30 years, delivery companies frequently purchase older aircraft that may not be as quiet. As those freight operations scale up, they can create more noise than anticipated. Finally, the use of GPS assisted takeoff and landings can create issues - previously aircraft were more spread out in their takeoff and landing patterns, which would mean more people are exposed to (relatively) less noise. With the increased accuracy of GPS navigation, flight patterns and much narrower, so the concentration of aircraft on a flight pattern means fewer people are experiencing more noise.

I totally support pulling up pilots who break the noise abatement rules. If these devices were used as intended, we could expect sudden occasional spikes in reports to pin point a flight where the pilot strayed too low etc., but I expect that these devices will mostly be used by irate people who just keep stabbing the button several times a day every time they cannot hear their television clearly.

In fact, the article makes it clear that this is exactly the case:

' “Oh, the joy, the sheer pleasure of pushing that button and seeing the complaints mount up,” she wrote in response to a reporter’s query. “We are over 115,000 complaints for BWI, more than 35,000 in just the past 30 days! So now when MAA wants to know ‘which flight bothered you,’ I have a real answer! ALL OF THEM.” '

Sure, noise complaints can be valid. Even saying "all the flights bother me" may, in some cases, indicate a real problem with the noise abatement procedures at the airport. In 99% of cases, however, noise complaints are simply NIMBYism, or people for whom any amount of noise is too much. Everyone wants to fly somewhere on vacation, or order cheap products from China online and have them delivered by air within a few days. Aviation is necessary, and airplanes need to land somewhere, but too many people are unwilling to tolerate even a small amount of discomfort to allow that. It doesn't matter that there's literally nowhere you can put an airport where the planes wouldn't fly over someone's house, as long as it's not _their_ house...

For every legitimate complaint caused by changes in approach procedures or the use of new navigation technology, there are 10,000 that can be summed up with "flying a hundred tons of steel through the air generates sound, more news at 11!" All it achieves is drown out the real problems in a sea of pointless griping.

Oracle's Larry Ellison's private jet was infamous for ignoring San Jose's noise curfew and flying too loud a jet for night flights.

Meanwhile, the San Jose Sharks' charter would often get bounced to Oakland if they missed curfew.

If you read the article you would have learned that this became a problem in the last 10 years because the FAA rolled out a new system for managing flight paths so a lot of new homes were now experiencing aircraft noise for the first time.

That doesn't answer his question. So the changed flight paths 10 years ago.. are they giving these buttons to people who moved under these 'new' flight paths a year ago?

What? The buttons are a totally private endeavor. You have to buy the buttons. They aren't "giving" them to anyone, and anyone can buy them. And again, all those questions are answered from reading the article.

Also, I was responding to him saying that he didn't think people should have a right to complain if they knowingly bought a house under a flight path. I'm saying that of the people they are quoting in the article, it sounds like many of them have owned the same house for a long while and their problems with aircraft noise are only because of the FAA changing flight paths.

You're being bizarrely pedantic. I never meant to suggest that Airnoise is public endeavor nor that the buttons are free.

>"I'm saying that of the people they are quoting in the article, it sounds like many of them have owned the same house for a long while and their problems with aircraft noise are only because of the FAA changing flight paths."

And his point is that while the people interviewed for the article may have been living there for a while, many of the complainers probably haven't been. Does the guy behind Airnoise.io vet that the people using his system have legitimate grievances (e.g. the flight paths were not over their house when they bought the house)? I seriously doubt it.

Flight paths change all the time.

Well not all the time. They can change, but approach and departure paths need to be approved by the FAA and published in official navigation charts. So they don't change on a whim.

Most people probably don't check official navigation charts, so they don't realize that just because they don't hear airplanes in a house when they visit it doesn't mean they won't later (like swapping runway direction depending on wind conditions).

The FAA NextGen changes have also moved flight paths quite a bit over the last few years. My parents live somewhere where they wouldn't expect to have airplane noise (about a 40 mile drive from the nearest airport, although more like 30 as the crow flies), but starting a year ago they've have planes flying 3,000 feet over their roof, low enough to be noticeably loud.

30 miles at 3000’ or below is an unusually and incredibly long low approach path for jets.

Most class B (largest 30 or so) airports only protect out to 20 miles and often only above 4000’ and none protect the airspace out to 30 miles. (Except DC which is protected post-9/11 not because of airplane needs.)

I don’t find small piston aircraft to be annoying (though perhaps constant beach banner towing or helo tours would be), but understand why people don’t like jet noise overhead. Fortunately jets climb quickly (for their own fuel efficiency needs) and while they have to be low for approaches, that’s generally well inside of 20 miles.

As detailed in the article, due to the FAA's efforts to modernize the air traffic control system, planes have different flight paths than they used to, and communities near airports which used to not experience noise problems, do now. Still, airports are too important and it is virtually impossible to build new ones. The needs of the airports and the airlines should take precedence over those of homeowners. Homeowners can move. Airports can not.

> if you knowingly purchase a residence under a flight path, you lose any privilege of complaining about the noise.

Honestly, this line really grinds my gears. Let me explain:

First, people don't always know. Actually I think people frequently don't know. It's not like estate/rental agents are known for their outstanding honesty.

Also remember that the loudness and frequency of air travel can change a lot. An airplane every few hours and none during the night? That's probably okay. An airplane every 15 minutes for 24/7? Probably not.

But the most important point is that it's a bit of a discussion stopper; in the end, no one really wants to live under a flight path, and we all have to live on the same planet. I'm not saying we can always accommodate everyone, but dismissing people's real daily struggles with this out-of-hand is probably not great, especially as there are many important details missing.

I had a noise problem at my previous apartment. I lived about 20 metres from a church repurposed as a "community and arts centre". Turns out, that this is code for "we will do rave parties where we literally pump out 100dB of bass until 5am every weekend during the winter season". I wouldn't have minded if it was the occasional thing, or if it wasn't literally 100dB (that was their limit, which by their own admission they also breached sometimes), or if it wasn't every weekend. I complained but they were very dismissive about it. It's one of the reasons I ended up moving.

My point is, there are many factors: loudness, frequency, time of day, etc. In a lot of airports the total loudness may be less (I'll take your word for it), but the frequency and time of day has definitely increased in many cases, as people are flying much more.

I appreciate your example especially since it’s something you couldn’t really have looked up beforehand. Imagine searching “raves til 5am in my area”

But flight paths are a known known. Maps exist. Noise level maps exist. Airport locations, runway directions, departing and arriving flight paths (and altitudes!) all exist.

Caveat emptor, you got a “good deal” on a house because it’s in a loud area. If you cared about the noise then you should’ve done your homework.

Or.. move somewhere else?

Again— all this only applies to people walking in to buying homes under takeoff paths. If the airport did this to existing homeowners that’s a prolem, and I think complaints are justified. (This case also runs into NIMBYism, which is also a problem, and so on)

Flight paths change sometimes. Airports expand, etc.

This is true. If you live near an airport the disclosure is required by law if you buy a house in the are.

However, it doesn’t preclude expansion and changes. If for example your airport moves from 12 hour a day to round-the-clock flights... nothing you can do.

It’s a sticky wicket.

Not all noise complains are from people who actually live near airports. I already linked this in my other reply, but: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/former-astronaut-fil...

> located five miles from Reagan National Airport.

That's not really close. The reason there are planes there is due to the flight paths:

> To reach Reagan National through the congested and closely monitored DC airspace, flights must basically follow the Potomac River. The problem for Vittori's neighborhood is compounded by the fact that the airport recently adopted a new flight navigation system known as NextGen to help cut carbon emissions and reduce fuel consumption. This brought planes directly over his Georgetown neighborhood.

Also see the other commenter whose living 12 miles from the airport!

Cities should of course be building airports outside of the city!

Doesn’t this somewhat defeat the purpose of the airport?

Not if they could put in good mass transit to and from the airport.

Airports, like heavy industries, should be outside the city limits, away from populations.

The problem is that access to the airport becomes a location amenity for some businesses, which in turn will draw housing for workers, and eventually the city will envelop the airport.

It's easy to forbid residential (or all) development under the flight paths.

By that logic, London should build their airport about 2 hours by train away from the city, because anything within <2h radius is still within highly populated zones.

2 hours by HSR is a very long way ~300 miles from London. In reality, 50 miles north east of London is farm land.

The core problem is when you build an airport you decrease the value of all nearby property. If people building airports directly compensated people say 50,000$ each property they would build airports in the middle of nowhere and opposition would likely be minimal. Instead people suddenly hate where their living but can’t afford to move.

Not everything is connected by HSR. Getting from Heathrow to city centre can take ~1.5h on public transport, and that's like ~15 miles in straight line.

If you're building an airport you can presumably also build other infrastructure. I am not saying it needs to be reach it in 20 minutes via HSR, just that distance is not the problem infrastructure is.

Dulles airport was built 30 miles from DC in what was the middle of nowhere at the time even though DC already had an airport. "In 1965 Dulles averaged 89 airline operations a day while National Airport (now Reagan) averaged 600 despite not allowing jets." Dulles still does not have a subway link to DC, and it's not the closest airport yet it still sees 21 million passengers a year.

Dulles is only really successful because National has capacity restrictions and a limit on how far flights can go.

As a counterexample, Narita, is too far compared to Haneda.

London like most major cities already has an airport. However, expanding airports means addicting a runway ~1.2km from existing runways which causes more noise issues as people are now effectively 1.2 km closer to the airport.

So, sure expanding existing airports is an option to consider, but doing so has a real and measurable negative impact on property values.

PS: I am not trying to promote a new airport further from London just saying such a thing is an option for London and most other major cities.

And they do, but of course cities expand. What might have been an airport in the middle of nowhere 30 years ago, might be a city airport nowadays.

Exactly. Heathrow was setup as an airport in the middle of the last century, and continues to be used as if London hasn't grown in that time, and won't grow in the future. With plans to extend. I regularly get woken at 4:30am. Undoubtedly, at some point during the day I'll see headlines or commentary about mental health or strain on the NHS. I wonder how many would be feeling considerably better if they simply weren't subjected to sleep deprivation and a plane flying overhead every 120 seconds.

Not really, runways are really expensive, long, wide roads, they may get lengthened slightly or have safety devices installed on the ends but their location is so fixed that few have changed since they were built, and most were built during the war years.

Airport expansion, or addition of new runways etc. are usually a tediously long process, and usually with a lot of community feedback and approval etc. (at least, here in Australia it is). Not something that can happen overnight without anyone knowing.

Flight path changes are more common. But then again, those are usually departure pathways. The worst noise issues are on final approach or on the takeoff run on runway heading, which rarely change. Most turning points are above 1000ft AGL where the noise levels are a lot less.

  usually with a lot of community feedback and approval

Has "community approval" ever been a prerequisite for commercial jet airports in the US?

You would probably use the buttons as part of a campaign to prevent the expansion of an airport further, to prove that aircraft noise is already louder than the authorities say it is. I doubt the current measurement of aircraft noise at ground level over wide areas and long periods is that great, and airport operators have a heavy incentive to understate the levels of noise pollution.

> flight paths are a known known. Maps exist. Noise level maps exist. Airport locations, runway directions, departing and arriving flight paths (and altitudes!) all exist.

I think it's not so unusual for people to just ... forget about this. Especially if they've never experienced it, or if the house isn't close to an airport at all. Moving can be a stressful experience; not infrequently moving has some sort of time constraint (family expansion, new job, etc.) or is due to a bad experience (divorce/breakup being a common example). There are loads of variables, and can't possibly check up on every one of them.

I once lived in an apartment where I couldn't properly open the windows. Of course I had a viewing before I agreed to rent the place, but it never occurred to me to check if I can open the windows. Not being open the windows is annoying on hot summer days. Not being able to sleep at night had a massive impact on the quality of your life. There have been a number of studies about the effects of noise pollution, and it's a lot more harmful than people think. Housing and a good night's sleep are basic human needs; even more so than health care. As I said before, we can't always need to accommodate everyone, but I don't think that concerns about them should be dismissed lightly.

Ideally, the landlord/agency should have an obligation to find out and tell people these sort of things. Maybe that's already the case in some jurisdictions? IMHO selling people a house above a plane route without informing them is like selling people a house where you know the roof is leaking but aren't telling people. Do you check if the roof is leaking? Do you ask? Probably not. And the roof is just one example, there are many more things to check. To have a free market you must have good access to information, so you can make an informed decision.

Also remember that situations change; here is actually an example from the D.C. area (not sure how related that is to this one, perhaps it is?): https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/former-astronaut-fil...

> The problem for Vittori's neighborhood is compounded by the fact that the airport recently adopted a new flight navigation system known as NextGen to help cut carbon emissions and reduce fuel consumption. This brought planes directly over his Georgetown neighborhood.

Other airports have massively expanded, and/or are misleading about the information they give out. A good example of this is Amsterdam airport (Schiphol), which had expanded a lot in the last 40 years, and has been misleading people about how much noise the planes make.

Honestly, I think blaming the tenants for "not doing their homework" is just not very constructive. As I mentioned before, someone will live there, and someone will have the draw the shortest straw. I don't have a good solution for airplane noise, but I don't think that "just don't live there" – which is basically your proposed solution – is really a solution at all. It's just waiting for the sucker who will forget to check the airplane paths, or the person who just can't afford anything else.

> Or.. move somewhere else?

Not always so easy depending on the area and requirements (e.g. closeness to job etc.), and not everyone has the money to just move whenever.

In my case, the housing market is crazy in the city I was living in (Bristol, UK); I tried finding something else but there wasn't too much on the market that fit my requirements, and it was a lot of effort.

I absolutely inspected both houses I’ve bought for a leaking roof prior to the inspection period closing and can’t imagine buying a house without doing so.

Once again - anecdotal evidence from my own experience - when we bought our house, which was the biggest purchase of our lives, we made sure that during the cooling off period before final settlement, we spent a lot of time parking our car on the street where our house was and walking around.

Day time, night time, weekends, working hours, we spent at least 30 to 60 minutes in the neighbourhood on multiple occasions to see what the noise and traffic levels were like amongst many other factors. I cannot believe that most people don't do this more often when looking to settle in a family home that you are going to live in (and possibly raise children) for a large chunk of your lives.

There are some markets where the real estate business is insane, you don't get to make those studies.

I once had 30 minutes to make an offer on a flat, I actually matched the asking price... and was outbid an hour later.

Current price for that flat is 50% higher now. I'm still renting :( .

And it was a sketchy part of town with known crime (mostly theft, not violence).

> First, people don't always know. Actually I think people frequently don't know.

Airports are usually shown on maps. I would expect most people to know what a map is. (If they don't, because e.g. they have cognitive issues, maybe they need to get someone to help them).

> It's not like estate/rental agents are known for their outstanding honesty.

People making big purchases should do due dilligence.

Loudness of aircraft nearby can vary greatly due to weather conditions.

It is quite possible that a location (near an airport) can be relatively quiet one season and very loud another. And if you go home shopping during the quiet period, you may not realize just what you're in for a few months later.

>>Loudness of aircraft nearby can vary greatly due to weather conditions.

So what the Gov to do, ground all air traffic in certain weather conditions? Air travel is a fact of life and planes must land in airports.

You may have read more into my comment than I wrote. I merely explained how a home buyer might reasonably underestimate the noise when agreeing to buy a house near an airport.

The entire city of Seattle is under a flight path. I can hear a jet right now!

I would hope that most people who visit/buy in Seattle would realise that one of the biggest airplane manufacturers in the world is based there (and has been for nearly a century), and that there are several airports spread around the city with lots of traffic. I find it really difficult to understand that this wouldn't be a factor with anyone who was looking to purchase a property in the city.

I rented near a train line for which I was told stopped running in the evenings as it was a passenger line, and only special circumstances had cargo trains coming through. Shortly after I moved in the cargo trains started running full time between 1am to 5am when they gave way to passenger trains on the line. Another thing not mentioned is routine rail maintainence vehicles work at night and they are pretty loud too. The proximity was ridiculous so I expected some noise. But I was not given correct information and it quickly changed anyway.

I lived by a train line in Australia a few years back. Commuter trains during the weekdays, and freight trains during the night and weekends. I actually found the sound really relaxing and had some of the best sleeps ever.

Though I presume not all train lines are alike.

It was a shame because I love the sound of trains as well, but this was on a bend and so it was just metal on metal screeching 10 meters from my bedroom wall for 15 minutes as it slowly navigated the hilly section I lived in (Australia too, we have hills I swear).

One of my favourite most visceral experiences in life so far was riding next to a freight train as it's two diesel engine cars slowly spooled up their enormous turbochargers, while I sprinted on the bike to keep pace. The sound was immense. I love infrastructure.

First, people don't always know. Actually I think people frequently don't know. It's not like estate/rental agents are known for their outstanding honesty.

In California, agents (and homeowners) are required to disclose any known issues with the property, which includes neighborhood noise issues like proximity to an airport. When I bought a house located near a small airport, the selling agent had a separate airport disclosure document that I had to sign.

Yeah, we just bought a house in Los Angeles. They gave us this huge sheet of all these things located within x number of miles of the house. It was kinda useless since everything is within a few miles in la, but was interesting.

> Actually I think people frequently don't know.

Indeed. I bought my first house under a major flight path and didn't know it.

Call me stupid, but I didn't know the traffic patterns. Namely that most traffic to the Salt Lake City Intentional Airport goes on a north-south route, and I lived due south of the airport. (The patterns are due to the surrounding Salt Lake Valley.)

So despite being 15+ miles from the airport -- further than most of SLC, where I had lived for years -- the air traffic at my house was incessant at the busy flight times.

I'm not sure that was anyone's "fault" except mine, but anyway, yes, I believe people frequently don't know.

Fortunately, I grew used to it.

Didn’t you spend any time in the area you were buying a house before you signed?

Yes! We had the luxury of being able to visit it several times, since it was an in-state move.

But none of our visits happened midnight or early morning where the issue is most apparent.

Sounds like something technology can solve. Service that you can pay to find out noise pollution and other nuisances for a given address.

It is an opportunity. Much like Nomadlist rates remote working locations on various important factors, it would be good if there could be a neighbourhood rating system that included things like traffic and noise levels. I am sure something already exists.

Ok, I am a former pilot, so I guess that my knowledge of the runway directions, and approach paths, extent of the circuit area etc. are at the forefront of my mind when I am in a new city.

I know friends that buy property according to how close the nearest coffee shop/cafe is. Not being a coffee drinker, I couldn't care less about that fact - but I know what I need for a comfortable, sane life, and noise abatement is a major factor, which is why I am always looking out for things like train lines, highways and flight paths - even when I am booking an Air BnB for a short holiday stay.

The solution is to stop flying so ridiculously often. It's getting entirely out of hand, and if we want to stop climate change, we need to FLY LESS.

That's as much of a "solution" as using teleporters is. It's unrealistic.

I do consulting work. My role originally promised 40-60% travel to customer sites.

For a while, that was true.

Now 95% of my work is webex or hangouts or go2meeting, etc. If I need physical goods somewhere quickly then flying is a must, but doing business across the wire is much easier.

People will also completely disregard the positive changes which have taken place over the same time frame though.

Aircraft engines are substantially quieter (and less polluting) than they were 50 years ago. Aircraft have better performance and so climb away much faster.

I live on the south side of Heathrow (which has east-west orientated runways). We only get a fraction of the departures anyway but of those only the heaviest aircraft are generally noticeable. The shorthaul (737, A320 etc) aircraft are so high that the noise is negligible.

I'm sure 50 years ago this would have been much worse with heavily laden Tridents and VC10s spewing black smoke and clawing for every foot of altitude.

They have the performance to climb faster if they wanted to, but they don't. They actually climb slower to save fuel. And the use of smaller aircraft means there are more of them, since they each carry less people, but there's more flying than ever. The result is lower noise level but much more frequent noise.

I feel the same way when people say "why are you complaining about a pub nearby? didn't you know it was there when you moved in?". The point is - yes, the pub was already there, but so were the anti-noise laws in the area. And the laws say that noise should be kept to minimum after 11pm - the pub that was there for the last 100 years isn't magically exempt from the laws just because it was there for a long time. What's the point of even having anti-noise laws if they are selectively enforced? And worse, if people complaining are vilified because "you knew the pub was there when you moved". Yes, and the law was also there when someone moved.

Aircraft noise can change after an airport is built. From the article:

> The multibillion-dollar program is changing the way air traffic is managed, moving it from radar to satellite navigation. Proponents say it makes the air traffic system more efficient because it allows planes to fly more direct routes to their destinations.

> But the shift has angered residents, who live in neighborhoods that are below the new flight paths. Residents in Northwest Washington sued the FAA over the changes but lost in court. A suit filed by the state of Maryland is pending.

> McCann was one of those affected. He lived in La Jolla for more than a decade and, other than the occasional stray plane, had not had problems with noise. But that began to change in fall 2016.

I don't think you lose your right to complain, even if you knowingly purchased a home that has a negative externality that you'd like to see removed.

If we lived by that logic, places would steadily become worse since complaints would only be valid if you lived there before a change took place.

Edit: removed my analogy because that's not really the point of my comment.

Edit: would sure like to hear from others about why they disagree and why they are down-voting this.

the pool analogy is a bit absurd, but similar things can and do happen. for example, if your private driveway connects two public roads and you don't actively prevent the public from exploiting that connectivity, eventually it becomes a public right of way and you lose the legal ability to stop people from using it.

> If we lived by that logic, places would steadily become worse since complaints would only be valid if you lived there before a change took place.

maybe. or maybe if this were the case it would exert a large enough downward pressure on property values that the current owner would be forced to resolve the issue before selling.

>>> maybe if this were the case it would exert a large enough downward pressure on property values that the current owner would be forced to resolve the issue before selling.

This is exactly what the current owners are trying to resolve via their complaints.. which is why their complaints are valid, even if they didn't live at the residence before the issue arose.

Edit: Hence the logic holds that if complaints are required to reduce an externality, and you simultaneously hold that complaints are only valid if they are made by residents who have lived there before said externality began, then places would only become worse.

first off, I'm not seriously trying to make the point that it's totally illegitimate to complain about things that you knew would happen going in.

but by "current owner" I meant the person who owned the property before the annoying circumstance began.

I think we can both agree that would have been ideal, but also far from the common case, which is why this is becoming an issue and might also contribute to an overall decline in home ownership. If there is uncertainty in the marketplace that is.

> “if you knowingly purchase a residence under a flight path, you lose any privilege of complaining about the noise”

Flight paths aren’t always static. Neither are the volumes of traffic using a given path, or the times of day when planes are flying on particular paths.

Aircraft noise is a mild annoyance when you have occasional flights during the day, but becomes life-ruiningly bad when you have departing 747s and A380s making turns over your house every few minutes at around midnight. Despite living more than 15 miles from the airport in an area of London that wasn’t previously known for aircraft noise.

In my case I was renting and could move, but if you were stuck with a house you owned (and couldn’t easily sell) it would be an awful situation to be in.

Flight paths change. It's been a big issue for these folks in some pricey neighborhoods:

"The FAA implemented NextGen, changed flight procedures, and moved vast quantities of jet traffic over Palo Alto."

http://www.skypossepaloalto.org/

The article (sort of) addresses that. Apparently ATC has changed systems in the last few years resulting in a bunch of new flight paths near airports. So neighborhoods that were not affected by airplane noise say, 3 years ago, are now directly under a flight path.

I think that for most people in the article, their house was not under a flight path when they bought it :

>>> The multibillion-dollar program is changing the way air traffic is managed, moving it from radar to satellite navigation. Proponents say it makes the air traffic system more efficient because it allows planes to fly more direct routes to their destinations.

But the shift has angered residents, who live in neighborhoods that are below the new flight paths. Residents in Northwest Washington sued the FAA over the changes but lost in court. A suit filed by the state of Maryland is pending.

Wow, I had no idea this existed. I built a similar thing for my own personal use for my local airport (Minneapolis/MSP). I looked at using an Amazon Dash button, but the lifespan is not great and the convenience is not high. Instead, I use SMS via Twilio and their cloud functions (source: https://github.com/justinph/macnoisebutton)

It's pretty handy to be able to say to my watch "Hey Siri, text complain to Dan Boivin" to make a complaint. (Dan Boivin is the chair of the Minneapolis Airport Commission, who I have entered into my contacts).

For those griping about people buying homes after airports existed, there are a couple things to defray that argument. Yes, the airports existed, but the traffic at airports have increased. Airlines are flying more smaller regional jets, which means the frequency of flights have increased. The FAA recently changed flight patterns (part of NextGen) that resulted in some areas seeing much more air traffic than they had in the past. And, airlines are not doing the steep takeoffs like they used to in an effort to conserve fuel, putting planes closer to the ground for longer, resulting in more noise.

It's a neat idea, but it's not clear from the article what these complaints accomplish. Are the airport administrators held accountable in any way? Are they required to respond to the complaints? Maintain a low threshold? It seems like this could just be a placebo button.

What are they supposed to do? They can't move the airport and if they change the routing then someone else will complain.

Sometimes you wonder if they could possible move the route a little to the side. I live on an island close to Seattle, and airplains flying from California will fly straight over the island, almost like it is on purpose. You wonder why they couldn't move the route a little to the west or a little to the east and fly over the sea instead.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA1041

There are two answers to this. The obvious one is, yes of course they could. The annoying one, is that it has to be negotiated, world wide flight maps would have to be updated, flight traffic control reprogrammed, and it is just easier by far in terms of bureaucracy not to do this stuff. After all, people must have known when they chose to live there...

The flight plan into Keflavik in Iceland goes directly over Mount Hekla (the way point is Mount Hekla, which probably made more sense back in the days of visual navigation). Mount Hekla is a fairly active Volcano, and is a little overdue for its next explosion, for which there might be at most about half an hours warning time. After all, people must know the risks when they choose to fly...

FlightAware on mobile isn’t letting me zoom in to see which island you’re on. There’s a few pilots on HN; we can help you look it up. It’s probably not on purpose as in “haha let’s fly over this guy’s house” but more likely to that it keeps traffic in the busy Seattle area flowing smoothly. You can certainly write to the local Flight Standards District Office and ask them to consider using new waypoints and procedures, or ask them for an official explanation.

It looks like Vashon Island (from Google Maps).

That one’s easy then - to the west, and you’re on the approach path to JBLM. To the east, you’re too close to SEA to properly intercept the final approach course. Vashon Island is also far less populated than the land to the east of SEA.

For those not familiar with the Seattle area, JBLM is Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where McChord is an air force base.

There's a little more related information on this further down in the article:

> Even before the arrival of Airnoise, airports had been dealing with a surge in complaints linked to the Federal Aviation Administration’s effort to modernize the air traffic system, known as NextGen.

My interpretation is that at least some of these people (see the lawsuit mentioned in the last paragraph — Maryland is where the woman mentioned at the top of the article lives) may be hoping to have NextGen reverted, which would send the planes elsewhere. It seems unlikely to happen though.

Are the airport administrators held accountable in any way?

Not necessarily the administrators, but the airlines (and sometimes individual pilots) can be held responsible and fined if the noise complaint is due to a pilot not following the proper takeoff or landing procedure.

Are they required to respond to the complaints?

The answer is generally yes, not necessarily to the complainant, but they may have to report complaint statistics to the public and FAA. The FAA takes this very seriously.

A button would be great to have for cars that run red lights and try to muscle in on pedestrians crossing while the walk sign is on. It would need a camera to catch the license plate, to be effective, though. Probably would be simpler as a phone app, just with a fast (or instant) camera. There's been a rash of pedestrian fatalities where I live recently and seemingly little by way of enforcement; it would be good to have some way to push back.

hook it up to a dashcam, and have it send the last 30s of footage.

A small part of my job (air force) is taking noise complaints. I find their rate has absolutely nothing to do with actual noise. It is all about time of day. A rainy tuesday afternoon: we can land on a roof without complaint from the owners. But on a sunny saturday evening, suddenly the same flight pattern we have flown for years without issue starts my phone ringing.

Standard, honest, responses:

1) Civilian air traffic control dictate our airport approach. If our helicopter was flying low it was probably because a 737 was on approach above it.

2) Helicopters have to land. They cannot hover down from 5000 feet directly onto the pad. They have to fly over someone's house somewhere to come home.

3) Sorry ma'am, but there was this boat on fire and a man was hurt. The strait line between the boat and hospital was directly over your house. Our bad. Ill ask the pilots to take the long way next time.

What AF personnel want to say:

4) Big helicopter? Did you see a big red star on the side of it? No? You're welcome. click

A rainy tuesday afternoon: we can land on a roof without complaint from the owners. But on a sunny saturday evening, suddenly the same flight pattern we have flown for years without issue starts my phone ringing

This isn't surprising - sound propagation is partially dependent on atmospheric conditions.

Or, more people are out eating dinner on their decks. I don't think is just about sound levels. They would complain about any aircraft. They just know that everyone else (airlines etc) will just file their complaint away. But if you call the airforce and you know my extension you get to chat with a polite officer who, theoretically, might pass your complaint onto those flying the aircraft. We don't. Noise complaints only every come from built-up areas and all flying over those is heavily planned and controlled by civilian authorities.

> It is all about time of day. A rainy tuesday afternoon: we can land on a roof without complaint from the owners. But on a sunny saturday evening, suddenly the same flight pattern we have flown for years without issue starts my phone ringing.

That one is easy: rainy afternoons, people are inside and have their windows closed, which provides a decent level of noise isolation... vs sunny evenings, people are outside, eating, playing, of course they'll hear everything in their sight and beyond.

> Did you see a big red star on the side of it?

Ah the 'sound of freedom' dodge.

What is the limit for that excuse? Broken windows from sonic boom? 20lb concrete practice bomb accidentally dropped through a roof? Cablecar knocked to the ground during low-level flyying training? All unfortunate but necessary to Maintain Freedom...

Yes.

But remember that civilian air traffic causes plenty of accidents and injuries too. Our helicopters (sar) each year save far more lives than all the accidents our airforce have ever caused.

So when people are at work or inside they don’t hear as much noise so don’t complain. When they are in their garden having a peaceful barbecue they do.

People tend not to complain about life and death stuff. Not everyone worships the military, even in America

Helicopters only have to land if they’ve taken off.

>That’s because with one click, Deckert has done what could have taken her hours to do a few months ago — she has filed a noise complaint with officials at the Maryland Aviation Administration.

One thing though is that the very ease diminishes how much attention the officials actually pay. Same as when you contact your officials, a hand written letter or phone call is much more effective than an email template or a retweet. When they got a noise complaint in the past, they would have thought: this bothered them enough to spend an hour filling out a noise complaint. Now, they can think: this bothered them enough to spend half a second to push a conveniently located button or use an app.

The officials already made clear that passenger comfort isn’t a priority; they could have mandated that airlines install noise sensors and file monthly reports with their data, but instead they chose to require passengers to risk suffering and then have to file complaints to seek recompense for it.

Article has nothing to do with passengers.

Assuming you only read the title of the post I can understand your reply, but I would suggest a cursory glance at articles before replying.

The noise complaints are coming from people under the flight path, not from within the cabin.

Ah, nuts, I misread before the “You’ve read too much” cutoff kicked in on the site. Oh well.

I miss the plane noise from my prior home. A bit odd to me that people object to it, so I’ll stay out of it.

> One thing though is that the very ease diminishes how much attention the officials actually pay.

The point isn't to get aviation officials to care. You want to build up a body of complaints to give your congressional rep something to make noise about. This has been an ongoing fight in Boston.

> You want to build up a body of complaints to give your congressional rep something to make noise about.

Congressional reps tend to care more about evidence that either donors they rely on or voters in their district care enough to take substantive action than numerical volume of complaints or even substance of the complaints (ease of complaints degrades value more for Congressional reps than even for aviation officials, as the latter are more likely to have some concern for the subject matter and rather than merely the political calculus.)

The voters in their district are the people complaining. Boston Logan rerouted air traffic to climb out over the city rather than the harbor. This has led to long daylong stretches of overflights every 90 seconds. Katherine Clarke, Stephen Lynch and Mike Capuano have been beating a drum about this for the past two years. The point of generating complaints is to give them an artifact to wave at the FAA.

In a properly functioning regulatory environment, an independent third party would establish a noise sensor monitoring network around the airport and use that data as feedback to stakeholders (officials, aircraft operators, private citizens around the airport). Failing that, you have angry citizens who push the button hard, and officials who (as you mentioned) don't care, which will probably end up with press (ie this article) and possibly a citizen caring enough to run against disinterested officials.

This is almost exactly what happens in the USA. Pretty much all of the major airports, and many of the intermediate airports have aircraft noise monitoring systems. See [0] for example.

[0] https://www.dfwairport.com/aircraftnoise/

The amount of data it collects and files hopefully makes it harder to dismiss. It is using the same ADS-B data as flightradar and similar sites, so it's able to report detailed information- exact time, what aircraft passed overhead, how far away, what altitude and ground speed. At a lot of airports, there are requirements for climb-out paths (in terms of position and altitude) for noise abatement, and if operators aren't observing existing rules, these detailed reports can have a lot of force.

Right, they're just going to filter that stuff out as noise. If not today very soon. Unless actual means are taken to address the issues and the nature of the complaints changes/abates. Sorta like having overly verbose log messages replete with far too many warnings no one addresses, it becomes less useful as a tool.

”It’s highly, highly therapeutic. It makes you feel like you can make a difference.”

And that's the business model for something like this in a nutshell.

In San Diego the airport is right downtown. Many people are pretty much gauranteed to be dealing with airplane noise regardless of the routes taken to land.

Of course La Jolla is probably the most expensive area in San Diego. Should we route the airplanes around them? Lol.

I mean you can't move the airports and most people can't move their houses so it feels like this is mostly a structural issue. And to me more direct routing based on satellites seems safer than radar based.

I think the buttons are a great idea though. Hopefully they will make buttons for more practical complaints like muggings or burglary. Or just fix reporting processes to be more efficient in the first place. Although that may not be the best example because if you need a button to press everytime you get robbed you probably need to just move to a better neighborhood.

I feel like this demonstrates the gap between where technology is and where government is.

Sats have wild accuracy shifts and depend heavily on the plane being fully operational. Ultimately what you end up with sats anyway is list of waypoints, not anything dynamic, and it can be done with radar as well.

Then why are airports trending towards satellite navigation? Do they not realize something that you do?

No, they do realize exactly that, which is why quite often the paths didn't change as much as they could and why aviation community tends to rebuke ideas like "remove SSR and PSR because GPS and Mode S + ADS-B is enough".

Sats provide good "happy path" when everything is ok and allow greater density. But approach and departure routes are going to be designed for safety as well, including when those features fail.

> Sats have wild accuracy shifts and depend heavily on the plane being fully operational.

Who is routinely flying planes that aren't fully operational?

In-flight accidents are a thing.

GPS and the like provide an efficient "happy path" and a horrible failure mode, which is why there's strong opposition to the removal of radars "because ADS-B/Mode S is good enough"

You definitely can move the airport. San Diego has considered moving several times already.

I don’t think that considering and rejecting moving an airport is nearly as convincing an argument as actually moving a major airport.

Vegas has it's airport close to the strip (and some residential burbs) but there seem to be little noise issues.

Why only complain about something when you remember to press a button?

At some point, someone is just going to hook up a decibel meter and automatically press the button when it hits a threshold. It might file a couple of bad complaints, but if the noise difference is significant, you could definitely increase your throughput.

My neighborhood has car alarms which serve a similar function (to warn of excessive noise or vibration by emitting louder noise.)

In the UK Gatwick and Heathrow airports have been there for a generation. By this I mean that the vast majority of people moved to their noise-affected houses knowing the airport was there already.

Do these people deserve our sympathy? Initially i find it hard to be charitable towards them.

In my local town there is a pub that has been there for around 600 years. A particularly pushy person moved in next door, complained about the noise and successfully got the licensing people to add a condition that the beer garden must be closed after a certain time. Same question again, surely they knew what to expect when they moved in?

I think the issue in question is that these were areas that were originally not under the flight paths, but the flight paths were recently changed to put their homes under them.

So, perhaps they deserve some sympathy for the reduction in their quality of life and in the value of their homes?

I suppose there is something in what you say, but presumably this is still only an issue in the locality of an airport?

I mean I am under a flight path, but the planes are very high and I can't hear them?

La Jolla isn't really local to the airport, and all the airplane noise I ever heard there was from military planes related to MCAS Miramar.

But for starters, it's a big tall hill with books and crannies, and if planes started turning east sooner after takeoff, instead of flying over the ocean, parts of it might get some noise. I'd bet some homes get the sound magnified by the local topography.

The pub situation feels very different: There you have the a 600 year tradition and the enjoyment of a whole neighborhood/community pitted against the annoyance of a single person. The ruling feels unjust, and I have little sympathy for the woman.

In the airport case, the noise makes everyone's life worse. As for "you knew it when you bought," air traffic might have increased over the years, you might not have realized how bad it was going to be, etc. Sympathy here seems reasonable.

On the other hand the whole community uses the airport? Presumably living close to it has it's own advantages? I don't have to suffer it so I am probably underplaying, but presumably it is a trade off?

It is really annoying in my area how hard it is to get to the airport, whereas if I lived close by I could take a bus. Maybe this is just the trade off people make?

>> On the other hand the whole community uses the airport?

Really? Most people cannot afford regular air travel. Most people fly very rarely, less than once a year and then only for extraordinary things. If you live under an airport what you see is people much richer than you flying around doing the stuff you can only dream of doing. It is much easier to make a complaint about a service that you do no regularly use.

In terms of flying, maybe (and then, given the price of budget airline flights, I don't completely agree with this, although flights are obviously only a part of the cost of a holiday).

A counter-point might be that the airport and surrounding industry provides you opportunity for work.

Many people use overnight or other air freight services, either directly or indirectly.

This is completely untrue in Europe. Flying is cheaper than taking a train somewhere with Ryanair and Easyjet. It's easy to get a ticket to a prime destination (any major capital) for 25 euros, return included.

Sure, an airport may have been there, but, in Boston at least, technology changes have made it so that if you are in the flight path, you have a much higher frequency of planes overhead.

See the traffic from runway 33L at Logan airport as an example: https://www.universalhub.com/comment/559152#comment-559152

Basically, flights used to have diverse paths, so you would hear a plane occasionally. And so would everyone else around. But now, if you are directly under the path, you will hear flights consistently every 90 seconds for hours on end. That is a major change, and a recent one at that.

How recent? (Ex last year, last decade?)

> The green lines are flight paths from before the implementation of the new technology (January 2013). The red lines are flight paths from after the implementation of the new technology (January 2015).

> ...the vast majority of people moved to their noise-affected houses knowing the airport was there already... Do these people deserve our sympathy?

I totally understand where you’re coming from, but as the article discusses, the flight paths are currently being actively changed:

> But the shift has angered residents, who live in neighborhoods that are below the new flight paths.

Unfortunately it sounds like many of these people may have lived in their homes for many years in peace and quiet.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy way out of this one other than maybe routing the new flight paths towards the least populated areas or something along those lines.

I do wonder why these types of changes aren’t brought to public discussion before they’re put into place.

It was only recently the licensing laws changed to allow pubs open after 2300, so depending on when and what “certain time” meant it could be a fair enough complaint.

Both airports have massively increased the number of flights they operate in a generation, and the number of nighttime aircraft movements. This is justified as planes are quieter now, but lowering the total noise obviously wasn't the target.

You can the Heathrow noise maps [1].

Kew Gardens [2] is worth visiting, but the current approach to the north runway crosses the garden. In a 500-1000m-wide stretch, it can be difficult to have a conversation since planes are crossing overhead every 45-90 seconds [3].

The local residents may have known about the flight path. The house might be all they could afford, or they thought it wouldn't be so bad, or flight paths might have changed. Whatever the case, we need the 3 million overflown people to continually complain, otherwise there will be nothing pushing back against further expansion of Heathrow.

It is extremely poor planning on successive governments that Heathrow has become Europe's largest airport. London's other airports are to the north or south of nearby larger settlements, so the approach paths fly over far fewer people. Other major airports in Europe have been (or are being) moved to avoid overflying cities.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... and https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/southwarkcans/pages/50...

[2] http://www.kew.org/

[3] https://www.flightradar24.com/51.45,-0.32/12

When I knew that all of the other apartments in the block I am living in were empty, I would throw parties.

Big loud parties, where people would yell and music would blare until the sun rose in the morning.

No one was living there but me so nobody was aware of them. It's a brick building so the noise wouldn't make it outdoor. Since it's winter, people keep their windows closed.

Once people moved in, I stopped hosting those.

Using your arguments, I should keep throwing them even if it means disturbance to the neighbors simply because it was an habit that started before they moved in.

I can't see myself saying: "Oh, those loud parties at night? They are happening since before you moved in. Surely you were aware of them when you visited during the day, you could see the plastic cups in the trash in front of the block! Get used to them or move!"

You know perfectly well that housing in London is a mess, resulting in people living where they might not prefer.

The problem is IMHO not the airplane noise. As many others have written, the actual noise has gone down over the decades.

The real problem is a perceived lack of democratic participation / a government that cares about its people. The interviewed people actually said so: "It makes you feel like you can make a difference", compared to manually filling out complex forms.

This actually is valid also for other countries: in Munich, there is a constant battle for the expansion of the airport with a new runway. For now, the project is set on hold, but who knows how the situation will look like in 5 years w/ the then-new government in Bavaria. This was also decided above the heads of the affected population (who would have lost their homes or be affected by massive increases in noise) without including them, and politicians didn't do flying f..k and tell the affected people that the state cares for them, their well-being or whatever. For new rail tracks or those where usage exploded over decades, people had to sue the rail company for installation of noise-protection.

Personal bet: Complaints about "NIMBY", endless and expensive judicial battles (as are hinted in the article), noise, playing kids, anything would go down to decent manageable levels if governments would care to meaningfully involve affected residents and give them the feeling that their voice matters for the government. The other way is to continue as usual and watch them fall to various radicals and their "the state doesn't care about you, only about <insert minority/marginalized group here>" message.

Not that there's anything wrong with reporting on the same topic by multiple publications, but this article just seems like a poor copy of this WSJ article published in August:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/airplane-noise-complaints-are-s...

https://outline.com/Kp3HcG

Out of curiosity, are there journalistic guidelines about publishing duplicate articles when there are seemingly no new pertinent developments? I haven't seen anything like this before.

Could be the author drumming up the attention, a la celebrities giving basically the same interview on the late-night circuit to promote their newest reboot/sequel.

The button maker probably just sent out a press release that everyone used as the basis for their story.

I don't know, sort of feels like this thing really isn't helping anyone other than perhaps the entity collecting the $5. These folks would probably be better served by speaking with some experts to find out whether there are any feasible short term things that can even be done, and if there are then organizing to lobby officials as a group. Punching the button every time a plane flies over is probably just going to limit the effectiveness of the complaints.

Another aspect to this problem is that the vast majority of houses in the US are made as cheaply as possible, and that means walls with very little mass and sound absorption.

If you had something like concrete walls like is typical for Germany, the plane noise would barely register.

Houses in close proxmity airports can be designed to help minimize the noise -- I know someone that built a house in the flight path for SFO, so he used triple pane glass windows, clay roof tiles instead of the more typical asphalt shingles, some sort of soundproofing insulation in the attic, heavy solid wood exterior doors (with tight weatherstripping) among other things. Apparently the home builders in that area know what they need to do.

It works, you can barely hear the planes go by from within the house, but outside, they are loud enough to make it hard to carry on a conversation.

I think most people just get used to the noise, I used to live close to a train line - close enough that not only could I hear the train horns at the crossing, but also could hear the rumbling train cars go by and could feel the vibrations in the house.

It was super annoying for the first month or so, and then I forgot about it and never really noticed it until I had a house guest that complained about the late night noise.

I once stayed at an airport hotel in Zurich, Switzerland, and I was amazed that while there was a direct view of the runway from the room, you could not tell there was a plane taking off a few hundred meters away. I didn't think it was possible.

I am curious why this wasn't just an app. What's the point of having a physical button other than for aesthetic gratification? If you had an app, it'd be more than just one click, but it'd only be like three "clicks" or steps. You'd have to unlock your phone, open the app, and click a button. Three steps instead of one. Not sure if that warrants a physical button.

Edit: I get why pressing a physical button is therapeutic, but even an app could play some audio when you pressed the button. These people are pretty pissed off when they click these buttons, because nobody is happy when they're complaining about noise pollution. An app could even play a voice-acted "fuck you, <name of airport>" when you click the button in the app. There are about 15,000 airports in the US. You could pay 150 people $10 each to say "fuck you <airport_i>" in an angry, cathartic voice. Each person would only have to say 100 lines.

It seems like a lot of users are clicking that button dozens of times a day. I suppose they might consider the extra convenience worth it, particularly at night.

I used to live directly west of DFW (Euless). I heard the jets maybe 3 or 4 times from inside my apartment; I heard them much more often outside, but it was never disturbing to the point I would have complained.

Two things help DFW: 1. It has a huge amount of land. 2. The main landing/takeoff pattern is North/South and there are roads and businesses to the North and South and not houses.

Now I live right near the landing pattern of ABIA - Austin, but way north. The only thing that bugs me is that the planes directly overfly the office and I've watched too many crash videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLPA0Dhi1VXQDGbkXwjDUzQ/vid...

One of my pet genius ideas that will never happen is to reserve prime housing areas near airports for the deaf.

Your idea is correct: According to mainstream economic theory, the invisible hand of the free market has already resulted in areas near airports being inhabited exclusively by the deaf.

I thought I was going to read about a home-sized noise cancelling system that you could activate by pressing a button when you heard an airplane overhead.

Me too! I’d just been thinking a few days ago how amazing an invention like that would be... no more concerns about neighbors or trains or airplanes or drones... lots of property values would increase and zoning laws would become obsolete if such a thing existed.

I wish this would also work with military flights. There's a lot of people here talking about NIMBYism and how you should know before you buy your house and what-not. I agree with most of that, except I don't think it fairly applies here in many cases. Take myself as an anecdote. I bought a house in a nice, quiet, neighborhood 7 years ago. I also live in a city with multiple active military bases, including two Air Force bases which do training flights. At the time it was established practice to limit training flights to daytime if they were overflying residential areas, I worked night-shift so it was annoying, but what can you do?

Now I work days, and multiple times per day and into the late night (stops around Midnight/1AM) there will be military training flights over my neighborhood. These are not high-altitude flyovers with some noise, these are young Air Force pilots in training flying over low, and sometimes breaking the sound barrier over my neighborhood (but at least high enough altitude that it's not breaking windows). I've adapted by basically shifting my sleep schedule so I go to bed around Midnight when it stops. What else can I do?

Short of using my personal connections locally to find out who their CO is and calling them on the phone directly, there is basically no process for me to complain. I'm also pretty certain that generating sonic booms over a neighborhood at night is probably against their training orders, and they'd get disciplined, but since I have no pathway to complain and it's something that could not reasonably be expected, I'm just stuck with it unless I want to move.

It's not a daily occurrence, but probably happens at least 3-4 times per week after 9PM.

There's a reason the pricing for homes is lower next to the airport or next to the Air Force base vs in my previously quiet neighborhood which is in a suburb more than 5 miles from both.

Could there ever be such a thing as domestic noise cancelation?

Presumably it would need precise location of ear-drums, such as by wearing a RF reflective stud on the ear lobe. And multiple time-of-flight receivers for triangulation.

I guess, if it were possible such a system would be much better when two or more people are not in the same room together.

Where can hobbyists purchase hackable/programmable internet buttons such as this for a reasonable price? I've seen a few around the place but the costs are exorbitant for what they are, and hacking the Amazon buttons is too much effort (and they're hard to get outside the US)

Is the $15 AWS IoT Button[1] too expensive?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/1st-Generation-AWS-IoT-Button/dp/B01C...

For a fun side project probably not, no. Anything past that (even a small scale beta) and yes $15 is quite expensive for what you are getting.

As said, doesn't ship outside US

esp32 + button + lipo ~= [9,15]

Nice thing is you could easily have multiple buttons and lights for feedback.

That's the route I'm going down, but for someone not so skilled in electric engineering, there's a bit of work getting the battery working and wiring up the switch, then making a suitable case. I'd like to just focus on the programming side of things, and am a little surprised there isn't an off the shelf solution.

I have just figured out the perfect IoT device to solve this problem:

Push a button when local infrastructure makes you angry. The device figures out your location from GPS and user input on setup. The device then searches for a local realtor, and sends them an email saying that the device's owner wants to move. The realtor handles it from there.

If flight paths are changing, the housing market will adjust. If you don't want to be subject to the vagaries of metropolitan infrastructure, buy land in the middle of nowhere.

Do you also complain about thunder and lightning to the NWS?

They should make a button to file noise complaints about city buses. This would be very useful for people living in low-level apartments located on busy city streets.

Or maybe the trains in Chicago or New York?

An air traffic controller acquaintance of mine warned me that they were making changes and that planes on approach would be flying at lower altitudes as a result. Sure enough, jet noise has gotten ridiculous. They have them flying way too low way too far out. You can be 10 - 20 miles out and have a jet noise such that you have to yell to be heard.

Does a noise abatement complaint service like this exist for garbage trucks that come in the middle of the night?

Looking forward to the one for leaf blowers.

I knew an individual that lived in a neighborhood frequently used for film shoots. “Coincidentally”, these shoots were always on days when he was planning on doing yard work. Inevitibly, some PA would come offer him some cash to convince him to postpone his yard work.

You can take this one step further. After manually flagging when you hear a plane, generate the next complaint automatically.

Airports aren't going away.

Engine makers aren't making them any quieter, laws of physics and time (airplanes in service for decades)

Airplanes have to follow a certain path and certain procedures, for example they can't land like helicopters from 30,000 feet.

So for the people that bought cheaper homes near an airports, it sucks, but get used to it (other than a rare case when the plane deviated from standard procedure). Maybe they'll make complaint filing manual.

Engine makers have dramatically reduced engine noise and continue to do so. Some aircraft have “hush kits” developed and installed.

Someone should do the same thing for filing complaints about homeless camps in San Francisco.

My first house had airplane noise.

Was minor league, mostly Southwest airline approaches. (I never inquired why)

Then, for a while, I got ultra intense! Was only for a couple months. And only intense on occasion. Maybe people complained.

I had never really experienced that kind of noise. It was bone rattling. Basic, like "oh fuck, this is LOUD"

Kind of liked it. I would not have had it continued.

As someone who lives near an airport (2.4mi) and under flight paths, I honestly don't care. It's the sound of valuable commerce passing through my community and it's not worth wasting official's time with excessive complaints.

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