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Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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).

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.

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

> ...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.

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!"

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.

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.

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

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