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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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.