I think they meant: For any given site, theres proportionally 'few' people that would be disadvantaged

But almost everybody wants access to one. This is coming from someone who lived a a kilometer away from the main airport of Istanbul at the time[0], for a long time. I was really disappointed when it was closed as the benefit of access was 100x better than the noise cost.

Of course, everybody has different priorities and getting a huge noise source in your backyard after you decide to call a piece of land your home would be frustrating.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport - used to be a very busy airport.

If this was true, areas around airports would have been non-residential or at least stupidly penalized in land value. They don't seem to be.

In fact when you live close to an airport you stop caring, perhaps not unlike smoke alarm chirps but without danger to your life.

The people who work at them do.