Travel Forum / Travel Types / Air Travel / November 2008

Many forms of noise abatement reduce safety margins.

No, that kind of thing doesn't bother me. Similarly police helicopters,
freight railways, that kind of thing. What /does/ bother me is the small
kids I have who wake up before me at weekends and play loudly. (-: Right
now I don't get any airplane noise at all - I live in Providence, RI,
near the MA border. Though, seeing as this is rec.travel.air, I may as
well incidentally mention that I was quite happy with O'Hare last night
- I was bumped from my flight to BOS, and was rerouted via ORD, and it
was nice to find I could go from a H gate to a K gate without going
through security yet again, and passing two food courts on the way.
Normally at O'Hare I seem to find myself having to go through the
psychadelic tunnel. (I saw another less-exciting tunnel, but with
colored lights and sounds, somewhere recently too - Detroit, maybe?)
I also seem to have read something at some point during these travels
yesterday evening (can't remember what, I was bored and read everything
I had to hand) about lithium ion battery hazards and I wondered if
that's why they don't like you putting laptops in checked bags.

Anyhow, I was curious because I had read this week that the US Navy is
interested in trying to find ways to reduce noise from military
airfields - apparently military aviation can be rather loud - and it
does seem there'd be a difficult balance to be struck between what's
ideal for the pilots and what works for the community. And, years ago, I
took a road trip down south and, among other things, saw Tinker AFB and,
if I recall correctly, there were some houses around it, and they
service things like KC-135s which I'm guessing are a bit loud when up
close, so I am guessing that they might face some of the same problems.

And then I got to wondering things like ... well, my vague impression of
takeoffs (I'm just a passenger) is they tend to be steeper than
landings, and I wondered if that's partly because the takeoff noise is
louder so they're trying to get it further away from people, or if it's
just a matter of that they think they're more likely to run into
surprise trouble at that point and want to have a bit more altitude as
breathing room before that happens. And if it's partly a noise issue,
that got me wondering if, say, for aircraft carriers at sea, Navy
aircraft might be lower for longer, there being nothing but fish to
irritate.

And, of course, with cities and suchlike, I wasn't sure /how/ you'd
trade things off. For instance, do they fly over commercial areas more
outside working hours? I have no idea, but I got curious. (Presumably
it's not official policy to note where the relatives of influential
politicians live. (-:)

Mark

Mmmm, true. Though, of course, I suppose that as the community around
the area changes, and the actual aircraft and their schedules change,
there's an ongoing tug of war. I have a friend at the Ohio State
University who tells me that for years their airfield (OSU) has been at
loggerheads with the local city of Worthington, though I don't know how
much merit there is on either side.

I was surprised years ago when I lived very near a freeway exit in a
major city and the people on my part of the street were upset about the
traffic! It made me wonder if they'd noticed the freeway exit before
they moved in; it's certainly been there a long time.

Mark

And then new neighbourhoods are built next to the airport, and
then we have noise complaints anyway.

Near LAX they spent untold millions sound proofing houses but the
residence who bought the houses still complained. Eventually they
bought the houses (at an inflated price) and bulldozed them.
Apparently that is about the only way to stop noise complaints.

-Robert