There may or may not be real noise issues but the author of this story is confused in a few ways.

The Surf Air issue is completely independent of this one. Everything in Eschoo's survey and everything in your article refers to SFO so the photo of Surf Air flying into San Carlos is not applicable.

The continuous descent will produce lower noise than previous stepped descents. Airplanes reduce power to descend and increase power to climb so the article's claim that it "increases noise as engines throttle for the decline" doesn't make any sense.

Mountain View has a problem with San Jose flight noise during downwind landing approaches, they all go down one path right over Mountain View when the wind at San Jose airport is from the South. The FFA needs to spread approaches and take offs over a wide area, running them all down a single path is very unfair and new technology does not require this, implementation is a must.

The " Inverse Wedding Cake " stepped approach system has worked for decades.
The real problem is trying to adjust for possible drone flights, especially by the DEA to find clandestine pot operations in peoples yards.
The real solution: designate the SFBA a DRONE NO-FLY ZONE. You have that ability to do that:

Web Link

Since many FEDERAL and STATE sites have that luxury ( and will SHOOT DOWN and confiscate drones overflying their property ) CITIZENS can place their property on this list and may be able to confiscate any drone on their PRIVATE PROPERTY. I leave it up to you how you can confiscate a drone, YouTube ( a division of Google! ) has some good examples of how to do it.
Decades before, it was local cops in helicopters shining their " Midnight Sun " spotlight at all hours of the night, waking people up with their voyeuristic tendencies. Before it became unlawful, these voyeurs got a taste of their own medicine and after several nights, the voyeurism stopped. This is a repeat of this same type of voyeurism.
If the whole SFBA and Silicon Valley cities made this a DRONE NO-FLY ZONE, that would make this noise problem go away. My house and property is already a registered Drone NO-FLY ZONE. It does not cost anything.

I'm not sure what's going on, but the increase of air traffic flying over or near our home has increased over the last two months consisting of commercial air planes, small jets, and small planes. This morning, from 8:30 am to 9:30am there was a constant barrage of planes flying over our home headed in a northerly direction.
So, the noise is more apparent. Maybe if there was more time in between the flights it wouldn't be so noticeable, but still, what is the reason for increasing air traffic over a populated area?

What the FAA has done is to have the planes approaching FAA do so at lower altitudes than before, all along the flight path, causing them to be significantly lower when they pass over Mountain View. But wait, that's not all. They also concentrated them more than ever before into a very limited number of approved flight paths. This means that one particular house will get the same treatment from many different flights, instead of them being spread out among different approaches as has been the case for years.

This was decided last year but only began to be happening a couple of months ago.

The reason is immaterial, but it's called 'nextgen'. What a crock. It's dangerous too because the emissions from the fuel burning are discharged above the same limited set of homes as well. This is a cancer risk. See Web Link

Thank you for the explanation. It appears that Palo Alto residents have been quite vocal about this issue. I just read a related issue by clicking on the links below.
a few months ago there was an event downtown where a small plane was displaying an advertisement. This went all day long. I asked the police if the person obtained a permit to be able to circle the city. Apparently the police did not provide this person with a permit, didn't know who he was. It's a scary thought to know that you can have a small plane circulating over your city, your homes and yet, no one knows who they are. Where is the security in that?

A lot of these planes are emitting persistent contrails, coating the blue skies with milky white plumes that expand and stay for hours. Blue skies in the morning are tunred milky white by afternoon, with bright pink sunsets reflecting the metallics off the artificial clouds. I believe it is all part of the geoengineering plan. They are trying to fight global warming with pollution, as these plumes may contain aluminum, barium and strontium. Extremely elevated levels of aluminum in California water and soil have been found. You cannot find aluminum in free form in the atmosphere--it must be mined, refined, and dispersed to see these levels. To learn more go to geoengineeringwatch.org If this continues our ozone layer will be shredded, amping up UV rays, it will also prolong the drought, as the aluminum oxide in the atmosphere prevents rain formation

Palo Alto gets noise and Mountain View gets their homeless population. Fair deal.

Apparently MV also gets the snarky trolls