Wow! The art of NIMBY at it's best! The airports came first, the noise comes and goes depending on the weather and there were times in the past that the noise was worse. Study the air traffic control system in the area and you will realize that it is a very complicated system. Someone will have the noise, whether it is the people who had it before, or someone new. If you people don't like it...move! Quit the whining and spend your energy on something good such as curing diseases, helping the homeless, stopping global warming, getting some politicians into office who will fix our more serious problems, ending war and poverty around the world or something of more substance than a little airplane noise. I've lived with it at fairly extreme levels and just got used to it. You should get over it or move to a place without aircraft (and the convenience of airports that are close). Maybe you can live next to the train tracks!

In response to PH. We are not talking about a few backyards here. We are talking about new flight procedures abruptly changed last year that are dramatically impacting hundreds of thousands of backyards in the Bay Area. Those of us who live here have the right to fix this mess without people like you telling us to go out and cure diseases and help the homeless.

Thanks, David. Looks like "PH" commented without bothering to read the article. ("The problem of increased noise began in 2015 after the FAA rolled out its NextGen program to modernize the nation's air-traffic system.")

This is a nonzero-sum-game situation. It's untrue that "Someone will have the noise, whether it is the people who had it before, or someone new." Many more people now have aircraft noise (all around the US) than ever did before the FAA's new "NextGen" protocols started. And FAA (explicitly) does not do ground noise measurements, instead it used a simplistic mathematical model, now discredited because it failed to predict the new levels of noise on the ground.

Those are the things the serious citizens' groups are trying to change: Require FAA to take responsibility for actual (not theoretical) ground noise; and use existing technology to revert to lower noise levels for *everyone* without sacrificing aircraft safety or economy. Most of the citizens' groups share a common vision: 13 local organizations in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, and San Lorenzo Valley signed this joint letter; together, they represent the large majority of views expressed at the recent meeting (though the article doesn't make that very clear): Web Link

We live in a bustling, dense and successful part of the world. Noise and commotion come as a part of that.

If I was to freak out about something myself, it would be the antiquated FAA rules which result in all the civil aviation planes still using leaded fual (avgas). They use the best of 1950's engine technology in a world which no longer needs it. I'll take a bit of noise overhead over lead in the air that I breathe.

The really loud whine that some planes make is Airbus Whine. It started to be audible about a year ago when they lowered all the planes down by 1000-2000 feet. So you can clearly be disturbed by the whine. But this is just
one model of plane which has these vents under the wings which get twanged by the air passing through as
the planes cruise along down low close to the ground (not a problem as they traverse at high altitudes).

So there's this thing that was left off in the earlier models of Airbus. It's called a vortex generator.

So these planes need to have this "muffler" put on. If all the cars were running around without mufflers,
we'd hear a lot more from them.

Congress members are deflecting responsibility. Congress passed legislation in 2012, FAA Modernization and Reform Act, that permitted the FAA to implement NextGen procedures without any regard to their impact on humans and the environment. The Wake Recategorization or Wake Recat procedure is the key to our misery. Aircraft are brought low into denser air so they can be flown slower and closer together resulting in the skies above communities near and far from airports having been taken over as arrival and departure queues. And if there are new concentrated flight paths, don't confuse that with fewer concentrated flights paths. These concentrated flight paths are proliferating as the goals to date that Congress, the FAA, and aviation industry are primarily concerned about are more and more flights, increasing capacity endlessly, and quicker frequency of arrivals and departures, increasing efficiency. Human health and the environment are being sacrificed for the goals and for an abstract term, the economy. What economy really means with NextGen procedures is industry profits and elected officials who ensure those profits keeping their political office. What it means for citizens is committees, roundtables, task forces, noise studies, noise complaints, initiatives, reports, surveys, and so on until citizens are worn down into silence and acquiesce to the air, noise, and visual pollution of 24/7 low altitude aircraft all over our skies. Furthermore, the ultimate strategy of elected officials, FAA representatives, and this industry is to pit groups against each other, make them fight each other for non-solutions, crumbs, and discredit themselves in the process and then say, Well, sorry but we don't seem to be able to come up with a regional solution. And yet they rig it from the start by telling different groups to come up with solutions.

Groups must stand together and not get played liked this. The industry has the money and too many officials are bought. But we have numbers and when we use the power of those numbers we can't be stopped. This is not the last opportunity to be heard. It's just the last of the Select Committee on South Bay Arrivals meetings which have been limited in scope and duration. It is not a solution for, in FAA speak, the NorCal Metroplex. Keep fighting, together!

Resident:

This article addresses changes to our skies owing to new airspace procedures tied to the NextGen program rollout across the U.S, officially since 2012.

What type of pollution you are more concerned about, leaded fuel rather than noise, should not sidetrack the issue this article is about. Plus, why must concern about one form of pollution, or injustice, necessitate ignoring or denigrating concern about a different form of pollution. Both are unacceptable and harmful to human health and the environment.

PH:

NIMBY, move, airports were here first, you live near an airport, etc. have no meaning when it comes to the NextGen program. 24/7 low altitude flying is happening countrywide irrespective of population density or proximity to an airport. Off point, but I’m always trying to figure out how an airport exists before the people exist, but anyways enough of this.

Nobody should suffer this air, noise, and visual pollution. Airports are nothing without the communities in which they exist and the aviation industry must cease behaving like a dictator over them with the help of Congress making such conduct legal and the FAA acting as battering ram against the justifiable resistance of communities throughout our nation.

I have been around aviation all my life and I have heard time and again about noise in high traffic areas. For over forty years I lived under the approaches to San Francisco, San Jose, San Carlos, Palo Alto and Moffett Field. It's been noisy and not so much depending on the years and it certainly was much louder when the Navy was active at Moffett. It just gets me when people live in urban areas and complain about noise when there are many of worse sources than aircraft, such as trains, garbage trucks, leaf blowers and other things. I don't think people understand the history of aviation in our area and don't have a good understanding of air traffic control or noise abatement procedures already in place. The fact remains that most of us moved to an area where aircraft noise is part of life and was here before we were. Yes it seems worse but I don't remember many complaints until Surf Air started service to local small airports. Aircraft already have to meet noise standards and most airports have rules as to noise and curfews where needed. These things will get worked out with time but it seems people need to rush to force the issue instead of letting things settle out. I still say that the airports were here first and were usually away from cities when built, but urban sprawl surrounds them followed by complaints. No one forces us to live where we are and moving to a quieter area is one choice that people should consider. Living where we do has its price and we are the only ones to blame when we choose to live in these urban areas. I did read the article, but it doesn't change my opinion.

I think the point is precisely that we have all been around aviation all along in the Bay Area, but prior to March 2015, most of us hardly knew it.

Since then, we get stretches of time where we very much know it, once every 2 minutes
like clockwork.

Why the sudden change? That's the question. It was negligible. Now it is oppressive.
There's nothing selfish or gradual about it. A switch was flipped and the plane noise became 20 or more times worse for large swaths of land 20-40 miles away from SFO regarding those planes following the SERFR arrival procedure complete with 50% vectoring as opposed to the previous BIGSUR procedure which involved much less vectoring and so covered much less ground, but also subject those below the planes to much less noise. Also, the drop in altitude brought the impact of the need for Vortex Generators on older Airbus planes home to many times more people since the planes are now low enough much further away from the airport for the whine to be "Appreciated" by thousands more people.

Oh, and then in Palo Alto and Menlo Park parallel to the Bay, some people already experienced more noise as planes got lower trying to descend to 4000 feet in the last
few miles before the Menlo Waypoint. For them, the change on March of 2015 only resulted in 10 times more annoyance than before. But that's 10 times more noise than an already
elevated level of disturbance. For them, the SERFR and BIGSUR ground track is the SAME, but the planes fly with more power and are lower and make more noise, even if they aren't vectored in loops around that area of the arrival procedure.

I mean, 10 times more noise, you're right, that's hardly anything to complain about.

Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen and County Executive Isiah Leggett July 13, 2016 letter to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta is the strongest one yet. Here's the link to the letter

Web Link

We need more elected officials to step up like this... Then hopefully we'll see more action to stop the suffering and less talk and studies and data collection ad nauseam. In short, no more stalling tactics. Do the right thing and put people before profits!

See Palo Alto Online's article by this title which has over 200 comments:

Web Link