Early revving of jet engines bothers Sanford residents
Being jolted awake before dawn by the sound of jet engines revving full blast is a jarring experience, Sally Moore said.
Her windows rattle and the walls of her two-story home near the Orlando Sanford International Airport rumble.
“You want to see a really mean person?” Moore asked. “Come talk to me after I’ve been woken up at 4 a.m. and had very little sleep. I’m not nice.”
Since Nov. 5, the airport has received dozens of complaints from nearby residents about the full-throttle engine noise, as Allegiant Air mechanics fire up the jets following maintenance work. A large number of the protests came in November, when Allegiant mechanics perform most of their maintenance work on the passenger planes.
Now, Sanford city commissioners are telling airport officials to cease with the early morning racket.
In a sternly worded letter approved by city commissioners,
Mayor Jeff Triplett urges airport President Diane Crews to find money to build a “hush house.”
Also known as a ground run-up enclosure, a hush house is an enclosed facility — similar to an airplane hangar — with sound-suppressing features and large enough to accommodate a passenger aircraft. Mechanics conduct the “engine run ups” inside the hush house to avoid blasting nearby residents with loud noise. The Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, for example, has long had a hush house. O’Hare International Airport in Chicago built the first one at a commercial U.S. airport in 1998.
“They’ve pushed this off for a long time,” Triplett recently told fellow commissioners. “Let’s put it on their [airport leaders] plate to figure out that they need to do it. Because they need to do it now.”
Crews agreed, and said the airport is trying to secure federal and grant funding to finance the construction of such a facility.
“They’re about $8 million,” she said. “So it’s a very expensive undertaking.”
But it might not be needed, she said.
Crews pointed out that most Allegiant jets are older twin-engine MD-80 planes that “sit higher off the ground.” That causes the noise to carry farther. The Las Vegas-based airline plans to replace those planes by the end of the year with new Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft that have significantly quieter engines.
“We know that there is going to be a decline [in the noise] after they are replaced,” Crews said.
The engine run ups are a test procedure required by the Federal Aviation Administration following work on the engines. But they’re giving nearby residents — who don’t mind hearing the noise during the day — redeye wakeup calls.
“It’s annoying. It’s very annoying,” said Don Knox, who lives down the street from Moore, on Ohio Avenue. “I’ve lived here for six months, and it’s gotten worse over the past few months.”
Trying to be good neighbors, airport officials have asked its airlines to refrain from performing the engine run ups between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., Crews said.
Allegiant spokeswoman Krysta Levy said the airline is trying to avoid the early morning run ups. However, sometimes the airline needs its airplanes for early flights.
“We understand that it can be an inconvenience. We empathize,” she said. “But the safety of our planes is of paramount importance.”
From Nov. 5 through Feb. 19, mechanics at the Sanford airport have performed 67 engine run ups on 46 days, according to airport documents. Crews pointed out, however, that not all run ups have generated complaints or can necessarily be heard.
“There are various factors, including wind, type of aircraft, position of aircraft on airfield, et cetera, that would determine which of these engine run ups would have resulted in a noise impact on nearby communities,” she said.
The Sanford airport is a maintenance facility for Allegiant airplanes. Early November is generally a busier time of year in airplane maintenance because there are fewer travelers and mechanics use the time to prepare the planes for the busy spring and summer travel seasons, Levy said.
Sanford Commissioner Art Woodruff, whose home sits roughly a mile south of the airport, also lodged a noise complaint.
“As the airport continues to grow, it will continue to be a problem,” Woodruff said. “We want to work with them to come up with a solution. The [airport] authority is on the same page that we’re on. We’re just pushing them to move more quickly.”
In the past two decades, the Sanford airport — between State Road 46 and East Lake Mary Boulevard on the city’s east side — has seen its passenger count soar more than fourfold, from 669,576 passengers in 1996 to just over 2.9 million passengers last year.
Orlando International Airport, which handled 44.6 million passengers last year, doesn’t have hush houses, primarily because the facility sits farther away from residential neighborhoods. However, the airport does have a large wall at the north end of its property to deaden sound.
Moore, 62, who has lived near the Sanford airport for 30 years, understands that she lives near an airfield and that mechanics have to test the jet engines.
“I don’t care if they’re testing them at 7 a.m. I’m awake at that time,” she said. “And I understand that the airport is my neighbor. I have no complaints against Allegiant. … My only complaint is the time of day.”