New flight paths lead to jet-noise complaints across US

PHOENIX — Airliners began flying over Twila Lake’s bungalow-style house in a historic district three years ago, taking off every one to two minutes from the Phoenix airport and roaring over her neighborhood. It was a sudden change after she had rarely heard jets in her previous 13 years in the downtown neighborhood.

Now, “it’s all day and night long,” complained the 71-year-old retiree, who said she sleeps with the television on to drown out aircraft noise. Some neighbors sold their homes and moved after the aviation-highway entrance ramp was routed overhead.

The Federal Aviation Administration started revising flight paths and procedures around the United States in 2014 under its air-traffic-control modernization plan known as NextGen. The new procedures use more precise, satellite-based navigation that saves time, increases the number of planes that airports can service, and reduces fuel burn and emissions.

The FAA announced in March that it plans to implement NextGen in Columbus in late 2018 or early 2019. Officials have said that overall aircraft noise is not expected to increase, but the rerouting of planes will mean that some neighborhoods not previously in the flight path might see and hear planes more often.

The Columbus Regional Airport Authority has for years administered a program with the FAA that pays for soundproofing of some homes in areas most affected by aircraft operations. The FAA and the airport authority have not said whether that could be expanded or changed as a result of the NextGen changes.

Noise complaints exploded from San Diego to Charlotte, North Carolina, to New York as flights were concentrated at lower altitudes, in narrower paths and on more frequent schedules. The new paths often reduce the number of people exposed to noise, but those who get noise get it far more consistently.

Those airports are larger and busier than John Glenn Columbus International Airport, which ranks 49th among commercial airports in the U.S., according to FAA figures.

In Phoenix, redrawn flights over vintage neighborhoods such as Lake’s affect about 2,500 homes, prompting a court challenge from historic districts and the city.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed on Aug. 29 with the plaintiffs’ assessment that the FAA was “arbitrary and capricious” in revising flight procedures. The case remains before the court.

Local governments and residents in more than a half-dozen other areas — including Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood and California’s Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Orange County and Culver City — have similar petitions before the court.

Attorney Steven Taber, who represents several Southern California communities with complaints, predicted that legal action over flight changes will be a continuing problem across the U.S.

Aviation experts said they don’t expect the Phoenix ruling to set a precedent for other cities, but it is forcing the FAA to be more responsive.

“We certainly view it as one of the mostegregious cases of a lack of community involvement,” said Chris Oswald, vice president of safety and regulatory affairs with Airports Council InternationalNorth America. The FAA has since done more outreach elsewhere, he said.

Policy analyst Rui Neiva of the Eno Center for Transportation research group in Washington, D.C., said agency officials must find a middle ground.

“In some cases, they may have to settle on a path that is less efficient, or create several additional paths,” he said.

But David Grizzle, a former FAA chief operating officer, said it’s not possible to redesign procedures to address the problem and still reap NextGen’s technology advantages.

“There is an intrinsic issue of concentrating noise in particular places that comes with precision-based navigation that is inescapable,” he said.

FAA officials knew a decade ago that some homeowners would experience more noise because of the changes, but the officials hoped that the complaints would be offset by the people who benefited, Grizzle said. But those people haven’t spoken up.

The FAA said it is reviewing the Phoenix decision and working with residents near airports around the country through “noise roundtables” to balance community interests with needed improvements to the national airspace system.

Complaints have arisen that the FAA failed to adequately explain the planned changes or provide opportunities to comment. In Columbus, the FAA announcement was reported on in local media in March, and the public-comment period ran through late September.

In some areas, people say they didn’t know that changes were coming because the FAA advertised them in places where people wouldn’t normally look, such as government webpages.