Los Angeles International Airport started in 1928 as Mines Field. It was a dirt strip, and its first building (Hangar 1) was built the following year. It was renamed Los Angeles Municipal Airport in 1930 and became LAX in 1949.
It’s been an airport longer than anyone has lived nearby, more or less. Anyone that’s been living there for forty or fifty years also knows that planes are far quieter than they used to be!
So why is the airport launching a new $57,000 per resident spending spree on noise mitigation?
The short answer is free money from taxpayers. FAA improvement grants include:
- $22.8 million for LAX “This project acquires and installs full noise mitigation measures for 400 residences affected by airport noise exposure.” ($57,000 per residence)
- $15 million for San Diego International Airport “This project acquires and installs full noise mitigation measures for 250 residences affected by airport noise exposure.” ($60,000 per residence)
In general I don’t have a lot of sympathy when people complain and try to restrict flights in and out of airports, complaining about the noise – although sometimes fight paths change. For instance, Donald Trump once filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming that planes departing West Palm Beach were being routed over Mar-a-Lago. But for the most part these complaints are risible.
It turns out, though, that there actually aren’t very many people complaining about noise to begin with. It’s often just one person or a few people complaining thousands of times so that there are large numbers of noise complaints, making it appear as though there’s a serious problem
- 3 residents of Daly City complained over 1,000 times about San Francisco airport in a single month. Six Woodside residents complained about the airport 2,432 times in just one month.
- One Northwest D.C. resident accounted for 6,852 (78%) of noise complaints about Washington National airport over the course of a year.
- One person 30 miles away accounted for 3,555 (73%) – and 4 people accounted for 96% – of noise complaints about Denver airport in one year.
- One person 11 miles away accounted for 1,024 (84%) of noise complaints about Washington Dulles airport over a year.
Ten years ago a single person accounted for half the noise complaints about LAX. Three people accounted for 88% of LAX noise complaints. And guess what? There’s actually a button that automates noise complaint submissions about airports. These people just push the button, and my buttons too it seems.
Don’t they measure the planes’ noise at complainants locations before initiating the expensive mitigation? If the noise measures excessive under the science, the small number of complainants shouldn’t be relevant. If they don’t respond by measuring, it’s just stupid
‘Free’ money? That sounds like an oversimplification. Anyway, ignore that and burn the witch!
If you buy under a takeoff or approach that was there before you, then tough. We have the same thing locally with a racetrack – it has been there since the 1950’s, running races every weekend for six months of the year. People moved in and now want the the track closed.The local politicos essentially told them to get earplugs.
Total loser. I often stay at airport hotels and never once have I stayed up at night or been woken up by early morning (5-6AM) departures. Get some earplugs.
They probably bought their house at a discount because of the airport. And now they want the noise to go away? I don’t think so.
Sounds like the way school boards say they have numerous complaints about objectionable books complaints from parents when it’s actually two or three parents submitting tons of complaints.
I actually find airplane sounds soothing. They could honestly help me get to sleep.
I live four miles from an airport. In the warm summer evenings I can hear the commercial airplanes taking off as I sit in my backyard. I told my wife, “ that’s the sound that paid off our mortgage.” I am a retired airline employee.
Do they make a button I can push to submit a complaint about this blog?
@Larry, This is tricky, but I’ll type slowly. There is no button to complain about this blog. But, it is even easier than that. All you need to do is not push the keys necessary to visit this blog. The air complaint button will nit stop the house. But, not visiting this blog removes every annoyance it gives you.
Somewhere near Champaign, Illinois, there is/was a paint factory that made the surrounding, then unpopolulated area smell bad. A developer got a great deal on nearby land and built a housing development. Everybody who bought there, whether the first buyer or any subsequent, was well aware of the stench (unless they never visited before buying) and quite willing to accept the tradeoff: a cheaper house for the stench that they’d eventually not notice. The standard home buyer’s MO was to buy at the nice discount, then attempt to get the plant shut down or modified.
I’m no lawyer but isn’t there a legal concept in play here? It’s called “coming to the nuisance.” We dealt with this all the time on the HOA board for a golf community where I lived. People wanted (and paid extra for) a home with a fairway view but then wanted to sue because their home kept getting pelted by errant golf balls.
Science has been suspended until further notice…
Many years ago I worked at Midway Airport in Chicago, in the Airline Tower for Midway Airlines. On many Saturday mornings, the local residents would picket in front of the Airport in protest of the noise from the airplanes. This was in the early 1990’s. Since the airport was built in the late 1920’s, I found this to be somewhat amusing. If any of those residents were there prior to say 1950, they probably should silence their hearing aid. Those who moved there later must have been surprised to find Midway Airport had flights after they purchased their homes.
I grew up 1/4 of a mile from the runway, directly under the flight path, at LGB. At the time, there were 15 commercial flights allowed per day max. Eventually that became 4X, limit is now 58/day. Planes have gotten quieter, yes. But the amount of noise when my parents bought in 1974 versus now (they still live there!) has increased significantly. Hard for them to determine their sleepy airport in 1974 would become a big Jetblue (followed by SW) hub decades later. They were recipients of this type of program. Not cash money, but contractors came and installed sound deadening insulation, triple glaze windows, etc to make it much much better inside the house when a 737 came over 100 feet above the roofline. Speaking of roofs when I was a kid a small plane ran out of gas and crashed through the roof of the next building over amazingly both on board walked away. I was so attuned to ignoring the plane noise, but I remember this one because I could tell something was wrong. It buzzed our roof and then boom.
Gary, You are mostly wrong with your take on aircraft noise. It is clear you don’t live in a flight path.
1. NexGen has RADICALLY altered the number of overflights for certain neighborhoods. So your argument that people knew what they were getting when they moved in is often false. You know this.
2. Flight volumes have increased over the years. 2024 had 30% more USA flights than 1993. So many people are experiencing increased frequency of flights. You know this.
3. The vast majority of people suffer without complaining or quickly give up filing reports when nothing changes. They are not insane. That does not make their suffering any less real. You know this.
4. How about talking about the very real and documented health impacts of aircraft noise and their cost to society. I am a rabid capitalist but why shouldn’t aviation pay for the externalities they cause?
@Andrew Rosenthal – what a silly take. You choose to live near an airport, there may be noise. The idea that this is only a recent phenomenon, when planes have gotten quieter, is odder still. Changing approach patterns is hardly limited to recent years. New runways, noise mitigation, and environmental concerns have led to shifts in approach paths consistently over the past 65 years. Most of this has been to reduce noise over neighborhoods! The vocal few have gotten an outsized chunk of rents at the expense of the broader traveling public for decades.