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.