Constant Plane Noise This Morning

[amy-s1.livejournal.com]

Let me say this first before you call me a whiner - watch the planes on this map for this morning of Friday 12/11: http://www4.passur.com/bos.html

You can replay any point in time with the menu bar at the top, you can even speed it up to 10X. Or you can watch "live" with a 10 minute delay.

Now, if those green planes dont go right over where you live, dont call the rest of us whiners. If they do go right over you, you know what I am talking about. My 5 month old daughter is constantly woken up by these planes and they can rattle the house.

Watch the flow of the planes coming off of runway 33L (the long one that points straight at Chelsea). The vast majority of them bank left and come straight over Davis Square almost every time. How about a little distribution over Harvard Sq, West Cambridge, etc?? Not to mention winds this morning are from the W/SW, not the Northwest.

Now, lets log complaints here: http://www.massport.com/logan/airpo_noise_compl.html

Comments

[frotz.livejournal.com]

Some technical nattering by way of reply:

1. is kinda-sorta true, in that operating with any significant tailwind is pretty bad, but otherwise virtually none of the traffic is performance-limited on takeoff and the pilots get to just suck it up with a crosswind unless it's really howling. The reality is that they'll operate with whatever set of runways is vaguely compatible with the wind and will move the most airplanes per unit time.

2. Takeoffs basically get a departure heading (which way to turn once they're off the pavement) and then almost as soon as they're off the runway they switch from talking to the controller looking out the window of the tower to the controller looking at a radar screen up in NH. At that point they'll usually get a heading as close to the direction they're going as possible. The reality of that is that, given Boston's location, it's virtually always west or southwest, and indeed, depending exactly how fast they're coming off of the runway and switching frequencies that left turn will put them right here.

Believe it or not, they are really sensitive to noise issues, though it's a balance between that and efficiency. I've been in the radar room when a pilot with discretionary altitude assignment was dragging it in low-and-slow over a residential neighborhood and causing needless noise, and he got bitched out but good. (The supervisor on duty also commented that his phone would probably start ringing with noise complaints in a few minutes.) Also, some of these people are your neighbors (yes, air traffic controllers live in Somerville, please nobody tell Animal Control) and aren't oblivious to the bitching.