Airplane noise Friday

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

Someone posted a comment that aircraft noise had increased over Davis recently. Today, I was sick in bed and I thought I was going to go insane. An aircraft flew over my house every minute, no kidding, all day long from 5am this morning.

I'd really appreciate it if fellow Davis Square readers who dislike noise especially from aircraft could make a complaint to Logan. Please don't flame the thread if you think airplanes are cute or you simply love noise.

Unless we speak out, even a little, no one will give a damn. I spoke to the airport people and they said they will act and possibly re-route or stagger flight paths but only if they get complaints.
Apparently, ever since a new runway went in, they have received an increase in complaints. 
http://www.massport.com/logan/airpo_noise_comcom.html
Thanks.

Call (617) 561-3333
or
This is the link to report a complaint: http://www.massport.com/logan/airpo_noise_form.aspx

Comments

[ifotismeni]

I sent them a comment. At first I was wondering if this had something to do with open-window season, but just tonight 2 flights rumbled by and were REALLY LOUD and all my windows were shut. I wonder why there's been such an increase lately.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. I too noticed that it was really excessive today -- more planes, and louder.

Sleepless in Davis

[laughing-jackal.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to add encouragement - if you think this is a problem please keep filing complaints, maybe en-masse we can make a difference. When I lived in Kendall Square a group of neighbors got together and were able to get one of the big biotech firms to put a muffler on their huge noisy generator that would run all night. It took a year, but we did it...

We live about 1 mi outside Davis towards 93, the airplane noise today was unbearable, averaging about one a minute, so close I could read the airline logos on the tails from 8am (when it woke me up) until almost midnight tonight.

I understand that I live in a metro area and that airplane noise is a fact of life - even, occasionally, LOUD noise, but EVERY FRICKIN' *MINUTE* ALL DAY??

Okay, I feel moderately better having vented, but I'll feel a lot better when I can sleep again.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

This is nothing new. I've taken off from Logan 4 or 5 times and the flight path has been directly over my place.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

but I do like the airplanes..

[larksdream]

I'm really glad you posted this... just this evening I was noticing the CONSTANT planes and wondering what was up with that. I'll give them a call.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

yeah...last night was especially noisy.

[ronhaha108.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, i've sent a complaint as well.

I never noticed

[cthulhia]

that it was frequent, but not that you mention it, there've been 5 planes since I read this.

Re: I never noticed

[jovianconsensus.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Now I just know I won't be able to think about anything else today.

[limbodog.livejournal.com]

They have the ability to make much quieter planes, but they're more 'spensive so nobody will buy 'em. :(

[red-liner.livejournal.com]

The wind has been from the north and northwest the last day or two, which probably has something to do with it....

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

You know that's what they keep telling me! The point is I don't really care what the excuse is, I just don't wanna hear them all day!
Thanks to all those who sent in a complaint.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

Gosh, noise in an urban area. Who would have thunk it?

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

exactly. This is one of the reasons I'm okay moving to Watertown - I knew what I was signing up for when I moved next to a train path.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

Is it especially loud closer to Davis or something? Because I've heard a couple of planes as well and it's honestly not that bad. And I really have to object with your comment above about moving Logan somewhere else - part of the great thing about Logan is that I don't have to take a cab to get there half the time - I can just hop down to South Station and take the Silver Line to the airport. I've never been someplace where that's been possible, except possibly NYC.

Absolute peace and quiet should not be the expectation if you're going to choose to live in a city. I'd rather hear the train pass by or a plane fly overhead once in a while than hear shootings or loud fights from my neighbors. If I have any noise to complain about, it's my neighbor revving his motorcycle for 5 minutes at a time.

[snowwand.livejournal.com]

So where do you want the planes to fly over? Being near an airport means you will have planes flying overhead and sometimes they will be noisy.

And where would you put logan? There is no where in Boston where it would be better. Its better to be out there with one/two sides surrounded by the water so that the pilots have an easier time landing/taking off (unlike in DC where they have to make such an angle to get up above the buildings and no fly zone) than to be surrounded by residential areas on all sides.

Maybe you should close your windows and get a white noise machine.

[watchamacallit.livejournal.com]

Ditto this. People in Davis sure do complain a whole lot.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

So, I sympathize with the increase in airplane noise -- I live a few miles from Hanscom and am not happy with the additional commercial traffic they've been getting the last few years -- but I'm unclear on what complaining to Logan will do about it except possibly shift the problem to a less advantaged community. It's a real problem but I don't think that it has a simple, short term solution.

In a sense, this is like moving to Alaska...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

...and copmplaining about the cold.

Commercial aircraft must take off (and land) into the wind.

While Logan has several runways, the flight path is largely determined by the direction the wind is blowing, which they have no control over.

Some additional points are:

1. I think certain atmospheric conditions can lead to louder ground noise. These would be transient and again beyond the control of Logan.


2. Logan already rotates flight paths whenever possible so communities share the noise.


3. Commercial aircraft can't exactly climb out of Logan quietly -- it takes a certain amount of thrust.


4. Peak noise tends to be in the evening when the translatlantic flights all leave within a few hours time span.

If aircraft noise really bothers you, I'm afraid the only option is to move to a community farther away from the city.

If you don't like the city...

[eighthman.livejournal.com]

I live next to the commuter rail line in Somerville, so I hear the trains AND the planes, and actually like them both. Once when I was sick, I didn't sleep well, and I was surprised that a train went by every hour -- I thought there weren't any after about midnight, because I figured they'd wake me up. Nope, I sleep through them -- even when I have the windows open.

Likewise for the planes. The lower and louder the better! I love when a loaded 747 makes a low pass during twilight and you hear the whine of the engines, and watch the wing lights blink as the plane slowly moves away. Makes me glad to have such technology. A couple of years ago, some grump was complaining in the Somerville Journal's "Speak Out" column about the planes flying over the city on a Sunday morning earlier that week. I thought it was ironic because that morning happened to be September 11th. I had been outside that morning reading the paper on my patio, and every time a plane flew over, I looked up to watch it.

When the wind is coming from the northwest, Somerville will have planes flying over. Deal with it.

Re: If you don't like the city...

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

I will admit that I got annoyed when I lived right outside the commuter rail - mostly because the rail was literally right outside my window and they'd make it a point to blow their horn just as they were passing.

a sky without planes

[lazyz.livejournal.com]

I remember a week with no planes in the air. It was eerie, terrible. Planes are part of our world, like polar bears, like war.

Re: a sky without planes

[sly-salkie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was so eerie. I never noticed them but that week the knowledge of the grounding made it so you had to notice. Looking up and not seeing stripes crisscrossing the sky. What a fun plane thread this is!

[ron_newman]

For me. just as for plumtreeblossom, the airplanes are background noise that I don't even notice except when I'm specifically thinking about them (like right now). This is not a flame, just an honest observation.

it's both the "too often" and the "too low" combining that makes folks complain...

[elements.livejournal.com]

I haven't minded the increase yet but I have noticed it. I think the issue is not necessarily *more* planes flying overhead but that they are flying significantly *lower* as well as more often.

Whenever I have noticed it lately, it's been very loud, much louder than I have ever heard planes flying over Davis except for the days after 9/11 when it was only military jets and they were flying really really low. In fact, at first I thought it was an increase in military jets over the past few months, until I was outside and could see them.

For the record, where I grew up I lived about 3 miles from the airport. Pilots regularly used my street, which was a large main street that pointed directly at the main runway, as a way to line up to the runway and the street was joking called "the runway extension" by locals. I never heard them as loud then as I've been hearing them lately over Davis. That may be because we got fewer takeoffs coming in our direction where I grew up, but Davis is more than twice as far from Logan as my house was from our airport, so you'd think that they'd be higher in the air by the time they come over here than the planes that took off from my home city airport and then circled back over my house to head east.

I don't think this is just spoiled yuppies complaining in Davis. When I was outside the other day, I actually had to stop and cover my ears because the noise was loud enough to be physically painful. That's never happened to me before in all my 7 years of living in Somerville, 4 of them in Davis. The current situation in Davis is well within my tolerance range, but I live in Ball more than Davis so I think I'm a little bit off the main path. If I were hearing one flight every 5 minutes I think I'd have to move, because noise disturbances of that intensity are one of the few facts of urban life that I can't deal with and stay sane.

Good luck.

Re: it's both the "too often" and the "too low" combining that makes folks complain...

[ron_newman]

One place you definitely don't ever want to move to is South Boston, especially the eastern part. I once took a guided tour of Castle Island, and the tour guide had to stop speaking every few minutes because of a constant stream of low-flying planes. They ruined what would otherwise be a very nice beach and park.

thanks for posting links

[winterhill.livejournal.com]

I just logged my complaints on the airport website. I don't object to the flight path in general, but I object to the constant noise, which I know they can address ... stagger flight paths (to the extent it's possible due to wind conditions) over the various possible directions, not just Somerville. I don't want to send the noise pollution over Fitchburg or whatever, but I've noticed it has definitely gotten to be more constant over the past month or so and if we don't let them know we've noticed, we wont have anyone to blame but ourselves when they do nothing.

[winterhill.livejournal.com]

elements ... exactly. They can stagger the flight paths. It's not like sending a man to the moon, it's just sharing the burden of the noise pollution.

And I seem to recall that the airport paid for sound proof windows for the residents of Southie and Castle Island. I think residents contend they don't hear it anymore but it IS loud and constant.

saturday morning airplane noise

[superchromix.livejournal.com]

This morning, Saturday July 21, the plane noise was insane. It woke me up at 6:15am and then I couldn't get back to sleep because there were so many planes passing overhead. It was so frustrating that I began writing down the times at which each plane would pass over. Between 7:05 am and 7:25 am, 10 planes passed over Davis Sq., each making a noise comparable to a loud truck barreling down the street, with each occurance lasting approximately 60 seconds. That's 10 minutes of loud aircraft noise in a 20 minute span of time, and this continuted for at least two hours starting around 6am. IT WAS CRAZY!!! I called the line. Something has got to be done about this.