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Congressman to hold meeting on jet noise south of Logan; FAA may actually deign to show up this time
By adamg on Thu, 11/12/2015 - 11:49am
US Rep. Stephen Lynch says he's holding a forum in Milton next month on complaints about flight paths south of Logan Airport and the growing number of complaints by residents from the South End to Milton.
Lynch says that among expected to attend the Dec. 3 meeting at Milton High School are FAA officials. Earlier this year, the FAA ignored a similar hearing by the Boston City Council, leaving a Massport official to say there was nothing he could do about the issue.
WGBH reports Lynch got the agency's attention by moving to cut $25 million from its budget.
Lynch's office says:
Following a meeting with FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta and State Representative Walter F. Timilty (D-Milton) in Washington, D.C. in September, Congressman Lynch was able to secure an agreement that the FAA would participate in a community forum in Milton.
Lynch's office summarizes the problem:
Much of the increase in noise coincides with the adoption of the NextGen, GPS-based navigation system. The GPS-based flight system guides hundreds of flights per day with laser-like precision over a narrow flight path. While the RNAV procedures of the NextGen system can increase efficiency and save on jet fuel costs, the neighborhoods lying beneath those flight paths can experience extended periods of aircraft noise, raising health implications and negatively impacting the quality of life for local families.
In addition to the reluctant FAA officials, others expected to attend are local members of the Logan Airport Community Advisory Committee, US Rep. Michael Capuano, US Rep. Katherine Clark and representatives from Massport.
The Milton meeting starts at 7 p.m. at Milton High School, 25 Gile Rd.
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Comments
Where are the planes supposed to take off towards?
Take off patterns depend of wind direction for the most part, correct? The runways at Logan 22 and 33 and such have been place since the 50's. There isn't much you do to move them.
It would be nice to say that they can only take off over water but then Winthrop and Hull take the noise and then planes cannot land from that direction. I've flown out of Logan three times this year and it has been over water each time and landing has been over water twice.
Sorry to say folks but if you fly even once out of Logan or order anything that is shipped in or out by plane, you are part of the problem.
I have wee sympathy for anyone who has purchased a house in Milton over the past 40 years and they are complaining about jet noise. The primary landing pattern from the southwest has been established over there for decades and the takeoff is only marginally better.
You want to have direct flights to Paradise Island, Vegas, or SFO, this is the consequence.
I think lack of variability is the issue
I think you could compare it to the difference of having a house on the shore of a fairly wide shipping channel vs having a house next to subway tracks. The flight path of planes on landing have a level of accuracy now which means that if you are directly under one of them you are directly under all of them whereas in the past they may vary a fair distance to one side or the other.
And of course..
And of course, nothing has changed in the past 40 years, and the flight volume out of Logan is exactly what it was in 1975.
Engines are Far Quieter
I know that is not saying much, but trust me they are much quieter and less pollutant spewing. I still remember Eastern Airline props in the late 70's. Those things were slower and much noisier than what goes up today.
We are far more options for flying in this area than we did in 1975. Manchester and Providence offer better service and more destinations. (Cheaper parking, fares and you can get to TF Green by commuter rail all you "I only take the T"'ers).
Aer Lingus is starting next year out of Bradley. Their studies show that they can pull from Albany to Worcester / Providence, making less congestion here and in the three in NYC.
Once again, if you fly, don't complain about jet noise.
Not that simple
That's great, and possibly true, but it still doesn't quantify establish the situation overall as better or worse today than in the past (individual aircraft quieter, more aircraft in the sky, who knows), and it doesn't serve to dismiss current complaints. Things have changed, and what people signed up for 40 years ago is not what's happening now, so why are you opposed to revisiting the question?
aal1852
I'm not sure I totally agree.
The FAA and massport are permitting flights like AAL1852 out of logan at 5:07AM from runway 22 over the city.
I've complained with massport, I received a letter back stating "the FAA permits stage 3 aircraft to leave / arrive from Logan 365 days a year 24 hours a day". I took that as an indication that massport / FAA wants flights all night long.
AAL 1852
Flies between Charlotte, NC and Baltimore, MD, so if it is flying over your house in the Boston area, the FAA should be very concerned.
many locations, and aal1500
Keep looking. You will see it departs sometimes out of Logan.
Another example aal1500.
Um, nope
The flight numbers exist for a reason.
But yes, every morning AAL1500 leaves Boston for O'Hare. It doesn't leave from any other airport or arrive at any other airport.
The same flight number can be
The same flight number can be (and is often) used for multiple flight segments. In this case, AA1852 flies a BOS-CLT-BWI routing on some days: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL1852.
Sometimes you'll even see the same flight number on a roundtrip, say, BOS-ORD-BOS. That is common among an airline's express carriers.
yes, but flights that once
yes, but flights that once flew over Brookline or even Mission Hill are now concentrated over Roxbury.
I think Runway 27 is the culprit - how new is that one? The intensity started in 2014 and has been really bad since; flying as early as 5:30am.
there are other variables beyond wind direction---like the schedule
Mission Hill *is* a part of Roxbury
Mission Hill is in Roxbury.
No it's not
unless you're referring to the dissolved city of Roxbury.
Roxbury Crossing PO (02119) located at 1575 Tremont
But, yes it is. Not that the United State Postal Service is probative for neighborhood boundaries, but the Roxbury Crossing post office (02119) is located on Mission Hill at 1575 Tremont Street. Previously, it was located at 1542, at the corner of Pontiac Street.
PO means squat
When I lived in Roxbury, across the street from Horatio Harris Park (very clearly Roxbury), the USPS and Google marked me in Dorchester. Their boundaries are wrong.
McGreevey Way, Huban Court
And, while we're at it, trying telling someone who grew up in the projects on McGreevey Way or Horban Court that they didn't grow up in Roxbury.
Conspiracy
I've always like the conspiracy that the elites of Chestnut Hill and the Country Club put the kibosh on flights over their neighborhood.
Flight pattern changes
This isn't a localized issue. The wsj reported on this in today's paper: http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-routes-mean-more-noise-for-some-homes-ne...
It seems that newer air control technology allowing for more direct flights has changed takeoff patterns, exposing neighborhoods that had not previously been under a flight path to new traffic.
While I agree that everyone should bear the costs of airplane noise, what people seemed to be most pissed off about is that there was little to no communication from the FAA ahead of changes, and very little response from the FAA to complaints since.
As the article points out, it *is* possible to come up with compromise solutions, but the FAA has to call you back first.
flight patterns
Most people can't tell you where the Logan flight patterns are unless you live under them and have made yourself knowledgeable. And unless you visit your potential home during the right conditions, you'll never know you're in a flight path until it's too late.
Yes and no
Anybody who commutes on the southeast expressway regularly has probably noticed the planes stacked up on approach heading southbound past Neponset Circle. There's a piece of guidance equipment right by the exit 11 cloverleaf and they go right over it. When the wind is coming off of the water as it often does in the evening that's the approach and this time of year when it's dark on the evening commute it's hard to miss.
The difference now is that
The difference now is that noise used to be distributed throughout Milton more than it is now. Instead of everyone hearing a loud roar every 10 minutes, a few people now hear one every 60 seconds.
Certainly the same technology that navigates planes over a handful of precise flight paths, can be tweaked to distribute planes over a broader set of flight paths to distribute the noise over a larger area.
Yes yes!
^ I can take my share of airplane noise, but if I gotta listen to it, let the guys a few blocks on either side of me get their fair share too.
It's all a ploy to increase
It's all a ploy to increase Amtrak profits.
Actually I wonder if we shouldn't move our airport out to Hanscomb and redevelop Logan for housing. The Residences at Logan Square in Boston's new East End neighborhood, anyone?
Airports are near cities, and
Airports are near cities, and housing near airports is cheaper for a reason. Tens of thousands of people live along train lines (subway, commuter rail, amtrak, freight), near ports, along busy streets.
It's loud, it will always be loud, sometimes it will be louder, sometimes it will be quieter.
There are some airports where they require planes to take off at EXTREME angles and then glide for a few miles, they are near super-wealthy neighborhoods. And guess what, everyone who knows about those areas and/or flies out of them knows one thing: those homeowners are the whiniest, most self-entitled assholes in the world.
Planes are loud, get over it.
No
I'm really getting tired of people saying "you moved to a hellhole, tough nougies, deal with it."
When we moved to Roslindale, planes directly overhead were a rarity. Now they're not.
Rozzie takin' it on the chin
I agree with you. I moved to Roslindale 15 years ago, and there was occasional plane noise, but not much. Now, it's every single morning at 6am, with planes roaring directly over our house every minute. I've asked that they vary the pattern a bit to provide relief, but no one has listened.
When you call the noise complaint line, they tell you what runway the plane took off from. This is like complaining to someone about loud music and being told who the composer is.
JP
I moved to JP 14 years ago and I have to agree with Adam (a strange feeling for sure!). We were on an occasional takeoff flight path where noise was audible 1-2 times monthly in the summer when windows are open. Since then I have fully insulated my home and changed all windows from the prior single pane glass of the 19th century and not nearly every morning starting at 5:30 the takeoff noise is enough to wake me up. I can attest that things have changed.
The issue is takeoff, not landing. Engines are on low power when landing (until right upon the field). On takeoff they are screaming at full throttle as they climb above Franklin Park.
Actually, I hear them now as I type this...
"I moved to a city with an
"I moved to a city with an airport and there are airplanes."
I know it's not a funny issue
I know it's not a funny issue to those living right under the flight pattern, but I can't help but think of Carla's house in Cheers.
Remember the Thanksgiving episode? One of the best, imho.
But, I do know people in Winthrop and Chelsea that have had new windows installed courtesy of Massport to lessen the noise and to replace the old windows that have been rattled too much over the years.
They're still using noise
They're still using noise maps from 1998 to determine who qualifies for those windows. Obviously a thing or two has changed in the meantime.
That's all Massport, by the way. FAA mandates the bare minimum of noise abatement, but Massport is and always has been free to voluntarily do more. They choose not to and keep blaming those old maps, as though the FAA somehow forbids them from soundproofing a home that only saw 64db 20 years ago.
Massport is lying slime and the FAA is above any politician local enough to care about neighborhood-level issues.
Seems to be a "new" noise problem
One of my friends posted something about "Medford being singled out for jet noise" and "unfair burden" etc. One commenter even said something to the effect that "we've been targeted because someone in the FAA doesn't think we will fight back".
That's why I'm glad to see this bit about Boston and Milton. The flyers that I have seen in other areas also tend to make claims about "unfair burdens" and "being singled out" by the FAA, too, but the problem is anything but an "unfair burden" one.
Seems to me that we are all sharing in the problem these days, which makes sense if you look at an annual windrose for Logan Airport (there isn't much of a prevailing wind direction).
Now, I don't like it when a certain weather pattern brings planes in low over my neighborhood, sometimes rattling windows and disrupting conversations. I'm betting people from Boston and Milton dislike it as well. I'm also betting that the noise is a recent development there as it is here. Just because it didn't happen before doesn't mean that anything is "unfair" here.
Massport does put up the complaints for each month by community, and Milton has had a lot of complaints in the past couple of years. Awareness of the complaint line has raised the number in other communities over the last year, but the rhetoric and absence of understanding of why planes go in certain directions is consistently amusing.
Such is the worth of UHub in making the larger geographic patterns of an issue more apparent.
Southwestof Boston is Logan's noise dump
South End, Roxbury, JP, Woodburne, etc. have been dealing with this for a long time. I was told that Runway 27 is used depending on the direction of somebody's wind. Whatever the reasons the noise is horrid.
Put in plain language Logan craps on thousands of people in and around Boston. Unless somebody craps back on the people who make the rules they won't care. Just like AT&T of old, and seemingly too many large institutions today, they don't care because they don't have to.
FAA made that clear when they indirectly told the City Council to pound sand. Now they are showing up only because a a $25,000,000 noose was shown to them. Require people running the FAA to live under the flight paths that are polluted by jet noise. Bet they don't have the, to quote Mr. Franklin, "stones" to do it. They are happy to crap on everyone - except of course themselves.
As much as I understand
how annoying and frustrating it is to put up with airplane noise and to have no one listen to you seriously, saying that "Logan craps on the Boston area" is a bit much. An airport is necessary for a city to become a city. Easy connection with other cities and countries is essential business, just as are subways, highways, and ports. All of which, if you live too near them, make noise and/or smell, but are a necessary evil for commerce and transport of people.
My husband's family seems to have an allergy to living in regions of the US with reasonable access to a major airport, and I assure you, it is much easier for me to get a 30 minute ride to the airport, hop on a plane, and get picked up for a 30 minute ride from the airport near my family's home than it is for, say, one of his relatives to take a three hour bus ride to the nearest airport, then a six-hour flight, then get a rental car and drive for five hours to visit the other relative. For commerce, this effect cannot be understated: no business would tolerate this epic journey on a regular basis unless they were moving product that could be relay-shipped via a freight company like FedEx.
30 minutes? Way too long.
I kid but it was funny that a friend of mine was stranded at Logan after a flight delay had her miss a connection here. Her options from the airline weren't good but she could get a direct flight back to the west coast the next day so she called to ask if she could crash for the night. Of course I said yes, always nice to see an old friend, right?
So she says she'll make the arrangements with the airline and asks how long it would take me to get to the airport. I told her about ten minutes. She said, "No, really, how long" and I said ten minutes. I was running some errands and was within eyesight of the Neponset Circle entrance to the SE expressway at about 1 pm on a weekday. I saw her ten minutes later much to her surprise.
Do you live under a flight path?
Are you outdoor conversations interrupted by jets? Is there a material impact on your quality of life?
A similar argument can be made for trash and noise in general. "It's a city. Trash happens. Noise happens." It's a simplistic argument that dismisses people who are subjected to the harm created by terrible noise.
Businesses that generate harmful side effects and the governnmental agencies that support the businesses have a moral responsibility to eliminating the harmful effects. If the harmful effects are determined to be a necessary evil for a greater purpose then there remains the responsibility to do everything reasonable to balance out the harm done.
Human beings are not objects to use and abuse just to make a city a city.
People continue to forget
People continue to forget this study from last year: https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/05/28/childho...
It's not just noise — there are health risks associated with any sort of consistent flight path.
It's all Arrivals over Milton at best...
I live in Southie and can attest to the noise from Runway 27 from planes taking off every minute with a West wind in progress. Logan still uses SIDs and STARs for approaches for each runway. Planes taking off from runway 27 seem to follow Washington St to Dedham before making a turn toward their destination - that affects Southie, South End, Roxbury, Rosi, and even W Roxbury - but not Milton. Planes taking off Runway 22L make the 'U'turn' right after wheels up and fly along the coast to about 10K ft before making a turn overland. I hear some good jet roar from planes taking off SE via Runway 9 as well. The only noise Milton residents seem to have to endure are arriving planes using Runways 4R and 4L. Those same planes fly over Dorchester and Southie as well and I will take a landing plane's noise over a takeoff any day of the year. So Milton - if you want to swap jet noise, I am game.
Thanks...
... for the detailed factual information.