Saturday, August 11, 2012

Louder skies over Queens


From Bayside Patch:

Northeast Queens leaders and residents said they are still waiting for answers about a flight pattern from LaGuardia Airport that has been bothering northeast Queens denizens.

State Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, recently called on the Federal Aviation Administration to meet with him to discuss the flight pattern, which has been aggravating residents along Bell Boulevard, Northern Boulevard, 43rd Avenue and sections of Douglaston.

But David Fischer, a spokesman for state Assemblyman Edward Braunstein, said he was told by the FAA that the Port Authority was handling the matter.

"We've been getting a lot of calls about it," he said. "Planes are flying very low and residents can almost see the windows of the planes. It's also happening very early in the morning, which is driving a lot of people crazy."

Braunstein has written to both the FAA and Port Authority on the matter.

Susan Seinfeld, district manager of Community Board 11, said the board was told that the flight pattern was in a six-month trial period, but it was unclear when it began or would end.

She said CB 11 has been receiving at least one complaint per day about noise resulting from the new flight pattern.


From the Daily News:

Experts tracking the uptick in airplane noise say there are two major culprits for the overall increase — the recently implemented New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Airspace Redesign and satellite technology which narrows the path that planes follow.

The redesign plan’s implementation schedule notes that it “increases air traffic efficiency and reduces airspace complexity for aircraft departing westbound from the New York area.”

Airport noise watchdogs charge that “efficiency” is really a euphemism for the number of arrivals and departures, meaning the two hubs can now handle more planes than before.

But the Federal Aviation Administration reports an overall decrease in airport takeoffs and landings at both airports since 2007. For example, there were 397,280 operations at LaGuardia in 2007, though that number dropped to 370,690 in 2011.

Jeff Starin, president of Prospect Park Quiet Skies, one of several community organizations dedicated to reducing airplane noise, said he views those figures with some skepticism.

He noted that satellite navigated routes, which use a FAA technology known as NextGen, are narrower. That means people who live under those channels will hear overhead planes more often, he said.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It always gets louder in Broadway-Flushing over the Summer, and when I moved here in 1999 I was told that they change the airplane traffic patterns so they won't disturb the US Open in Flushing-Meadows - and they start doing it about 2 months before the tennis tournament so the pilots and air traffic controllers can get used to the changes, rather than doing it suddenly right before the tournament. Don't know if it's true, but it's not as noisy here during the rest of the year.

James Lin said...

I found a website that shows you how to check flight patterns of airplanes departing from airports.

1) Go to this website: http://www.ourairspace.org
2) Select “Downloads” option from “Research Center” drop-down list on top of the website
3) Click on “Online Flight Tracking” link under “Community Noise Monitoring Initiative” section to download a PDF file that shows you how to access certain flight tracking websites that are available to the public

After I checked the flight patterns of LaGuardia airport, I noticed that almost all departing airplanes from this airport are flying over northeast part of Queens. I also noticed that these airplanes are flying at an extremely low altitude when flying over this area. I think these are the main reasons why we are hearing loud airplane noises within few minutes apart for pretty much every day.