FAA plans to reduce flight delays, face political fight over airplane noise

For years, jets taking off from Newark Liberty International Airport have performed an act of mercy as they roar south.\nMoments after leaving the ground, the planes bank left, out over an industrial port district, and away from the residential streets of Elizabeth, N.J., the working-class city that sits right up against the busy airport.\nManeuvers like this are a common method of sparing citizens from the window-ratting noise of jets passing overhead.\nBut now such practices are being dropped in some places in the Northeast as part of a federal plan to ease record flight delays. And some neighborhoods that fear they will be subjected to more noise are fighting back in court.\nOn Dec. 19, the Federal Aviation Administration began its first overhaul in decades of the jet routes that crisscross the country’s most congested airspace – a 31,000-square-mile area around New York and Philadelphia.\nThe corridor has been criticized for years as one of the worst problem spots in the nation’s beleaguered air traffic system. Most of the paths were laid out in the 1960s. Some date from the earliest days of air travel, and airlines have been complaining for years that they are horribly outdated.\nOver the next five years, the FAA will be rolling out new routes it believes can cut flight delays by as much as 20 percent. Some aviation experts say improvements are essential; nearly three-quarters of all flight delays nationally are caused by backups in New York and Philadelphia.\nBut a closer look at the revamped flight routes shows that the changes will lead to more noise for tens of thousands of people, many of whom are already subject to the whine of jet engines because of their proximity to airports.\nIn Elizabeth, N.J., the changes will mean that some planes will fly straight over the center of the city.\n“The FAA plan will do more harm to the city of Elizabeth than any terrorist incident,” said Mayor Chris Bollwage.\n“We live next to the airport, so we have to take some noise,” he said. But the FAA plan, he added, stretches fairness. “There are places in town where you can touch the tires.”\nAt least 12 lawsuits have been filed so far in an attempt to stop the plan. \nSo far, the complaints haven’t stopped the FAA. Last month, the agency began phasing in new traffic patterns at the Newark and Philadelphia airports that allow departing planes to fan out in several directions as they climb, rather than stick to a single path.\nFAA officials say the airspace redesign will actually lead to a reduction in noise for a majority of people, largely because the changes will allow planes to fly at higher altitudes.\nBut sound-modeling data released by the agency reveals that the gains and losses will not be spread evenly. Loud neighborhoods will, on average, be getting louder, while the biggest improvements will be in places that aren’t that noisy to begin with.\nAccording to the FAA, an additional 30,600 people will find themselves living in neighborhoods where the average daily aircraft noise level is 60 to 65 decibels – \nconsidered the high edge of tolerable for a residential area.\nNoise at that level is far from earsplitting; experts say it is less than residents might experience if they lived next to a busy road. But it is loud enough that people have to raise their voices as a plane passes overhead.\nThe number of people living in areas where the average decibel level is between 55 and 60 will rise by 79,813.\nThe big losers will be a few communities near Newark and Philadelphia that already hear a good deal of airplane traffic because of their proximity to the airports. There will also be a slight to moderate increase in noise in parts of Morris and Sussex counties in northern New Jersey.\nThe big winners are people who live a little farther away, and now hear a medium amount of noise.\n“It’s a quality-of-life issue,” said Rudy Marconi, a spokesman for the Alliance for Sensible Airspace Planning and a selectman in Ridgefield, Conn., 40 miles northeast of LaGuardia. “Will I get used to it? Probably. But should I have to get used to it?”