I’m usually sensitive to other’s problems, so when I saw a brave Lady, almost crying on TV, I listened to what her problem was. Sleep disorder. Bad. Caused by aircraft noise at night. Oops. I felt somehow gulty. I dislike being deprived of good sleep (to answer a previous comment, yes, I continue to sleep, even with a wife, 2-yr kid, job, and this blog), and the idea that aviation was making that to someone else was not exactly a pleasant idea. The French Lady in question is living in Gonesse. The name sounds familiar ? This is where the Air-France Concorde crashed (visit the air-accidents page to read the report, and see additional charts). Gonesse is 8 kilometers to the west of Paris Charles-de-Gaulle – one of the busiest European airport – , and 800 meters of Paris Le Bourget ! Gonesse is the red pentagon on the picture below. Commercial operations started in Le Bourget in 1919, and the planning of Charles-de-Gaulle began in 1966, so they’re not exactly recent constructions.

The next big step in my life is to buy a house, together with Mrs. PlasticPilot, in the region between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Frankfurt is a very busy airport, and many departures use runway 18, flying over the Darmstadt area. And this includes many Airbus 340 and Boeing 747, which don’t have the world’s best climb ratios. We know that aircraft noise could (will ?) be an issue. Not that much as in Gonesse, but being 17 kilometers away, under the departures path, we expect some noise. This is also why we will visite the house and the neigborhood several times, at different times of day. Frankfurt is linked to the entire world, so there is the typical departures wave to North America in late morning, and a second one to Asia and Middle-east in the evening – all using heavy aircraft types.

We also know that arrival and departures route can change, and make the quantity of noise we would get daily really different. We discussed it, and it will be a factor in our decision. No hidden things, no surprises. But we would certainly NOT buy a house located 800 meters from an airport. Even one which is closed at night. Local regulations can evolve, and assuming that a night or week-end ban will last for ever is simply wrong. Even if someone promised me that there would soon be a ban, the same would apply. So why do some people live so close to airports ? Why do they not move to another place ?

Could that be a question of money ? Well… houses or flats located is so noisy areas are notoriously cheap to buy. And if the unlucky buyer does not want to sell at a lower price, it has no chance to sell. The prices can only get lower and lower, thus annihilating the possibility for owners to sell their house and get another one somewhere else – except by injecting extra cash in the operation, which is not always possible. However, buying such a house seems to me like a serious lack of common sense. I don’t know if people who did it visited the place on days where the airports were on strike, or if they simply not noticed the noise. This seems simply impossible… Or were there naive enough to think that there would never be night traffic ?

This is a sad situation, but what to do ? Is it normal to allow real-estate developers to build so close to airports ? Probably not. Shall the authorities ban night traffic ? This would endanger local economy, destroy jobs, and reduce local communities income. Shall the state pay for the relocation of the concerned persons in a quieter area ? Well, being silly is not illegal, and do not create right for compensation by the state… Imagine what refunding all silly persons around would cost !

I admit it, this post was driven by an unnerving situation, and is may be a bit severe… but it was so good to say it. This was not my first post about airport neighbors, check the links below for more.

Airport neighbors are our friends

How a modern aviation policy should be

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