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Technology - NOISE

The following are from a talk given by Rod Stewart (retired Air Traffic Controller and commercial pilot) on November 18th, 1997.

Why is the noise worse?

First:
There are more and more planes using SFO. This has been somewhat limited by the number and sizes of gates at the airport but they are being enlarged as we speak.
Second:
There are more much larger planes such as B747 using SFO. These aircraft are required to be kept farther apart during flight, which enlarges the area neede for Airtraffic Control to and from the runways and reduces the number of landings/takeoffs per minute.
The engines of the bigger and newer planes make a deeper sound. This type of sound travels farther and is much harder to block than the higher pitch of older "noisier" engines. Most of the newer engines are not quieter during landing, only takeoff. The present noise metric, used to define the noise of 60's vintage aircraft, does not measure this new level accurately. Thus, the old noise rules do not work the same today.
Third:
Late night and early morning traffic is increasing. The Pacific Rim traffic is growing. These are bigger planes which, because of flight times from Asia often land here at night. Interestingly, some must depart airports there in time to avoid their curfews which puts them here in time to wake us up!
The acceptance rate of the runways and gates at SFO during the day is almost full, leaving only the night to increase traffic numbers.
Freight operations prefer nighttime and the Bay Area demand for airfreight is increasing even more than that for passenger flights.

Why is noise allowed to grow?

In the early 1990s, SFO's need to expand led to several agreements with the cities of the airport area. One, a MOU, set up the Airport/Community Roundtable, and allowed and promoted the expansion of the airport that is now in progress. A specific intent in these documents is a lessening of airport noise. But there are surprisingly few requirements in these documents for SFO to alter its operations to comply with this intent and the few there are are not being enforced. The multi-governmental/industry involvemnt complicating this issue has been used to blunt and invalidate efforts to put meaningful controls or limits in place. While several small changes for the better have taken place, finger pointing, buck passing and simple lack of action has been the main result of years of efforts to put any reins on SFO.

In response to years of lawsuits and random actions all over the U.S., the Federal Government in 1992 standardized aircraft noise regulations. Basically, they leave curbing airline activities up to the owner of the airport in question while insulating the owner from many local legal actions. The effect was to let the power of the voter control the government entity that runs a city's airport. But, as we cannot vote for or against Willie Brown, our airport remains a nuge business, managed by an absentee landlord, with no enforced limits on the activities of its tenants, imposed by eigher the landlord or it's host county and surrounding cities.

It appears from this history that San Mateo County was not well served by those officials who were, and in most cases still are, representing us in dealings with SFO. SMCo has not matched theAirport's political, technical and financial resources and we all live with the result. The Airport knows how to use both its money and its political clout to get its way. So far, this power has been used only to maximize the profits of the Airport and promote its growth, not to control its tenants or their negative effects on us.