From: utzoo!decvax!cca!LRH@MIT-MC@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.aviation
Title: Your comments on noise abatement, in particular
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2484
Posted: Thu Aug  5 23:09:49 1982
Received: Sun Aug  8 07:15:13 1982

From: "Lyman R. Hazelton, Jr." 
  Although it is not necessarily true here in the northeast, it has
been an observation of mine that a considerable number of airports
were there BEFORE the housing developements that now surround them;
and it gripes me no end that the people who bought that land under
the approach want the airport closed in the evening or want me to
fly a less than optimal (or less than safe!) approach so that they
can have it quiet.  I suspect that this may even be true here around
Boston, to some extent... after all, Hanscom Field has been there a
VERY long time (though not nearly as long as some of the houses near
it).  I can site at least one example where an old and established
airport which when build was out in the sticks was surrounded and
finally forced to shut down... they sold the land to a university
and bought land way out in the sticks and proceeded to build a new
airport.  That was 7 years ago... now with that airport came businesses,
and with the business came people who wanted to live near their work
(at the airport)... well guess what!  It is now 7 years later, and those
self same people are demanding screwy takeoff and landing patterns and
making strong suggestions that maybe this airport ought to be shut down.
Damn it, they knew what they were getting when they bought those
homes next to the airport!  But in the end, there will be more of them
than the people who run that airport and the pilots that use it, and
they will succeed in closing it.
  I know how much noise a light, piston powered aircraft makes during
a landing... and is NOT MUCH.  I don't have any good solutions to this,
but I sure do think it stinks.