Resident Midtown,

It was a frenzy of loud planes. I was sickened by the noise around 9:30 pm and it went through after 10:30 pm. SFO shared us with San Jose Airport planes.

SFO OZ286 at 12:32 AM and UA1844 at 1:12 AM outdid themselves. I don't usually use the INSANELY LOUD notation on stop.jetnoise.net but OZ earned it last night.

Sickened by the noise, and sickened by the robbery

That many planes flying that low over a residential area is unsafe and irresponsible!

Flying that many planes that low over a residential area at NIGHT and during the wee small hours is not only unsafe and irresponsible, but rude, cruel, unhealthy--causing unsafe levels of sleep deprivation for the residents!

Why in the world is this continuing!!?

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Nothing much to do now except to keep up with the submissions to stop.jetnoise.net. I'm seeing the complaint numbers are rising weekly. Currently he FAA is still in the process of studying what changes will be done to reduce the noise.

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boyohboy,

"Ambien, or whiskey, or warm milk on hand for occasional interruptions to your sleep."

And you probably know that you would have to be on Ambien, whiskey or some other oblivion aide to ignore the robbery,

Clearly even the FAA gets that this is not a boyohboy matter.

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We work in high tech--long, long hours at that-- and have three jobs between the two of us, as well as two children.

When we first moved in, noise was not a problem. Six years later it most certainly is a BIG problem, because good sleep is important when you only get 6-7 hours of it!

Also, our two year old has always been a light sleeper and is awakened at least twice nightly by low flying jets!

We did not bargain for this when we moved here! Tried to sell last spring, but we were only offered below-market rates due to the noise of trains + planes during the week. All offers were rescinded after buyers spent some time in the neighborhood. Yet, we can't move unless we get a good price!

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@ Techie

Long hours? Three jobs? Add all the noise of living in the city. Does not even seem worth it. Silicon Valley is not reality. So many better more peaceful places to live than the Bay Area, cheaper too. I can't see how working yourself to death just to barely make it every month is worth it. Enlighten me.

We are doing the jobs we were educated to do! We alternate driving for Uber in the ev nines and weekends.

None of your business what our address is, other than on Cowper.

Our house was appraised at 1.9 million when last appraised in September. Moving out from under the flight path means spending nearly 3 million for a 4 bedroom house that is not a fixer-upper!

We had nearly 35% down when we bought in 2010...... The house did not begin to appreciate until 2012.

My in-laws, BTW, had to sell below market rate to get rid of a house on Clara that was next door to a doper who is a hoarder!
Another neighbor a block away had to sell below market rate to get rid of a house on a substandard, 5,000 ft lot.
My supervisor had to sell below market rate to get out of a house one block from the Caltrain tracks.
A coworker who needed a bigger house had to sell below the appraisal value because he shared a driveway with three other houses--and there are a lot of those in Palo Alto, if you walk the streets you will see them.

I work in Palo Alto, my wife works in Menlo Park---we like the fact that we can get by with only one car. Mortgage companies like to see no more than one car payment, regardless.

You people need to wake up to reality!

I have been follow air-traffic over Palo Alto since the fall of 2014 when I first started noticing a dramatic increase in aircraft noise over Palo Alto. Last evening was one of the worst on record.

The FAA is one of the most corrupt and incompetent federal agencies in the US. The FAA is controlled by the industry is supposed to regulate, and yet even when they neglect the citizens they are supposed to protect, the FAA's "nextgen" implementation cannot even deliver the airspace capacity and fuel savings the aviation industry covets.

Despite obvious failures by the FAA to fairly and competently regulate air-traffic into SFO and SJC, the Palo Alto City Council continues to cede its responsibility to regulate the Palo Alto Airport to the FAA, and through the AIP Grant scam, continues to allows the FAA to pursue its goal of expanding Palo Alto Airport into an airport that can RELIEVE congestion at SFO and SJC!

"Brilliant Video - What is Happening in Our Skies?"
AIReform ~ April 19, 2016 Web Link

I wondered about the comment above about houses selling below market value on the pot street. I drove down that street and was surprised that a couple of houses looked so bad. Why isn't the city imposing some type of requirements on the owners to clean up the mess. The neighbors should complain that everything has to demonstrate some type of compliance to some type standard. Which leads to why aren't the realtors up in arms to coordinate another form of opposition against the city for not taking a stronger stand on the airplane noise and pot messes. The Real Estate group is a powerful group who should want to sell at top dollar. Get going guys and gals - start working these issues - this is part of your business.

During inclement weather such as we had last night, incoming SJC traffic reverses its flight path to fly above Palo Alto not only low enough to land at SJC, but even lower to be under incoming SFO traffic. The result is horrendous noise, and most likely a big safety issue.

Make sure to dirct your complaints to the San Jose airport when this happens.

Jetman, thanks for the link to that short film about the reality of jet traffic increases over the mid-Peninsula. It gave me chills to see validation of everything we have noted in the past two years. However, I n Palo Alto, the changes predate the formal rollout of NextGen in the Bay Area, as the FAA was clearly phasing in the "noise ghetto" slowly, with the hope of not causing an outcry from residents. Everyone has their own threshold for noise tolerance, and mine is low.

As soon as we saw the jets lowering, we also noticed more GA, or private planes. Maybe the two types of noise just combined to become a nightmare. Surf Air, (the flying shuttle for rich folks too impt. to bear with airport security,) has doubled the grinding turbojets over PA since it began two years ago. This is San Carlos Airport traffic, but it forces the smaller hobby planes even lower over our homes. The PC-12, 11 person planes are not little! They are 50 ft long and wide! And they are flying out of Palo Alto airport now, as privately owned PC-12s. They are anywhere between 800 ft (yes, over Midtown) and 2000 ft. Far too low and loud at either altitude. And don't think all the helicopters are life saving. Most at PAO are training lessons. A helicopter pilot school!

How is the Palo Alto City helping us? By pretending they don't own PAO, the Palo Alto Airport. Check out this page on the City web site--about airplane noise--with not one link to the PAO noise complaint number.

Web Link

I find the grinding noise of one person tearing up the sky more offensive than a jet taking 300 to SFO. The small planes are actually louder, for longer, overhead.

That PAO complaint number, for those impacted by the weekend warriors in the sky, is 650-329-2405, or email the time, date, place of disturbance, and direction of travel if known, to pao@cityofpaloalto.org.

Friday's Almanac and Daily Post both have articles about an upcoming San Mateo County Board of Supervisors meeting to discuss the noise from aircraft, approaching and departing, San Carlos Airport.

The Daily Post article highlights discussion of a curfew (and 11 other ideas). This should be an interesting discussion. SFO and other airports contend they are not able to impose curfews due to the contractual requirements imposed by the AIP grants they clamor after, and receive, from the FAA.

The meeting will be held this Tuesday, April 26, starting at 9 a.m. in the supervisors' meeting room at 400 County Center in Redwood City.


"Tuesday: Board of Supervisors update on San Carlos Airport issues"
The Almanac ~ April 22, 2016 Web Link

LOL I used to hang out at the house next to the old hippie burnout on Clara. Work on Hot rods and drink beer till late at night. He krpt all the cars in hos ysrd registered do the city could'nt F with him.

Sometimes you win one. The solar plane came in directly over my street and house. I was following the trip on Flight Tracker 24 and the Schindler site. Schindler is the plane builder and had a direct feed in the cockpit and live at Moffett Field in the inside control building and the field. That was something to see - YEAH.

I was woken up last night by a low flying plane. Really scary. I'm going to start sleeping with my phone next to my bed so I can report flights. Sigh...

Resident Adobe Meadow,

Saw it too, just after seeing the movie 10 Cloverfield Lane.At a distance it looked like it was hovering over the same spot, so first thought was wth, then maybe it's a helicopter but the body was wide different and with lights all accross. It moved very slowly, enough so that we followed it, it had and one red light that went on and off also slow pulse. It crossed 101 about 11:30 pm? Made a right turn at the Bay. Did not know it was a solar plane until seeing your post, It looked more like it was waning or in trouble with that red light, creepy. Looks like the FAA cleared the skies for that crossing. So what did it sound like?

Do not feel like a winner seeing it, somebody else is winning with the airplane business and that plane probably has some of our tax dollars which the airlines and airports need to pay back and should start being used to quiet the skies. Quiet the wolf packs that barrel down on their way to SFO howling, making a racket EVERY night. We may as well be 10 Cloverfield Lane, or any dystopian sick nightmare. Airplane noise party needs to stop.

Oh and it was very peaceful skies in downtown Redwood City, people eating outdoors, could hear people laughing, no interruptions from planes trashing the peace there.

I haven't entered any complaints yet because it is hard to write down the time and date and take time out to do that. But I will have to start doing that because I cannot believe the amount of airplane traffic overhead. I have been working in the garden and it is one plane after the next after the next right overhead. It feels like I live next to the airport.

Awful. We shouldn't have to prove that it is disturbing. There must be records of exactly where these planes are flying, when, where, and how low. And they are disturbing.

I believe in the past flight patterns were designed to avoid densely populated areas. Whatever happened to that?

I tried to have a peaceful Sunday morning on my computer and was bombarded by low flying planes at 10:00-10:30, seemingly every 2 minutes. It's getting worse all the time. Where were they flying when our skies were quiet before? I heard they were flying over the water.

and the reason you've removed my posts?

Last night ... or rather this morning Tues 26th there was a plane going
by at 4am that sounded like it was landing on my roof. I could feel the
vibrations in my bed and the room was filled with noise.

I think it was a plane destined for the local airport because it did not
sound like a jet. Whatever it was it is very inconsiderate to wake up
or dump so much noise on the whole city.

"I believe in the past flight patterns were designed to avoid densely populated areas. Whatever happened to that?"

The FAA improved them.

Let's do some role playing, OK? You be the FAA. Your mission is to promote air commerce. So what is more important to you: the tranquility of thousands of U.S. citizens on the ground (you are not one of them), or getting a few hundred passengers to their gate two minutes earlier?

The only traffic I see near Palo Alto on this morning's radar is a helicopter at 4:34, inbound for SFO at 2200 ft, from Modesto. Can't tell who was on it; registered to a bank in Cincinnati.

Two of the three usual United arrivals from Hawaii didn't touch Palo Alto; coming in well over Atherton. The 737 from Maui did cross Crescent Park, at 5:11.

On Tuesday I spent most of the day at home and using stop.jetnoise.net I counted 111 planes. 111!!!. Heading to an airport 25 miles away. And that was just when I was paying attention. Pretty ridiculous. We live between the ocean and the bay, why can't the jets simply fly over water? In addition, if you use flight tracker thru stop.jetnoise.net you will see flights that take off at SFO, fly south to palo alto, then north to Oregon or Washington. Can anyone explain that logic?

SFO arrivals fly over water the final 14 miles, from near the Dumbarton Bridge. Not sure how you expect them to get to that point without flying over some land. The only SFO departures I see over Palo Alto are southbound, and up over 12,000 feet already.

Posted by Peter Carpenter
a resident of Atherton
29 minutes ago
Peter Carpenter is a registered user.

Posted by Peter Carpenter
a resident of Atherton
on Nov 13, 2015 at 10:24 am
Peter Carpenter is a registered user.

"Eshoo's constituents have come up with some sensible solutions of increasing the altitude at which planes cross over populated areas before reaching the bay and distributing the arrival flight paths over a larger area so the impact is shared more equally among communities."

Yes we have and here are the two proposals that do just that - the first increases the altitude of arriving flights over most of the populated areas and the second distributes arriving flights more uniformly over all the South bay communities:

The higher altitude proposal:
1 - All SFO inbound traffic from the North and the East must use the RNAV (GPS) X RWY 28R approach and must enter that approach at the ANETE Initial Approach Fix (IAF) for which the minimum crossing altitude is 7000 ft,

Alternatively these aircraft could us the ILS or LOC RWY 28R approach and must enter at ARCHI IAF for which the minimum crossing altitude is 7000 ft,


2 - All SFO inbound traffic from the South and the West must use the RNAV (GPS) X RWY 28L approach and must enter that approach at the Faith IAF which has a minimum crossing altitude of 7000 ft.,


Entry to this approach via MENLO intersection would not be permitted.

Alternatively these aircraft could us the ILS or LOC RWY 28L approach and must enter at the FAITH IAF for which the minimum crossing altitude is 7000 ft,


Entry to this approach via MENLO intersection would not be permitted.


3 - SFO and SJC must be landing in the same direction unless the wind differential between them is greater than 1o knots.

The uniform distribution proposal:
Using the concept of a herring bone pattern and Advanced (or curved) Controlled Descent Approachs (CDA'a) here is a Draft SFO Arrivals Protocol:


1 - that is on the 284 deg radial from SFO
2 - that has at least ten Curved Continuous Descent Approaches (Advanced CDA) that link to that 284 deg radial with five on the Northeastern side of the radial and five on the Southwestern side of the radial
3 - that the closest of these ACDA's connect to the 284 deg radial no closer than the DUMBA intersection
4 - that the connection point for each of these ACDA's be at least one mile apart on each side of the radial
5 - that between 6 AM and 10 PM each incoming aircraft be randomly assigned to one of the ten individual ACDAs
6 - that between 10 PM and 6 AM incoming aircraft be assigned only to the two farthest out ACDAs

I also have been tracking jets - out of 32 I "reported" yesterday, only 2 were over 7000 feet. Most of them were 3200-4500 feet altitude. They are much quieter when they are higher (obviously).

@musical - you can get to SFO without flying over land if you start from San Francisco and head down.

Complaining about airplane noise would be much more effective if there were an objective, measurable reference. Some way to report that "Flight 123 went over at 3000 feet at 90 Db". Otherwise, most of the complaints just go into a bucket of "Oh, a plane flew over. I didn't like that!". The agencies monitoring the reports need to be able to distinguish between real problems and chronic complainers.

Mr. Carpenter,

Most of us understand what the solutions are from a technical perspective. Even the FAA, or rather especially the FAA, understands what can be done to mitigate noise. The problem is why did the FAA do nextgen wrong in the first place, and now that they have done it wrong, why won't they fix it?

The last couple of weeks the airplane noise has been ridiculous. When I moved into this house 6 years ago, I never noticed any airplane noise. Now, it's almost constant.

JFP,

Make sure to report intrusive aircraft noise using Stop Jet Noise at stop.jetnoise.net

Let your neighbors know to report as well

Noise reports help elected officials address the problem with the FAA.

Yes. Let's live in an area where there are 3 major airports, plus a few smaller fields and expect complete peace and quiet. How very Palo Alto. We are so special.
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@Whine of people: We don't feel special; this is a true health hazard affecting everyone. You are breathing polluted air when the planes fly so low. The planes disrupt our sleep, very much like torture tactics. There are 200 planes per day, some 20 per hour. The point is, this was not an issue until the last couple of years. I have grown up here since 1975 and we never heard the planes. There is no reason they need to be flying so low. We don't expect total peace and quiet but to be disrupted every 2 minutes is unacceptable.

Whine...,

See a32owhine .com Web Link about airplane whine

Traffic has been mostly flat or down in the last decades. Aviation noise need not be "growing." Tax dollars are spent on quieter planes and many initiatives. Where are the returns on those investments?

Report airplane whine with Stop Jet Noise at Web Link

This morning I witnessed a jet approaching SFO at an unusually high altitude and making no audible noise. How do I turn him in?

Airplane noise, the sound of freedom!

Linvin,

You must be living the freedom as a passenger, a pilot or airport

While passengers are looking at the scenery (look that's Palo Alto!) the sound of planes descending is brutal to the people on the ground. SFO has made Palo Alto one of the lowest points that planes cross before going to the Bay, freedom indeed.

The pilot of KE 213 last night had the freedom to wake people up - it happens nearly every night (on the way to make the curfew in Seoul).
Ear plugs are not helpful for the low frequencies, this plane is affecting many people whether they notice it or not.

Making money from the freedom to interfere with people's sleep should not be a freedom.

Report intrusive jet noise with stop.jetnoise.net

If a plane is approaching SFO at a high altitude then he has been directed to a Fly-Around - he will circle down the peninsula and re-approach at the lower altitude. If you follow the plane on flight tracker 24 then you will see this occur on a regular basis. It means that the number of flights incoming is too voluminous and they need to create room for the planes to land.
Get familiar with the flight tracker 24 program so that you are knowledgeable about what is occurring in real time.

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