2.1 Landmarks in the Development of U.S. Aviation Noise Regulation

The following sub-sections describe some of the major legislative and regulatory actions affecting aviation noise in the United States. See Bennett (1982) for discussion of additional case law, and Sabel (2004) for further discussion of early legislation affecting air commerce.

2.1.1 Pre-World War II Years

Formal regulation of airports in the United States began with the Air Commerce Act of 1926 (Falzone 1999). The Act treated airports as individual entities under the “jurisdiction and control of municipalities concerned”, rather than as components of an as-yet non-existent nationwide air transportation system. The 1926 Act also asserted that the U.S. government “possessed” all airspace, a claim invalidated by the Supreme Court 20 years later in Causby v. U.S. (328 U.S. 256, 1946) (v.i.).

The Civil Aeronautics Authority (“CAA”) Act of 1938, which established the agency later re-named the Civil Aeronautics Board (“CAB”), reaffirmed local control of airports, even while setting the pattern for decades of federal regulation of passenger aviation.13

2.1.2 Post-World War II Years

As late as the mid-1950s, commercial aircraft operations were so sparse, and propeller-driven commercial aircraft sufficiently small and (relatively) quiet, that civil aircraft noise could plausibly be viewed as a problem confined to neighborhoods adjacent to runway ends.14 Modern U.S. positions on the definition of “significant”15 noise exposure, and on disclosure of adverse environmental impacts of aircraft noise, can be traced to the start of jet-powered military aviation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These origins antedate by a decade the 1958 Federal Aviation Act which created FAA.

High levels of aircraft noise exposure were viewed primarily as an occupational hazard at the start of the jet era, and residential concerns with aircraft noise exposure were confined mostly to military base housing. Many U.S. civil airports in the early post-World War II era were typically utilitarian, lightly-used former military facilities. Beginning in the 1960s, renovations and upgrades of runways and landside facilities that accompanied the expansion of flight operations and the enormous growth of in-terminal foot traffic began to transform large airports into shopping mall-like facilities with runways nearby.

Following a 1956 mid-air collision of a DC-7 and a Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon, Congress in 1958 assigned the Federal Aviation Agency (later re-named the Federal Aviation Administration), a dual mandate with regard to regulation. The 85th Congress described Public Law 85-726 as an Act “…to create a Federal Aviation Agency, to provide for the regulation and promotion [emphasis added] of civil aviation in such manner as to best foster its development and safety…”. In other words, Congress directed the new agency to regulate for two purposes: first, to provide safe and efficient air transportation services for the nation, and second, to promote civil aviation by fostering its development. The original act makes no mention of minimizing adverse environmental impacts of aviation or protecting communities from them.

As interpreted by FAA, the agency’s dual mandate required that policy positions on permissible levels of public exposure to aircraft noise not infringe on promotion and development of civil aviation. FAA has never had a direct mandate to promote municipal development, nor to vigorously protect airport neighborhoods from excessive aircraft noise exposure.16 On the contrary, FAA’s primary noise regulatory goal for decades was to protect public investment in airport infrastructure, or in essence, to protect airports from communities.17 In practice, this goal meant that FAA’s aircraft noise regulatory positions (e.g., on the definition and disclosure of “significant” noise exposure; on eligibility for mitigation of noise impacts; and on land uses considered “compatible” with operation and expansion of airports) were intended primarily to support the interests of airports, air carriers, express shippers, airframe and engine manufacturers, and air travelers.

2.1.3 Influence of United States v. Causby and Griggs v. Allegheny County Supreme Court Decisions

During World War II, the U.S. military flew aircraft at altitudes as low as 83 feet above the Greensboro, NC farm of Thomas Causby, panicking his chickens. The U.S. government cited its claim in the 1926 Air Commerce Act that the government “possessed” all airspace as supporting its right to conduct such low altitude overflights, but lost in lower courts to Causby’s argument that the government had taken the value of his land in violation of the “takings” clause of the 5th Amendment. The ruling against the United States in United States v. Causby (328 U.S. 256, 1946) established a legal precedent that a demonstrable economic loss due to aircraft noise exposure was required to prevail in such “inverse condemnation” litigation.

Sixteen years later, the Supreme Court built on this precedent in Griggs v. Allegheny County (369 U.S. 84, 1962). The decision on aircraft noise liability, reached only four years after the start of commercial jet service in the United States, set the pattern for much subsequent aircraft noise regulatory policy. On land that Allegheny County had acquired for airport use, the proprietor of Pittsburgh’s airport (PIT) had constructed a runway that ended about 1 km from plaintiff’s property. A Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas awarded plaintiff $12,690 for a 5th Amendment “taking” of an air easement by the County that caused airplanes to fly at low altitudes over plaintiff’s home, thereby interfering with the plaintiff’s beneficial use and enjoyment of his property.

The County appealed the trial court’s decision to the state Supreme Court, which found that the County was not liable for any such taking. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s reasoning was that the County had fully complied with the provisions of the U.S. National Airport Plan (49 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.), and that the Federal Government had provided much of the funding for runway construction. The plaintiff appealed the reversal of the trial court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court could in principle have assigned partial to full liability for noise damages to any combination of three parties:

  • The airlines, which owned or leased the noise sources that interfered with plaintiff’s beneficial use and enjoyment of property;

  • The Federal Government, which had provided the County with much of the funding for runway construction and controlled the movements of the airlines’ aircraft in flight; or

  • The airport proprietor, which had made all decisions about runway siting, and leased gates to airlines for their flight operations.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, faulting the airport proprietor alone for not acquiring sufficient property to build the runway. As a consequence, “ownership” of liability for aircraft noise damages in the United States has ever since rested with airports, with no direct financial consequence for airlines or FAA. Had the Court decided otherwise in Griggs versus Allegheny County, U.S. aircraft noise regulatory policy would likely have developed in very different ways.

For example, if the Federal Government had been held liable in full or in part for aircraft noise damages, airport layout plans would have received much closer scrutiny, and far more critical analyses in FAR Part 150 studies, Master Planning exercises, and proposals for construction of airport infrastructure. If the airlines had become the “owners” of noise liabilities, greater pressures for reduction of aircraft engine noise would have been applied sooner; the costs of operating marginally profitable flights might have tempered enthusiasm for excessive hub-and-spoke network development; development of modern performance-based navigation (“PBN”) flight procedures might place greater emphasis on ground-level noise exposure than on fuel and flight crew cost savings; and so forth.

Had the Supreme Court found some combination of airlines, airport proprietors, and the Federal Government liable, all of the liable parties would have been incentivized to collaboratively minimize and mitigate aircraft noise impacts in airport neighborhoods. Without feared noise liabilities, commercial proprietors (or even airlines) might have contested local government ownership of airports. As is, FAA plays little substantive role beyond financial planning support and pro forma approval of airport layout plans in local and regional development of airport infrastructure, and individual airlines and air cargo carriers are effectively invisible in most airport/community controversies. If liability for noise damages had not been assigned exclusively to airports, FAA might plan airspace use with lesser concern for minimizing airline flight time costs than for residential aircraft noise exposure. Further, airports might have access to additional means and greater flexibility in crafting compromises to resolve noise-related confrontations with communities.

Although the Griggs decision was feared at the time to have opened the door to widespread litigation against airports for noise damages, such has not been the case. Property owners typically encounter many difficulties in proving aircraft noise damages. Since damages are nearly always expressed as diminutions in property values, valuing lands near airports usually involves courtroom battles of assessors. When valuing property, plaintiffs stress adverse effects of aircraft noise, air pollution, and traffic congestion on property values, while defendants stress proximity to jobs, travel, and resources, and a host of local factors ranging from proximity to schools, convenient access to shopping, water views, and similar neighborhood amenities. (The larger issues of disproportionate sharing of regional economic benefits and local impacts of noise generated by a large airport are noted in Sect. 3.10.)

2.1.4 Slow Recognition of Need for National Aircraft Noise Regulation

Harper (1988) faults the FAA for its inattention during its first decade to aircraft noise as a nationwide problem. Smith (1989) likewise points out that governments, in their haste to facilitate the growth of air commerce in the early days of jet transport aircraft, bear some of the responsibility for exacerbating noise problems. Since the Supreme Court had immunized FAA against liability for aircraft noise damages (per Sect. 2.1.3), and the agency’s charter required it to promote civil aviation, FAA’s preference for the two decades following the decision was for a laissez-faire approach to aircraft noise regulation. This preference was based on FAA’s apparent belief that stricter regulation of aircraft noise would invite industry criticism of inconsistency with FAA’s original charter to promote civil aviation. Aviation-related industries (airframe and engine manufacturers, airlines, airport operators and their trade associations) also pressed for protection against assumption of any liability for aircraft noise damages. FAA responded to these pressures by attempting to facilitate voluntary cooperation on aircraft noise problems among aircraft and engine manufacturers, airlines, and airport proprietors.

As discussed further in Sect. 5.2, the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (“ICAO”) has long advocated a “balanced” approach to minimizing aircraft noise effects—that is, a combination of source-level reduction, airport-compatible land use planning, and operational controls to reduce noise impacts.18 ICAO’s balanced approach strategy has been largely ineffective for land use planning purposes in the United States. The failures of ICAO’s balanced approach in the United States are due to several factors: federal pre-emption of local discretion in operational controls; differences in State land use legislation nationwide; a lack of Federal authority over local land use planning; airport proprietors’ lack of authority over uses of land adjacent to airports that they do not own; and landowners rights under the Fifth (“just compensation”) Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

2.1.5 Continued Industry Concerns with Liability and Operational Restrictions

The potential liability (for airports) imposed by a noise policy that sets limits for noise-sensitive land uses and for development of compatible land use plans has been a central concern of aircraft noise regulation from its very beginning. The concern for liability for damages caused by aircraft noise exposure has strongly favored creation of large buffer areas around airports.19 This concern creates a paradoxical policy inconsistency, however: airports must explain to residents of nearby neighborhoods that their aircraft noise exposures are insufficient for mitigation or compensation (i.e., are at levels lower than Ldn = 65 dB), while simultaneously insisting to owners of undeveloped land of similar noise exposure that their property is too noisy (Ldn > 60 dB) for conventional residential development.

Further, the emphasis of noise regulatory policy historically has been on near-term concerns for liability around long-established urban airports. Residential land use patterns near such airports were often established before the introduction of jet aircraft. Prevention of longer term residential encroachment at less-developed airports appears to have been of lesser concern. Prevention of encroachment of airport noise on communities (as by growth and changes in numbers, types, and locations of flight operations, changes in fleet composition, and construction of additional airport infrastructure) seems to have been of yet lesser concern.

FAR Part 150 appears to have been intended primarily to discourage community encroachment around airports in less-developed areas, such as reliever and regional airports. Given that the “Noise Control Program” phase of a Part 150 study still maintains a list of alternatives that are effectively prohibited under the 1990 ANCA, management of existing airport-vicinity noise problems at larger airports was at best an afterthought.

These emphases were arguably reasonable in the early days of policy development, but are less so today, as aviation has largely avoided liability for noise damages to people living within areas that exceed FAA’s Ldn = 65 dB guideline for residential land uses. Approximately 400,000 people reside within the Ldn = 65 dB contour today (FAA 2018). Residential sound insulation programs cover a portion of these homes, but are by no means fully inclusive. Not all of the 400,000 people within the Ldn = 65 dB contour would qualify for sound insulation under current guidelines. Most residential sound insulation programs are focused on single family detached dwellings, and usually do not extend to apartments or condominiums.20

Likewise, homes built after 1998 are assumed to have been designed to protect interior areas from aircraft noise exposure, and do not qualify for residential sound insulation programs. Little data supports this assumption in most states. Further, a home qualifies for federally sponsored sound insulation only if its interior noise levels can be shown empirically to exceed Ldn = 45 dB. The criterion of an interior DNL of 45 dB requires that the test be done with windows closed, regardless of whether a home has adequate ventilation to meet building code fresh air ventilation requirements.

Airport proprietors have long been almost exclusively municipalities or other regional government entities. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., the Port of New York Authority – now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as described in a first-person account in Chap. 6 of Beranek 2008), airports have historically lacked both influence and authority to persuade, much less compel, industry to develop and operate quieter jet transports. Unless compelled by inverse condemnation, nuisance, or personal injury lawsuits, individual airports were reluctant through the early 1980s to adopt measures to meaningfully reduce aircraft noise exposure (and hence, adverse reactions to aircraft noise) in airport communities.21

Smith (1989, pp. 22–23) reproduces a portion of a 1966 letter from FAA to U.S. aircraft manufacturers warning them that “… it could well be that the most significant deterrent to continued growth [of commercial aviation] is related to problems associated with aircraft noise”. The letter further warned that FAA might be forced by new legislation to “… require compliance with noise standards as well as compliance with safety standards as a condition to the issuance of future type certifications”; and that the agency was concerned about “…the engulfing of lands immediately surrounding our airports by urban communities…”.22

The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-117) included a provision to study the effects of aviation noise on “economic loss and hardship suffered by homeowners as the result of the depreciation in the value of their properties…”.23 This legislation was intended to protect federally backed mortgages introduced by this landmark legislation. At the time of this writing, half a century later, the mandated report to the President has not been published.

2.1.6 Genesis of FAR Part 36

Faced with nationwide political dissatisfaction in the late 1960s with growing adverse community reaction to noise in airport environs, and fueled by substantial increases in numbers of jet aircraft operations, Congress amended the FAA’s charter in 1968 via an act “to require aircraft noise abatement regulation and for other purposes” (Public Law 90-411, 49 U.S.C. Section 1431). The amendment forced FAA for the first time to treat aircraft noise as a national, rather than a local issue.

FAA’s initial response to its new direction from Congress was issuance in 1969 of Part 36 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, describing noise certification requirements for source control of aircraft noise, as discussed in greater detail in Sect. 4. The regulation established noise limits by weight categories24 for new aircraft offered for sale in the United States. Setting noise limits for new aircraft types had little immediate effect on the composition of the existing fleet, however.

2.1.7 National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (“NEPA”)

Passage of Public Law 91-190, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, focused regulatory attention on prediction and disclosure of noise impacts associated with airport infrastructure projects. The act requires agencies proposing major federal actions to fully disclose to decision makers the effects of such actions on the environment. More than any prior legislative action, NEPA necessitated formalization of FAA’s methods of prediction and its interpretive policies regarding actual and prospective aircraft noise effects (“impacts”, in environmental impact assessment jargon) on residential populations around airports.

The Council on Environmental Quality, a body created by NEPA, required FAA to spell out its procedures for evaluating the significance of aircraft noise impacts. FAA’s response was Order 1050.1A, since amended five times at the time of this writing. The Order specifies “policies and procedures to ensure agency compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act”, as well as additional requirements imposed by the Council on Environmental Quality and Department of Transportation (DOT) Order 5610.1C, “Procedures for Considering Environmental Impacts”. NEPA is a procedural statute, however, rather than a substantive one. It requires FAA to take certain defined steps to assess the environmental impacts of a project, but does not in itself require the agency to meet any standard, nor to mitigate any noise impact that it discloses.

2.1.8 FAA’s Definition of the Significance of Noise Impacts

Among its numerous provisions, FAA Order 1050.1 formalizes a set of cumulative noise exposure thresholds for disclosing and mitigating changes in aircraft noise levels, and for defining the “significance” of aircraft noise exposure. The significance of noise exposure is most reasonably defined in terms of its effects on individuals and communities, and was in fact so defined in the original Community Noise Rating scheme (Rosenblith et al. 1953). Rosenblith et al. associated community response to aircraft noise exposure at a CNR value less than 100 (subsequently transformed into NEF units, and thence into units of DNL as Ldn = 65 dB), with “essentially no complaints”, even though such exposure might “interfere occasionally with certain activities of the residents” of communities with such exposure.

As noted in Sect. 3.1, FAA adopts the FICON (1992) position that “…the percent of the exposed population expected to be highly annoyed (%HA) [is] the most useful metric for characterizing or assessing noise impact on people”. One might therefore logically expect FAA to define the significance of aircraft noise exposure directly in terms of a percentage of the population describing itself as highly annoyed. FAA Order 1050.1, however, offers no such straightforward definition of the significance of noise impacts. Instead, it expresses the significance of noise exposure solely in terms of noise exposure itself, in units of decibels, not in units of noise effects.

FAA abandoned the original definition of aircraft noise impact (in terms of complaints) after the agency adopted DNL as its preferred measure of noise exposure as required by ASNA. The 1992 FICON curve (see Sect. 3.2.4) provides the only linkage between noise exposure levels and the noise effect that FAA considers the most appropriate measure of noise impacts – the prevalence of noise-induced high annoyance in a community. Since the prevalence of high annoyance that the FICON curve associates with (all) transportation noise exposure is 12.29% at Ldn = 65 dB, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that FAA considers that exposure of more than 12.29% of the residential population to highly annoying aircraft noise constitutes a “significant” noise impact.

The arbitrariness of considering 12.29% of the population as an indicator of the presence of significant aircraft noise impact is likewise difficult to escape. The definition begs a host of questions such as “What technical rationale supports consideration of a prevalence rate of high annoyance of 12.29% in a community as a threshold of significant noise impact?”; that is, “Why 12.29%, rather than 10 or 15%?”; “Why is there no rigorous, quantitative cost-benefit analysis to support FAA’s regulatory policy thresholds?”; “Why define a single, constant noise exposure level as significant in all communities when it is well known that communities with similar aircraft noise exposure differ greatly from one another in annoyance prevalence rates?” For that matter, “Why define the significance of noise impacts in units (i.e., DNL) that do not map uniquely into impact units (i.e., prevalence of high annoyance) in different communities?”

In lieu of any other definition of significance, FAA’s retention of a definition traceable to CNR = 100 serves as a de facto definition of a prevalence rate of high annoyance of 12.29% as a threshold of significance of noise impact.25 Current policies fail to address the large differences in annoyance prevalence rates at the same noise exposure levels in different communities in several ways:

  1. (1)

    A nationwide definition of the significance of aircraft noise exposure is often offered as a necessity to avoid the airline-dreaded “patchwork quilt” of regulation at different airports. Until FAA lost its charter to promote civil aviation in 1996, allowing different airports to establish different cumulative exposure thresholds of significant noise exposure would almost certainly have been challenged by aviation industry interests as inconsistent with FAA’s charter to promote civil aviation.26

  2. (2)

    Current policy tacitly assumes that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution principle of equal application of regulation of law requires a universal definition of significance of noise exposure in all communities. This is a somewhat simplistic position that is undermined by the fact that defining a unique sound-level threshold for noise exposure in all communities does not insure equal effect of regulation in many of them. (The FICON logistic regression curve greatly under- and over-predicts annoyance prevalence rates in any but a hypothetical, perfectly average community.) Further, the annual average day conditions for which DNL values are calculated may never be experienced on any actual days, compounding efforts to explain the nature of noise exposure modeling to the public.

    Both the responsibility and authority for land use controls are local, not federal, in any event. This leaves unanswered the question of why the aviation industry has long been resistant to a federal policy level lower than Ldn = 65 dB.

  3. (3)

    Current regulatory policy continues to ignore the role played by non-acoustic factors27 in determining the effects of noise exposure on communities. This position is a vestige of 1950s-era efforts to predict community response to noise exposure exclusively via measurement or modeling of noise exposure levels. The limitations of this position are now well understood, and formal, systematic analytic means (cf. Fidell et al. 2014) now exist for quantifying the net influence of non-acoustic factors on empirically observed annoyance prevalence rates.

2.1.9 Noise Control Act of 1972

The Noise Control Act of 1972 (Public Law 92-574) established as a matter of national policy that Americans should live free from noise that jeopardizes their health and welfare. The act was not concerned specifically with aircraft noise, nor even with transportation noise alone. Although the act was not concerned only with aircraft noise, it required FAA to develop rules and regulations regarding aircraft noise. Among the Act’s other provisions, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) was empowered to coordinate federal research and activities in noise control. From 1972 to 1980, this created bureaucratic tension between EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control (“EPA/ONAC”) and FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy (“FAA/AEE”). The clash between EPA/ONAC and FAA/AEE echoed their agencies’ respective charters: EPA/ONAC was established to protect public health and welfare, whereas FAA’s charter included promotion of civil aviation.

A 1973 EPA “Aircraft-Airport Noise Report to Congress” found that new regulations for flight and operational noise controls would be needed, including takeoff, approach and landing procedures, and minimum flight altitudes. Further, EPA called for amendments to FAR Part 36, as well as regulations to control and reduce noise emissions from existing aircraft. From the aviation industry’s perspective, EPA/ONAC’s establishment infringed on FAA’s former sole authority for regulating aircraft in a manner consistent with promotion of the industry.

Another Report to Congress mandated by the 1972 Noise Control Act (von Gierke 1973) evaluated noise metrics and criteria for “acceptable” aircraft noise levels. von Gierke (correctly) recognized that the controversial issue of aircraft noise impact analysis was not properly a purely technical issue, but “a social, ethical, and economic one: what percentage of the population shall be protected and at what price?” This depth of understanding has been absent from much subsequent policy debate.

The best-known report produced by EPA/ONAC was its 1974 “Levels Document”, whose full title (“Information on Levels of Environmental Noise Requisite to Protect Public Health and Welfare with an Adequate Margin of Safety”) reiterates the legislative language mandating the report’s production. The Levels Document introduced Day–Night Average Sound Level as the primary measure of environmental noise exposure, and identified an exterior level of Ldn = 55 dB (i.e., 60 dB, with a 5 dB margin of safety), and an indoor level of Ldn = 45 dB, as levels of environmental noise that posed no threats to health and welfare. The document took pains to emphasize that the noise exposure levels that it identified made no provision for economic or practical feasibility.

The tension between EPA/ONAC and FAA/AEE continued until the 1981 budget for EPA/ONAC was reduced to zero by the Reagan administration, without rescinding Public Law 92-574. This action created a paradox in which EPA’s statutory obligation to abate noise remains intact to this day, but the agency has been deprived of resources for carrying out its obligation. One practical consequence of the termination of EPA’s ability to act under the Noise Control Act was not merely that FAA regained exclusive custody of aircraft noise regulation, but also that state and local noise control efforts became pre-empted and de-funded (Shapiro 1992). Subsequent legislation (see below) further preserved FAA’s sole prerogative to regulate aircraft noise without explicit responsibility for protection of public health and welfare, until the 1996 Department of Transportation Re-Authorization eventually rescinded FAA’s charter to promote civil aviation.

2.1.10 Aviation Safety and Noise Abatement Act of 1979 (“ASNA”)

Congress enacted the Aviation Safety and Noise Abatement Act of 1979 (“ASNA”) to direct FAA “to establish a single system of measuring noise and the impact of noise on individuals to be used to measure noise at airports and their surrounding areas and to establish land uses for such areas which are compatible with such noise levels”. FAA eventually did so six years later by issuing its “Airport Noise Compatibility Planning” (14 CFR Part 150) regulation to implement ASNA.

The six-year delay from passage of ASNA in 1979 to issuance of FAA’s implementing regulation (FAR Part 150) in 1985 was due in part to bureaucratic skirmishing between EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control and FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy. As described above, the 1972 Noise Control Act had given EPA authority for regulatory oversight of transportation noise, and EPA’s 1974 “Levels Document” had adopted a particular noise metric (“Day Night Average Sound Level”, or DNL) as its preferred measure for characterizing community noise impacts. FAA resisted adoption of EPA’s community noise metric—itself borrowed from California’s aviation noise regulations – for years. FAA resisted acceptance of DNL as a measure of aircraft noise until forced by advances in understanding the predictability of aircraft noise annoyance (EPA 1973; Schultz 1978) to publish the much-delayed implementing regulation for ASNA.

2.1.11 Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 (“ANCA”)

Several U.S. airports adopted noise restrictions in the mid-1980s that had the potential to constrain operations. These included John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Long Beach Airport, and Santa Monica Airport (all in California) and Denver’s new airport in Colorado. A brief simple description of their programs is as follows:

  • John Wayne Airport: The Phase II Access Plan was the result of a stipulated settlement agreement signed in 1985. The access plan limits the number of commercial operations by noise class, establishes daytime and nighttime single-event noise limits at fixed noise monitor locations, sets an annual passenger limit, and establishes a night curfew for commercial operations and other controls on the development of the airport. It is often cited as the strictest noise control program in the United States.

  • Long Beach Airport: Long Beach Airport’s Noise Ordinance sets in place a nighttime curfew, single-event noise limits at fixed noise monitor locations, and an airport noise budget based on cumulative noise levels. It was also the result of a 1985 settlement agreement to ongoing litigation.

  • Santa Monica Airport: Santa Monica Airport is general aviation airport with a long history of noise litigation. A 1984 Settlement Agreement confirmed a nighttime curfew, single-event noise limits at fixed noise monitors, and limits on the aviation developments on the airport.

  • Denver: In 1988, the City and County of Denver, Colorado, wishing to develop a new airport in an adjacent rural county to replace its existing Stapleton Airport, was compelled to assure residents of neighboring Adams County that aircraft noise from operations at a new airport would never exceed cumulative noise levels in Adams County produced by 1987 operations at Stapleton airport. Adams County insisted on a formal inter-governmental agreement that included substantial payments that Denver would owe Adams County should long-term, cumulative aircraft noise from the new airport exceed “noise exposure performance standards” at 101 points on the ground in Adams County. In return for this binding contractual agreement, Adams County consented to annexation by Denver of about 50 square miles for construction of a new airport.28 At the time of this writing, DEN has been ordered to pay a cumulative total of approximately $75 million to satisfy its obligations under the inter-governmental agreement.

The implications of such agreements in the face of local opposition to such projects were of particular concern to the aviation industry. So too were the possibilities of exhausting runway capacity at busy airports,29 and operational restrictions on airport use, such as night curfews and caps on numbers of permissible flights. By the late 1980s, aviation industry interests were alarmed by the possibility of proliferation of such local government agreements beyond California and Colorado.

FAA, whose charter at the time included promotion of civil aviation, was not a signatory to the agreement between the two local government agencies in Colorado, and had no authority to prevent additional agreements of the same sort. As described by Suter (1991), industry lobbied vigorously for legislation to drastically increase federal control over airports, in order to effectively preclude airports and local governments from entering into future agreements limiting airport operations in any manner. ANCA, attached to a must-pass bill and hastily passed without benefit of public hearings in the heat of a budget crisis, was the result.

The major provisions of ANCA include (1) intentionally difficult, complex, and costly procedures in FAR Part 161 for seeking FAA approval of any compulsory operational changes (night curfews, caps on maximum noise levels, numbers of operations, noise-based landing fees, and the like); and (2) de facto veto power for airport users over proposed operational restrictions. ANCA also granted airports the authority to assess head taxes (“passenger facility charges”), while denying the same authority to local governments. As an ostensible concession to airport communities, the noisiest (“Stage 2”) commercial aircraft then flying were to be withdrawn from service a decade after passage of the act.30

2.2 Revocation of FAA Charter to Promote Civil Aviation

For decades, Congress viewed FAA’s maintenance of a light regulatory hand to avoid inhibiting the growth of commercial aviation as a proper interpretation of the dual mandate assigned to the agency in 1958. Congress eventually came to view the dual mandate as an inherent conflict of interest, however, and rescinded FAA’s dual mandate in the 1996 Department of Transportation Reauthorization Act. Public Law 104–264 relieved FAA of responsibility for promoting civil aviation, limiting the agency’s regulatory remit to maintenance of a safe and efficient national air transportation system.

Despite FAA’s loss of its charter to promote civil aviation, the agency’s pre-1996 policies on permissible levels of public exposure to aviation noise remain in effect, without revision. These policies effectively subordinate community to aviation industry interests, but may soon be revisited, as noted in the next sub-section.

2.2.1 FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018

The 115th Congress included several aircraft noise-related provisions in Public Law 115-254 (the FAA Reauthorization Act) at the urging of the 40-member Congressional Quiet Skies Caucus. These include a requirement for FAA to finish within one year its long-delayed evaluation of alternatives to the Day–Night Average Sound Level (DNL) and 65 dB threshold of significance of noise effects. The Act also directs FAA to consider diverging departure flight paths or lateral spacing to address community noise concerns. The Act further required FAA to undertake studies about health effects of noise on local communities, and thereafter to make recommendations within two years for revising land use compatibility guidelines.

Some of these requirements could in principle compel FAA to reconsider and clearly state its rationale for NEPA-related definitions of significant aircraft noise impact, as well as its eligibility criteria for acquiring private property and for participation in aircraft noise mitigation programs. Such reviews and policy updates have been very slow to develop.31 Airport-vicinity aircraft noise problems are sometimes re-cast as safety or efficiency issues. For example, the recent introduction of NextGen air traffic procedures were designed solely for efficiency, with no consideration of using these new procedures to mitigate noise (beyond the use of lower power approach profiles). Nor have any rigorous, quantitative cost–benefit analysis supporting FAA’s historical noise policy preferences been conducted in NextGen exercises.

Others of the aircraft noise-related requirements of the 2018 Reauthorization Act are wide of the mark. For example, the requirement for FAA to evaluate alternatives to DNL has been studied many times, including an exhaustive review of the topic a few years ago (Mestre et al. 2011). It is doubtful for reasons described in detail in Mestre et al. that yet another such study would support any different conclusions. In any event, the greater problem is not finding a holy grail of noise metrics that accurately and precisely predicts the prevalence of annoyance with aircraft noise in all communities, but rather a more fundamental lack of systematic understanding of noise-induced annoyance, and of how to incorporate such complexity into noise policy.

2.3 Other Developments Influencing the Growth of Aircraft Noise Exposure

Quite a few other federal legislative acts, administrative actions, and policy positions, as well as technical standards, although not aimed at disclosing or assessing aircraft noise impacts, nor at directly regulating aircraft noise, have nonetheless had important indirect consequences for the expansion and management of aircraft noise exposure in airport environs. These include provision of subsidies to the air transportation industry; officially sanctioned “land use compatibility” guidelines; regulations governing federally sponsored airport and airways facilities and airport revenues; and eligibility criteria for aircraft noise impact mitigation measures. Several of these are noted in the following sub-sections.

2.3.1 Air Mail Acts of 1925, 1930, and 1934

Scheduled daytime air mail service in the United States began under military auspices in 1918. It expanded into nighttime commercial service, managed by the Post Office Department, throughout the 1920s. A series of lucrative subsidies for mail carriage, as well as construction of emergency landing fields, beacons, and airfield lighting, were implemented specifically to foster the growth of civil aviation. The Contract Air Mail Act of 1925, which expanded the number of airmail routes and carriers, quickly attracted financial interests seeking subsidies to form private airline companies.

A small number of cartel-like holding companies, which controlled both airframers and transport companies, operated most of the airmail routes by the end of 1920s. This arrangement culminated in a scandalous “Spoils Conference” in 1930, at which the Post Office colluded with the cartels to discourage bidding by smaller airlines on future air mail contracts. The Air Mail Act of 1934 was intended to rectify such abuses. It eventually led to the formalization of regulated air carrier operations that lasted until the 1978 deregulation of the air transport industry. Regulated air carrier operations for years guaranteed airline profits, which in turn led to an industrial oligopoly, economically unjustifiable numbers of low load-factor flights at major airports, and excessive arrival and departure noise.

2.3.2 Airline Deregulation Act of 1978

Public Law 95-504, although not specifically noise-related, nevertheless played a major role in sustaining the growth of aircraft noise exposure in airport environs. By abolishing CAB’s role in approval of flight routes and by encouraging competition, it strongly supported continuing growth in annual numbers of aircraft operations. By replacing city-pair with hub-and-spoke flight routes, it concentrated the scheduling of operations at large hub airports. Morning and evening rush hours were replaced by as many as a dozen “banks” of flight operations at roughly hourly intervals throughout the day and evening. Deregulation also encouraged the growth of a new class of 50–70 passenger transports (regional jets, noisier than the short haul turboprops that they replaced, even if quieter than large jet transports) at many airports.

From a noise perspective, the net consequence of deregulation at hub airports was to periodically concentrate flight operations into recurring episodes of high runway demand throughout the day, thus putting increased pressure on peak airport runway acceptance rates. Airport managements at large hubs, eager to satisfy increased demand for air transportation services, responded by building new runways, terminals, gates, and complementary landside facilities. To residents of hub airport neighborhoods, the continual growth in operations ended mid-day relief from periods of heavy overflight noise.

2.3.3 FAA Support for Airport Planning Exercises

FAA controls access to funds needed to plan and construct airport infrastructure as a legacy of its former charter to foster the growth of civil aviation. FAA’s primary funding source for supporting airport development is not its annual Congressional General Fund appropriation, but rather the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, established under the Airport and Airway Development and Revenue Act of 1970. Because the Trust Fund accumulates nationwide aviation-related excise taxes on passengers, cargo, and fuel, and distributions from the fund inevitably favor some airports over others (at least in the short term), it may be argued that users and stakeholders, not taxpayers, pay for such capital-intensive airport improvements. It is nonetheless airport-vicinity residents, rather than other stakeholders, who suffer increased exposure to aircraft noise at airports which receive subsidies that attract increased flight operations.

Individual airports’ Master Planning exercises generally start with aviation activity forecasts32 and analyses of current or anticipated future discrepancies between airfield demand and capacity. Airport Master Plans typically evaluate alternative development options, identify associated capital improvement needs, review the environmental consequences of alternative developments, and develop a preferred airport layout plan. As described by FAA Advisory Circular 150/5070-6B, U.S. airports are eligible for substantial funding of the conduct of master planning exercises with twenty-year time horizons. (The long-term planning horizon gives airports a distinct advantage over community planning departments, whose interests do not often extend farther than the next election cycle.) Airport master plans may be updated as often as every five years to encourage airport-initiated development strategies – not to address regional air transportation needs, nor potential imbalances between airport desires for growth and local demand for air transportation services.

Funding the planning and implementation of airport growth is a legacy of FAA’s original charter to foster the growth of civil aviation. Since the 1996 loss of FAA’s charter to foster the growth of civil aeronautics, airport expansion projects can only be justified by arguing that they enhance the efficiency of the national air transportation system. Although some FAA construction grants include provisions to enhance the safety of ground operations, such grants may call into question the safety of existing airport designs.

From a community noise exposure perspective, nearly all major airport expansion projects (i.e., runway and terminal construction) facilitate growth in numbers of flight operations. Growth in air traffic may worsen aircraft noise exposure in already-affected neighborhoods, or newly expose other neighborhoods to aircraft noise. Grants that pay for major portions of airport infrastructure construction thus work at cross-purposes with the goal of reducing the numbers of airport neighborhood residents exposed to high levels of aircraft noise. As a rule, however, airline calculations of the profitability of adding flights at airports with lengthy flight delays do not take into consideration the costs of mitigating their noise impacts.33