Quote of the Week: "We were shocked to learn how much noise increase that there would be. I didn’t know it would cause high blood pressure or heart palpitations and possibly kill people, or make our children stupid." Pennsylvania's Delaware County Councilman Jack Whelan quoted in a story this week about community opposition to the FAA's corrupt Airspace Redesign Plan for the Eastern Region
Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter #415.........................................................................February 11, 2007 Past newsletters can be accessed at: http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/ACNewsmenu.htm The PASSUR airport flight tracking system at many major U.S. airports http://www.passur.com/sites.htm (you must have Java installed to view it). If you want to get the newsletter sent to you every week, sign up to AviationWatch. Bill Mulcahy rockaway@prodigy.net
N.Y. Times Does Story On Airspace Redesign Scheme!!!
As
Bill
Sees It: (Editorial):
Airspace Redesign - FAA's New Victims Make Their Own Noise!!! There seems to be a storm
brewing over the FAA's Airspace Redesign Plan as communities already hit with
aircraft noise find out it's going to be increased. Even the N.Y. Times, usually
one of the aviation industry's biggest pollution supporters, 
did a story (2/11/07
- The Roar Above: Remapping The Skies) on how people in the N.Y. City
metropolitan area are getting upset with the FAA's planned noise increases.
Obviously, the loss of peace and quiet is starting
to effect the homes of even some N.Y. Times executives. They should give Sen.
"Chuck" Schumer a call; he has been very effective at getting
protected status for the politically connected. Chuck Schemer has been one of,
if not THE biggest, supporters of increased aviation over the N.Y.
metropolitan area. When this creep was a congressman in my heavily aviation noise-impacted
community, he portrayed himself as a fighter against aviation expansion.
Now, as a senator he voted to remove longtime 
flights-per-hour
restrictions on New York City airports and he recently boasted about his role in
expanding aviation in upstate New York's
Stewart Airport. Even Communities Hours From
Airports Are Complaining!!! I particularly enjoyed the part of the Times story that talked about
complaints from Woodstock,
New York, which is a two hour drive from Manhattan. It seems that the nighttime
overflight noise from Newark Airport jets is disturbing the yuppies and artists
that live there. Maybe the artists noticed that there is something wrong
with a sky full of long white streaks instead of normal puffy clouds.
Web Site
Shows
Pictures Of
"Chemtrails" Near Stewart Airport,
New York!!! While I don't
buy into all the conspiracy theories about airplane "chemtrails," the
fact is that they do contain many toxic gases. While other segments of the
modern world industrial nightmare we live in are reducing greenhouse gases, the
aviation industry is increasing their contribution!!! 
They are not only
increasing the global warming problem, that is destroying the ice caps and
causing the sea level to rise, but they are also creating visual pollution. You
don't even have to live near an airport to see jet engine contrails instead of
clouds. Maybe some people aren't bothered by this, but I consider it just
another indication that we have allowed this industry to go to far. So maybe
the contrail conspiracy theorists aren't that far off with their assertions. Strange,
International "Anti-Noise" Group 
Carefully Avoids Mentioning Plane Noise!!! As
I browse the Internet I came across a very weird anti-noise group; founded in
the plane
noise hell of Queens,
New York City no less. This group has obviously went way out of its way to avoid the issue of
aviation noise!!! Now I know that aviation noise is not the only source of noise
pollution, but for a anti-noise group from airplane noise-polluted Queens to totally avoid it
was something
I had to look into. I noticed that even in their list of other noise groups they
show, the obviously dreaded words..."plane
noise"
were were carefully avoided being used. Is
This An Aviation Cabal Operation? Could this be an
Aviation Cabal (FAA/politician/aviation industry) plot to co-opt and divert the noise issue? It wouldn't surprise
me (especially
after I saw that N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg was mentioned) that the whole purpose
of this group is to divert attention from the airplane noise issue and focus it
on things like leaf blower and "boombox" noise!!! I
remember reading that Russia's Joe Stalin created his own counterrevolutionary group so he
could better keep track of those counterrevolutionaries who 
might oppose him. Perhaps Stalin's
organization influenced the aviation industry, and the their politician abettors like Mayor
Bloomberg. Maybe they created a anti-noise group for the express purpose of diverting attention away
from aviation noise. What better way to undermine aviation noise pollution
efforts than to create a noise group that avoids even recognizing aircraft noise?
I wouldn't be surprised if this group gets government grants to pay off the
political hacks that probably run it. I liked the NoiseOff youtube video though.
Of course, like every one of their web pages I saw, it didn't have or even
mention airplane noise. I wonder where this group is located as they
don't give their address or even say who are their officers. That's why
I called my web site the aviation conspiracy. There IS a conspiracy.
N.Y.
Times: The Roar Above Even Rural New York Skies: Nearly everywhere
you look in the Northeast, there are signs of increasing air traffic. Even in
remote rural areas, 100 miles from a major New York airport, the thunder of jets
routinely fills the air. In Woodstock, N.Y., more than two hours’ drive
from one of the three major airports in the New York City area, a jet passes
overhead every two to five minutes, residents say, since 1997, when the area
became part of a landing approach to Newark Liberty International Airport. To
the residents, many of whom moved to the Catskills to escape pollution and the
urban hullabaloo, the constant noise is especially irksome. “It’s like
having a highway over my head,” said Euphrosyne Bloom, a poet and filmmaker
who lives in West Saugerties, N.Y., near Woodstock. “They are loud enough
to wake you up in the middle of the night.” At 10,000 to 20,000 feet,
airliners seem small, but even the newer, more efficient jets can be loud.
Like sparrows towing a freight train, they rumble across the sky, leaving
feathery white contrails, ribbons of exhaust that slowly disperse and form their
own pseudo-cirrus clouds. In the minute or so it takes for a jet to pass
overhead, the sound gets louder, until finally it fades away, a thunder without
rain. Read story below or at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/11Rcover.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Pennsylvania
Community Meets With FAA Criminal Con Men: RIDLEY TOWNSHIP -- U.S. Rep.
Joe Sestak, D-7, of Newtown, moderated a public meeting Friday night at the
township’s municipal building on the FAA’s proposed Airspace Redesign 
plans
for Philadelphia International Airport that drew a standing-room-only crowd of
about 200 residents concerned about noise and air pollution, and safety hazards.
Sestak (picture at left) said it was the first time since the redesign was
proposed - which would direct flights over major portions of the county - that
the FAA airspace redesign manager was permitted to directly answer questions
from concerned citizens in any locale. "I think the best we can do is to
try to avoid litigation.. and consider directing flights down I-95 instead
over the heart of the county, Sestak told the packed audience in the municipal
building. He said county council has made its position very clear all along.
"This mitigation that they’re talking about - and you use that word very
loosely - what they’re talking about right now, the planes are over the
Delaware River until they hit an altitude of 3,000 feet, then they fan over
parts of Delaware County. "Under the current plan they will fan right away,
they’ll make a right turn immediately." Whelan indicated that FAA manager
Steve Kelley said the mitigation includes that some paths may be deleted and
planes may not fly at certain times. "But the bottom line is they’re
still going to fly over Delaware County - that is unacceptable to Delaware
County Council," Whelan said. Editor's Note: "Avoid
litigation!!! Rep. Sestek should be PUSHING LITIGATION!!! That's the only thing
that the FAA is afraid of. It's good that congressmen only have a two year term
of office. I hope newly elected Sestek doesn't get too confortable. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17835276&BRD=1675&PAG=461&dept_id=18171&rfi=6
New
Jersey Politicians To Vote On Dumping Airplane Noise On New York Communities!!!
TRENTON, N.J. -- New Jersey moved closer on Thursday to allowing the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey to buy Stewart International Airport in
Newburgh to help ease congestion in the region's skies and airports. A Senate
transportation panel approved changing New Jersey law to let the Port Authority
to enter into a $78.5 million, 93-year lease of the airport 60 miles north of
New York. It was the first legislative approval for the plan, which still
requires consent from the full Assembly, Senate and Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Bill
sponsor Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, mentioned the Atlantic City International
Airport and Trenton Mercer Airport as potential purchases by the Port Authority
in New Jersey, but Shawn K. Laurenti, the Port Authority's government and
community relations director, said nothing is imminent. Sarlo said he at least
hopes using Stewart will ease congestion at Bergen County's Teterboro Airport,
which has become one of the nation's busiest small airfields. Teterboro
Airport has been a longtime sore spot for neighboring residents, who have
complained of aircraft noise, exhaust odors and incidents involving planes
running off runways. Editor's Note: It is good to see that New Jersey's
newspapers ADMIT that they are going to dump aircraft noise, exhaust odors and
plane crashes on New Yorkers. Picture on the left is a plane that overshot
Teterboro Airport and crashed into a building.
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/SWF_PA_update-11Feb07.htm
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=561746&category=BUSINESS&newsdate=2/9/2007
Georgia:
Community Demands Savannah Airport 
To
Get "Mandatory" Routes!!! Hilton Head Island Airport could soon
get mandatory flight paths, which would stop planes from flying over homes and
could eliminate the noise and safety complaints that have hounded the airport in
recent years. At meeting with county and town representatives today, state and
federal aviation officials said they will begin drafting mandatory flight paths
that would require planes to fly over the water or other inhabited areas. The
airport currently has only voluntary flight paths that carry no penalties for
pilots who don't follow them. Some residents have complained that pilots ignore
those routes and take shortcuts over land, often buzzing loudly over homes. http://www.islandpacket.com/front/story/6358154p-5674053c.html
Illinois: Dueling Plans For
Proposed Peotone Airport: The Illinois Department of
Transportation on Friday submitted two layouts for the proposed airport near
Peotone to the Federal Aviation Administration, initiating what is likely to be
a lengthy review that will prove crucial to whether the project moves forward.
The layouts for an inaugural airstrip, one designed by IDOT and the other by a
commission created by U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) that wants to oversee
construction, will be reviewed by the FAA to determine which would work best,
said IDOT spokesman Mike Claffey. "It's in the hands of the FAA, and we're
hoping to hear which one is finally determined to be the most suitable,"
Claffey said. IDOT did not specify which it prefers, something the FAA hopes to
iron out with the state next week to ensure a manageable review, said FAA
Chicago regional spokesman Tony Molinaro. Typically, the FAA receives one
preferred layout for an airport, he noted. "The FAA is ready to work with
the state on its planning process to resolve this issue," Molinaro said. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/northshore/chi-0702100138feb10,1,5171604.story?coll=chi-newslocalnorthshore-hed
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Important Aviation News Stories This Week
HERE come the planes.
THE VIEW BELOW An air traffic controller, Scott Brancifort, working in the control tower at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.
Nearly everywhere you look in the Northeast, there are signs of increasing air traffic. Even in remote rural areas, 100 miles from a major New York airport, the thunder of jets routinely fills the air.
In Woodstock, N.Y., more than two hours’ drive from one of the three major airports in the New York City area, a jet passes overhead every two to five minutes, residents say, since 1997, when the area became part of a landing approach to Newark Liberty International Airport. To the residents, many of whom moved to the Catskills to escape pollution and the urban hullabaloo, the constant noise is especially irksome.
“It’s like having a highway over my head,” said Euphrosyne Bloom, a poet and filmmaker who lives in West Saugerties, N.Y., near Woodstock. “They are loud enough to wake you up in the middle of the night.”
At 10,000 to 20,000 feet, airliners seem small, but even the newer, more efficient jets can be loud. Like sparrows towing a freight train, they rumble across the sky, leaving feathery white contrails, ribbons of exhaust that slowly disperse and form their own pseudo-cirrus clouds. In the minute or so it takes for a jet to pass overhead, the sound gets louder, until finally it fades away, a thunder without rain.
Now, for many residents across the region, from Bergen County in New Jersey to Litchfield County in Connecticut, noise levels from aircraft could change significantly under a major reorganization of the highways in the sky that the Federal Aviation Administration is undertaking for the first time since the 1960s. It is called the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Airspace Redesign Project.
After nine years of study, planning and public hearings, the F.A.A. is expected to make a decision this spring on how planes will be routed from the 5 major airports and 16 satellite airports within a 31,000-square-mile area that stretches from Delaware to Connecticut. The F.A.A. says it is part of an effort to address airplane delays in the nation’s busiest airspace and to minimize conflicts among planes in flight so controllers will not have to issue so many instructions. The proposed changes — combined with the steady increase in air traffic at satellite airports like Stewart International in New Windsor, N.Y., near Newburgh, Trenton-Mercer County in West Trenton, N.J., and Westchester County Airport in White Plains — have led to the creation of community organizations concerned about noise.
But many of these groups and elected officials say the F.A.A. is not adequately addressing concerns about noise levels on the ground. Representative Steve Rothman, a New Jersey Democrat, says the F.A.A.’s redesign plan does not include any meaningful provisions to reduce the impact of noise on people living below flight paths. “I am aware that our traffic patterns should be redesigned to reduce flight delays and allow more flights in and out of some of the busier airports,” he said. “I don’t believe F.A.A. officials have tried hard enough to do that.”
There are now four alternatives, and depending on the choice by the F.A.A., some people will hear more noise. Others will hear slightly less. Over all, those already noisy areas will stay the same. For example, New Jersey residents in the western edge of Warren County and in part of Somerset County could find a moderate reduction in noise levels, according to an F.A.A. projection of decibel levels. But residents in Bergen, Rockland and Orange Counties could experience a significant increase in air traffic noise.
Noise levels could also rise in and around Stamford and Danbury in Connecticut as well as nearly a dozen towns in Westchester, including Briarcliff Manor and Peekskill, because of changes at La Guardia Airport. Already, air traffic from the Westchester airport has prompted town officials in Greenwich to demand a mandatory ban on departures and landings from midnight to 6:30 a.m. after a voluntary restriction on overnight flights failed.
The four plans under consideration include modifying existing air space, routing air traffic over the ocean, making additional airspace available for air traffic controllers, or taking no action at all. Given the increased volume of air traffic nationwide — 739 million passengers last year, with the number expected to climb to 1 billion passengers in 2015 — the overall situation in the air is only going to get worse; not just in suburbs close to New York City but for miles, far beyond the city’s borders.
In Connecticut, in northern Litchfield County, jets taking off from Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, north of Hartford, cut across the countryside with increasing regularity. “It can get pretty loud,” said Roberta Memoli, a bank employee who has lived on Fuller Mountain, just outside Kent, for 17 years. “There are times when it’s like a traffic jam.”
Some 75 to 100 jets going to and from Bradley Airport fly over the area daily, according to F.A.A. officials, although local residents claim there are more. This number does not take into account additional overflights originating in Boston or Europe, which turn onto the same route, Victor 405, a kind of highway in the sky that connects the Bradley Airport area with the next ground-based navigational aid in Pawling, N.Y.
HIGHWAYS in the sky are somewhat analogous to highways on the ground, with large main routes that branch off into minor roadways. This is what the F.A.A. is rewriting. In the Northeast, a sectional aeronautical chart, or road map of the sky, looks almost as webbed and complex as road maps of the ground.
Each spur of the highway below 18,000 feet is known as a “victor airway.” Above 18,000 feet, they are called “jet routes.” The Catskill Mountains approach pattern that prompted citizen consternation is known as Victor 213. The takeoff pattern, Victor 405, which cuts through the Litchfield Hills, was changed in 1997 as part of a reshuffling of the Boston airspace, to accommodate many more planes.
“Aircraft flights are forecast to grow,” said Steven Kelley, the project manager of the F.A.A.’s airspace redesign project. “So there will be additional noise impacts.”
Unlike roadways on the ground, the virtual highways in the sky are three dimensional. This vastly complicates the job of the controllers and air traffic planners. For wherever you have heavy traffic, in and out, both horizontal and vertical separation of the traffic flows must be provided for. To airspace designers, controllers and the F.A.A., the paramount issue is separation — that is, keeping airplanes separate from one another in the air. This is their operational imperative, their higher calling.
After separation, the goal of air traffic professionals is efficiency, or the need to minimize delays, which any frequent flier can attest are endemic to the system.
It is therefore not surprising that the F.A.A. does not consider ground noise the first priority in its planning. Mr. Kelley said that the government’s current efforts are focused on two goals: safety and efficiency. If some noise mitigation were to result from the redesign of the airspace, that would be all to the good — but it would be, at best, a side issue.
Mark Allan Guiod, the air traffic manager at Bradley Airport, said that annoyance levels on the ground are generally not part of his team’s mission. “When we are dealing with traffic flows, we are not looking at what’s underneath them,” he said in his office at the Bradley control tower. “If you don’t like the noise now, think of the noise when two planes hit each other.”
Some opponents of aircraft noise have suggested rotating the traffic on victor airways, so that long-suffering areas can enjoy respites. They also propose rerouting planes along “transportation corridors,” places where the pattern of development has led to pre-existing noise levels that would mask aircraft sounds and not detract from the quality of life. They offer as an example the New York Thruway, with its booming truck traffic.
But such suggestions present their own problems, air traffic professionals contend, and do not come to terms with the three-dimensional structure of the system — and the cascading effects of delays at any one point along the line.
In New Jersey, community opposition to Newark Liberty International Airport operations has long been organized. The New Jersey Coalition Against Aircraft Noise has proposed that departing Newark westbound airplanes first wheel out over Raritan Bay, then turn around after gaining altitude to proceed across land. Early in the process, however, the F.A.A. has discounted this “ocean routing” option in its planning, saying it would not eliminate delays. Newark airport consistently leads the nation in delays.
From the standpoint of the airline industry and the F.A.A., it is much easier to make changes in the cockpit than in air routes. One answer to growing airplane noise may be technological: getting planes higher faster. Also, newer aircraft are less noisy.
In the Woodstock area, residents formed a group called Ulsterites Fight Overflight Noise and campaigned for more than a decade to get the F.A.A. to alter Victor 213. At first, Joyce Timpanelli, 70,a retired English professor who lives in Woodstock, said she felt she was getting the runaround from the F.A.A. But eventually the group achieved a 30 percent to 40 percent reduction in airline overflights.
“We held meetings,” she said. “My husband and I kept a log, with a stopwatch, tracking flights overhead. I gave something like 10 years of my life to this. It is still terrible.”
For the airspace redesign project, the F.A.A. will hold additional public hearings in the spring that focus on noise concerns, according to Jim Peters, a spokesman for the agency. In August, he said, the agency will issue its decision.
Email
From Arline Brozaft, Aviation Activist
: I am a member of
Congressman Sestak's (picture left) advisory committee and served
on the panel in Philadelphia this past Friday. There were about 200 residents
in attendance who came to speak out against proposed FAA Airspace Redesign -
they were protesting the resulting increase in noise over their homes if
Redesign went into effect and were also concerned about safety and air
pollution.
Mr. Steve Kelley of the FAA made a presentation and then answered the questions
raised by the audience. These questions, relevant and on target, were asked
in a polite manner and Mr. Kelley answered all of them politely but not
necessarily to the satisfaction of the audience. Congressman Sestak stressed
that
he would like to work out something with the FAA to address the concerns of his
constituents and promised the audience that he and his advisory committee
would continue to talk to Mr. Kelley and other interested parties. Congressman
Sestak is also aware that the Proposed Airspace Redesign, if adopted, will
adversely affect residents in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware. He
and his advisory committee also commented on the need for this country to
develop an overall transportation policy, not policies that separately address
air, rail and highway issues. Arline L. Bronzaft
