Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter #463........................................................................January 13, 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
Quote of the Week: "The FAA plan will do more harm to the city of Elizabeth than any terrorist incident," comment from Elizabeth, New Jersey Mayor Chris Bollwage in a Associated Press story this week on increased noise impacts from the FAA's Airspace Redesign scheme
FAA Airspace Redesign Equated With Terrorism!!!
As
Bill Sees It (Editorial): Airspace
Redesign Increased Noise Pollution IS Terrorism!!! I totally agree with
the Elisabeth, New Jersey mayor's description of the FAA's plan as
"terrorism." I would even go further. A terrorist bomb is usually only
a one time event, while increased aviation noise roaring day and NIGHT over
communities is endless torture. This kind of torture on human beings should
be banned, not increased!!! "Our" federal government, has
developed noise weapons for the battlefield has also been accused of using noise
as way of torturing e
nemy
prisoners!!! Perhaps they used the FAA to help develop their plan. The FAA, however, cares little for the health
and welfare of American citizens as the push their pro-aviation industry airport
capacity increasing scheme down the throats (and ears) of their victims.
They are rushing to implement their scheme
despite legal challenges and
before the GAO study of the noise and health impacts is done. I know
what its like to be a victim of an FAA route changing scheme. When I lived in
Rockaway, New York City, the FAA 
selected
my community as the "preferred" late night overflight route for
nighttime planes using unscientific, phony justifications to back up their
decision. At the same time they were telling other communities how they were
solving their increasing late night aircraft noise problem. This is how this
vile agency works. Calls For Aviation
Committee Head To Resign!!! I see a Rockland County, New York legislator
has called for the resignation of House Transportation Committee and the House
Subcommittee on Aviation former chairman, John Mica. Personally I would like
to see him put in jail. If we ever get a real congressional ethics committee
operating in Washington I believe he would be. Aviation activists should look
closer into this guy's activities, and not just his pushing aviation expansion
on American's. He's as phony as his bad hairpiece. One news story described
Mica as a "career mouthpiece for the FAA and the rich aero community, Mica
recognizes no value beyond the smell of spent jet-fuel and the crinkled-paper
sound of a handed-over almighty Dollar." Of
course now that the democrats have taken over this committee there has been no
policy changes. Everyone concerned about aviation expansion should quit
the corrupt democrat and republican parties.
New
York Environmentalists Call For Representative John L. Mica (R-Fl.) To Resign
From The House Transportation Committee And Aviation Subcommittee!!!
Rockland County, NY - January 7, 2008: Fed-up with “stone-cold
anti-environmentalists” threatening their homes with unrelenting commercial
jumbo-jet overflights, and incredulous that an eight-term Congressman would
support the “already-failed, chronically-unsafe regime” of FAA Acting
Administrator Robert A. ( “Bobby” ) Sturgell, New York environmental group
“Quiet Rockland” has called for the resignation of hard-core extremist
conservative Representative John L. Mica ( R-Fl. ) from the U.S. House
Transportation Committee and the House Subcommittee on Aviation. Said John J.
Tormey III, an attorney with “Quiet Rockland”: “It’s time for Mica to
flake himself off from the American political landscape.
His harmful transportation legacy 
includes
the Minnesota bridge collapse and Alaskan “bridge to nowhere” fiasco each
occurring under his watch. Mica’s bald plugs for the FAA and aviation
over-expansionism are as tiresome as an “Apply directly to the forehead!” TV
commercial – as well as hazardous to innocent American people. Through
long-distance cyber-contribution to the political process, ‘Quiet Rockland’
will afford every assistance to help the informed electorate in Florida’s
Seventh District chip Mica and his cronies away from elected office in November.
Any vote ‘for Mica’ would be a vote for Mica’s vacuous petro-plastic
culture. Yet aviation safety and the environment require an approach far less
inanimate, and one far more sentient and human. John L. Mica is incapable of
anything so organic. As career mouthpiece for the FAA and the rich aero
community, Mica recognizes no value beyond the smell of spent jet-fuel and the
crinkled-paper sound of a handed-over almighty Dollar. We embrace the wisdom of
clean open space and peace-and-quiet, in lieu of further Mica-forced inhalation
of fossil-fuel for the sake of someone else’s quick-and-dirty paper profit.
The governmental function of objective aviation regulation must be reinstituted.
The stewardship currently feigned by Sturgell and Mica must be scissored out.
Costs of their ouster should now be for the airlines to pay. http://media-newswire.com/release_1059362.html
Greenwich,
Connecticut Rethinks FAA Lawsuit!!! Greenwich, which once helped lead the
fight against the Federal Aviation Administration's controversial aircraft
rerouting plan, might be getting cold feet over a lawsuit it and several
neighboring municipalities filed against the agency. "At this point in
time, I personally have a number of reservations about continuing the
lawsuit," said Erica Purnell, co-chairman of the Selectmen's Advisory
Committee on Aircraft Noise. Along with 10 other municipalities and the state
itself, the town sued the FAA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second
District of New York in early November over its new flight paths over Fairfield
County, arguing that the agency failed to take residents' noise and other
environmental concerns into account when developing the plan. But a number of
the committee's members, which has advised the Board of Selectmen on the matter,
have raised concerns about the coalition's ability to win the legal battle and
are issuing warnings about committing more taxpayer money to the effort. http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/local/scn-gt-a1faa1.8jan08,0,2617984.story?coll=green-news-local-headlines
Editor's Note: It looks as if the FAA strategy is working, at least in
Greenwich, Connecticut. When the FAA route change gets going full blast they'll
be sorry they didn't fight it tooth and nail.
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Important Aviation News Stories This Week
NEW YORK (AP) — For years, jets taking off from Newark Liberty International Airport have performed an act of mercy as they roar south.
Moments after leaving the ground, the planes bank left, out over an industrial port district, and away from the residential streets of Elizabeth, N.J., the working-class city that sits right up against the busy airport.
Maneuvers like this are a common method of sparing citizens from the window-rattling noise of jets passing overhead.
But now such practices are being dropped in some places in the Northeast as part of a federal plan to ease record flight delays. And some neighborhoods that fear they will be subjected to more noise are fighting back in court.
On Dec. 19, the Federal Aviation Administration began its first overhaul in decades of the jet routes that crisscross the country's most congested airspace — a 31,000-square-mile area around New York and Philadelphia.
The corridor has been criticized for years as one of the worst problem spots in the nation's beleaguered air traffic system. Most the paths were laid out in the 1960s. Some date from the earliest days of air travel, and airlines have been complaining for years that they are horribly outdated.
Over the next five years, the FAA will be rolling out new routes it believes can cut flight delays by as much as 20 percent. Some aviation experts say improvements are essential; nearly three quarters of all flight delays nationally are caused by backups in New York and Philadelphia.
But a closer look at the revamped flight routes shows that the changes will lead to more noise for tens of thousands of people, many of whom are already subject to the whine of jet engines because of their proximity to airports.
In Elizabeth, N.J., the changes will mean that some planes will fly straight over the center of the city.
"The FAA plan will do more harm to the city of Elizabeth than any terrorist incident," said Mayor Chris Bollwage.
"We live next to the airport, so we have to take some noise," he said. But the FAA plan, he added, stretches fairness. "There are places in town where you can touch the tires."
At least 12 lawsuits have been filed so far in an attempt to stop the plan. Congress ordered the Government Accountability Office to examine the FAA's method for choosing the new routes. Top lawmakers from several states have demanded changes. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., threatened to block Senate confirmation of acting FAA administrator Robert Sturgell if the agency doesn't halt implementation.
So far, the complaints haven't stopped the FAA. Last month, the agency began phasing in new traffic patterns at the Newark and Philadelphia airports that allow departing planes to fan out in several directions as they climb, rather than stick to a single path.
In theory, the change will allow more takeoffs per hour, but outside Philadelphia it will also mean more planes over a cluster of suburbs in Delaware County, just west of the airport.
Since the first of the changes went into effect in Philadelphia on Dec. 19, the airport said it has been getting three complaints a day about noise, compared with about one every two days in the previous three months.
FAA officials say the airspace redesign will actually lead to a reduction in noise for a majority of people, largely because the changes will allow planes to fly at higher altitudes.
But sound-modeling data released by the agency reveals that the gains and losses will not be spread evenly. Loud neighborhoods will, on average, be getting louder, while the biggest improvements will be in places that aren't that noisy to begin with.
According to the FAA, an additional 30,600 people will find themselves living in neighborhoods where the average daily aircraft noise level is 60 to 65 decibels — considered the high edge of tolerable for a residential area.
Noise at that level is far from earsplitting; experts say it is less than residents might experience if they lived next to a busy road. But it is loud enough that people have to raise their voices as a plane passes overhead.
The number of people living in areas where the average decibel level is between 55 and 60 will rise by 79,813.
The big losers will be a few communities near Newark and Philadelphia that already hear a good deal of airplane traffic because of their proximity to the airports. There will also be a slight to moderate increase in noise in parts of Morris and Sussex counties in northern New Jersey.
The big winners are people who live a little farther away, and now hear a medium amount of noise.
By 2011, the FAA estimates that there will be nearly 728,650 fewer people living in areas where the daily noise level is between 45 and 55 decibels — louder than a refrigerator hum, but quieter than two people talking in a room.
Many of those people are in a corridor running southwest from New Brunswick, N.J. There will also be noise benefits in pockets of densely populated Essex County, N.J., which includes Newark, and parts of northeastern Pennsylvania.
The opposition is not just coming from areas likely to see big changes.
Fourteen municipalities in western Connecticut have been trying to get the plan blocked, largely because it will shift an arrival path for New York's LaGuardia Airport eastward, creating what the FAA says will be slightly more noise for some towns in Connecticut.
"It's a quality-of-life issue," said Rudy Marconi, a spokesman for the Alliance for Sensible Airspace Planning and a selectman in Ridgefield, Conn., 40 miles northeast of LaGuardia. "Will I get used to it? Probably. But should I have to get used to it?"