By Khalida Sarwari
Some Sunnyvale residents and their neighbors in Mountain View and Cupertino have a common complaint: their family dinners and backyard leisure times are shattered by the noise of airplanes that fly directly overhead seemingly every two minutes 24/7.
Dozens of them packed a standing-room only town hall meeting Thursday night at the Sunnyvale Community Center to complain about planes that fly too low, too loud and too often in and out of the Bay Area’s airports.
“It’s hellish, frankly,” said one area resident of 26 years. Others griped about the process of lodging complaints, saying they don’t know who exactly to contact or whether anyone is even paying them attention.
The complaints about increased air traffic stem from a plan implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015 that rerouted incoming flights at airports around the country, including Mineta San Jose International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and the smaller ones in in Palo Alto and San Carlos. Dubbed NextGen, short for Next Generation Air Transportation System, the plan’s purpose is to reduce air traffic congestion by directing flights to approach airports along a fixed, narrow “superhighway” above parts of the Peninsula and South Bay at altitudes below 5,000 feet. As a result, slices of some cities bear the brunt of the noise.
Compounding the problem are weather conditions such as high winds, which cause some flights at Mineta to be rerouted. And then there was the six-month period from 2016 to 2017 where Surf Air, a California-based commuter airline, tested a new route that took planes toward Moffett Federal Airfield and over the Bay before landing at San Carlos Airport without notifying any of the affected communities.
Eileen Hails, a 19-year-old West Valley College student who lives in Sunnyvale’s Madera neighborhood, told a panel that included Sunnyvale Mayor Glenn Hendricks and some members of the City Council and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, how airplane noise has impacted her.
“I’m someone who sleeps very, very deeply; when I sleep you can’t wake me up,” she said. “I hear it going over my head at like, 6 in the morning, and I don’t wake up until 7 o’clock for school.”
Hails’ mother, Kelly Hails, a financial consultant who has lived in Sunnyvale more than three decades, said she too worries about the health impacts of aviation emissions.
“I think that we need to be aware that these houses, these schools that live below, those children are getting more emissions and air pollutants than the children in another neighborhood and I think that could have health effects,” she said. “From the beginning, Mr. Hendricks has said altitude is our friend and from the beginning I thought that’s not the answer. You would still have the same planes polluting the same houses all the time.”
Hendricks kicked off the meeting with a presentation on solutions proposed by those studying the issue, such as a request for proposals the city sent out for airport-grade noise measuring instruments. He also shared noise management recommendations in a report produced in May by San Jose’s Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on South Flow Arrivals, which he chaired. That report was subsequently sent to the FAA, which has exclusive authority over all air space, and is awaiting a response.
Khanna said he agrees with the complaints of some residents and the council that the FAA tends to pit cities against each other in the effort to address noise issues and he finds the agency’s inaction disappointing.
“Every week I ask my staff to summarize what people are writing about and airport noise is always in the top five of the issues in this district,” he said. “It’s something a lot of people care about; it’s not just a few folks.”
Sunnyvale and Cupertino recently joined a newly formed roundtable that aims to give member cities a united platform to negotiate with the FAA. The roundtable is comprised of representatives from several other affected communities, including Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Los Altos Hills, Campbell and Saratoga.
Residents air complaints about constant plane noise directly above them
