"Noise Matters" is a periodic report issued by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, and their Airport Noise Mitigation office, directed by Dan Frazee. It is also a part of the airport's corporate culture, mindset, motto, and mantra.
During 2009, out of 199,209 total flight operations, a decline of 11.9% from 226,141 total flights in 2008, the Airport Authority had only 13 violations of the San Diego International Airport's (SAN) 11:30 P.M. to 6:30 A.M. curfew.
Of these 13 violations, 7 of them have resulted in fines, 3 are pending decision by the Curfew Violation Review Panel (CVRP), and 3 have been excused due to mitigating circumstances, such as lightning strikes, other atmospherics, or fuel truck delays.
CAPTIONS: (ABOVE LEFT) Dan Frazee (Photo Credit - Joel Siegfried); (LOWER RIGHT) Aircraft landing at San Diego Int'l Airport (Photo Credit - Google Images)
A video follows this article showing the Airport's 2009 Summer Intern Program.
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According to Frazee, the trend in curfew violations is heading lower. "In 2005 we had 41 violations resulting in 29 fines, which was a high. That number dropped to 27 violations and 16 fines in 2006," Mr. Frazee stated to the San Diego Airport Examiner in a telephone interview.
The turning point was a revised and progressively higher fine structure that went into effect four years ago. Under the new system, a first offense costs $2,000, a second compliance violation is $6,000, and afterwards, fines will cost a carrier $10,000 per incident.
"In the past, airlines wrote this off as the cost of doing business. Now they do a benefit analysis, sharpen their pencils, and look at the bottom line more," Frazee said.
He also added that aircraft causing the most noise complaints, outside of curfew violations, are a Boeing 727 operated by Capital Cargo, a stage 2 aircraft referred to ironically as a "Whisper Jet", and various McDonnell Douglas MD-80 stage 3 equipment operated by American Airlines, who eventually will phase them out.
CAPTIONS: (ABOVE LEFT) Boeing 727-200 (Photo Credit - Wikipedia); (LOWER RIGHT) Brian Towle, JetBlue San Diego General Manager (Photo Credit - Joel Siegfried)
Delays are often caused by waiting for equipment to arrives from the East Coast, where bad weather
has a large impact. After landing in San Diego, the aircraft has to be cleaned, refueled, and boarded by passengers for the return flight, where it is used for the airline's other flight operations the following day. It is a passenger convenience and cost savings, to take off beyond the 11:30 P.M. curfew, rather than put customers up overnight and pay for their room and board.
An airline's station manager or operations personnel will make the decision to break curfew restrictions, or to cancel the flight. It is never left to the aircraft's pilot in command to make that call.
Only one carrier, JetBlue, keeps an extra aircraft and flight crew on standby at Long Beach Airport, as an "heir and a spare" as the British would say, to fill in for West Coast equipment problems. Even so, the airline was fined $2,000 on July 31, 2009 for a curfew violation. Other carriers fined in 2009 include Stryker Corporation, Helinet Corporation, Helicopter Aviation, and Clay Lacey, all general aviation companies, $2,000 for each; and Delta Airlines, two incidents which resulted in $2,000 and $6,000 separate fines.
Three additional cases will be reviewed and decided on February 3, 2010 at 2:00 P.M. by the Curfew Violation Review Panel (CVRP), at an open meeting held on the third floor of the airport's Commuter Terminal.
Current members of the CVRP include Angela Shafer-Payne, VP for Airport Authority Planning, Bryan Enarson, VP for Development, and Brent Buma, VP for Marketing and Communications.
Tell us your thoughts about the curfew and airport noise. Please leave comments below or by email and subscribe to get future updates.
Comments
Enjoying your articles, keep them coming! :-)
I feel for anyone who lives too close to an airport or has to listen to airplane noise. We're stuck listening to the train horn non-stop every night and had to buy an air purifier just to drown out the noise.
Would hate to live near a big airport. We lived in the flight pattern for private planes in Santa Fe. Sometimes I thought they were coming through the roof any minute.
This is really a problem especially when the airport is built after the houses, changes its flight pattern, or the number of flights. I have been anchored in bays near airports and it can be pretty loud. Of course, if I'm the one who has a flight delayed and then can't take off because of curfew, maybe I'll be less sympathetic. A conundrum.
It's tough living near an airport, indeed. Westchester County, NY had a similar problem with flight noise and patterns from the county airport. I'm sure many airports have had the same problem.
Thank you Joel for the write up! I was SO hoping that we would not have any violations last year as the Airport recognizes the air carriers who do not have any violations with an aircraft picture / plaque at an awards presentation in January. Maybe 2010 will be our year!!!
Brian
Regarding a comment by Brian M. Towle below:
You're most welcome, Brian. Sometimes curfew violations are unavoidable and beyond your control, when you have to depend on equipment arriving from JFK, where there are often weather and other delays, especially now that they will soon be resurfacing one of their major runways.
I hope that 2010 is a great year for you and JetBlue.
Thanks for this report...
Considering the amount of traffic in and out of your airport, that's appears to be a very reasonable performance level ( only 13 total violations). Great, thorough read again, Joel..
Cheers
I had a friend who used to live right by San Diego airport. His big, beautiful window faced the runway and you could see all of the airplanes come in and out. You could hear it, but within a few days of being there, it just became white noise and it was my favorite of all places he lived. Good luck to Jet Blue...this is a great article.
Interesting to see how this works. I did not know much of the logistics described in the article.
With airports comes noise, but the new generation of aircraft are quieter and climb faster, so fewer people are affected. Excellent report!
Thanks for sharing these interesting statistics with us, Joel. It's heartening to see the PTB put enough pain into the punishment to make a prohibition meaningful.
Another well reported, thorough article from the San Diego Airport Examiner. Thanks!
Danny! Capital Cargo 727 has stage 3 hushkit retrofitted. Stage 2 aircraft stopped operating a decade ago. Go read up on it at more reliable source like wikipedia. San Diego Port Authority should have a position of fact checker for jekoff noise mitigation specialist opening soon.
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