One of the factors that made leaving Anchorage during the summer for this trip, was the knowledge that the Anchorage airport would continue with construction on the North-South runway, diverting all flights to take off over Anchorage. Last summer it was three months of constant noise. This summer is scheduled from May to October.
Fortunately, it hasn’t been as bad as last summer so far. Planes took off on a flight line just south of our house, so we heard most of them. Those heading south than veered in that direction, and those heading north veered over our house, some a little further east, a few just west. The constant rumble and sometimes roar, was a serious annoyance.
I was surprised - I should know better than to be surprised - by the vehemence of some online comments at Next Door and letters to the editor that made light of the noise and attacked the complainers as whiners. After all, it’s your airport, they’d mock.
Clearly these were folks who have trouble empathizing. If it wasn’t a problem for them, anyone who complained was a weenie. But what I wanted to know was whether they just lived where there was less jet noise, or they endured the same decibels as I did but it didn’t bother them.
I also was curious about what kind of disturbance would start THEM whining. Gun control laws? Lack of alcohol? Drivers going the speed limit? Losing at anything?
But this last week it seems the planes have been moving back to last summer’s pattern. I was at a Community Council meeting at which Jim Szczesniak spoke briefly. He’s the guy who worked at a high level at O’Hare until about 10 years ago when he took over his grandmother’s T-shirt company. It seemed a strange career move that made me wonder why Alaska hired him to run the airport and whether this runway project is his ticket out of here. In any case, he’s full speed ahead, people with noise problems be damned. He did say that pilots this summer have been requested to fly slower until they reach - if I recall correctly - 4000 feet. That was supposed to make things quieter. And maybe accounted for the planes who flew farther east (than my house) before turning. But it was at the pilots’ discretion.
I’ve realized though, in the last few nights that planes have been waking me at all hours of the night. So if I’m going to miss a month summer in Alaska, this is a good summer to do it.
Where I live Steve (Oceanview) even before the repairs sometimes I could hear planes taking off at night as well as the Alaska Railroad train blowing its whistle and when the wind is blowing right I can hear the pops from the shooting range. They built five houses in the last two years on our street with all the noise of digging foundations, framing and roofing so I am no stranger to noise. The planes are coming over the south side now.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in the lower 48 they had a saying ‘temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement’ about improvements to the infrastructure, kind of like when they redid the New Seward Highway for a couple of years. Normally it would take me 15 minutes to get home, during the construction, it took a half hour. It was a pain but things are better now. I seem to remember a picture of your porch being replaced; it looked like they were jack hammering it. I am sure that was not pleasant for your neighbors (‘temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement’).
I remember your solution last year was maybe to close the airport at night (all those people here and at the planes destinations could go on unemployment for the summer) for you. I always wonder about THEM, privileged folks who think that things like this should be in someone else’s backyard. Roads and improvements just drop from the sky with no effect on THEM. Did you ever wonder Steve when YOU are flying in and out of airports about the noise people on the ground have to deal with?
I am still waiting for the numbers of the carnage from last summer’s closing, work hours missed, emergency room visits and hearing loss.
I have empathy, but not much sympathy for people who use a venue then complain about maintaining it.
Finally that was a cheap shot at the airport director.
Oliver