The sound of aircraft taking off from the local airport or flying over head can be quite a disturbance for people who live near an airport. The issue of noise pollution can cause an even greater concern for airport managers because it is a difficult and expensive issue to tackle. Many main airports in the United States are surrounded by cities and there has been a lot of concern from local communities of the noise disturbance. Unless you build an entire new airport in a different area, which requires large hurdles such as funding and the acquirement of property, the solutions to mitigating noise pollution at airports can be quite an inconvenience to airport managers. The current solutions involve different arrival and takeoff trajectories, sound barriers, nighttime curfews, and the restriction of flying times for loud aircraft (Visser & Wijnen, 2008). These mitigation strategies can lower the noise but also decrease the amount of flying time that can be conducted, which poses a problem for the high demand of flights and can cause a negative economic impact.
The best solution for noise pollution would be in the prevention of it by planning and designing an airport or aircraft to have the minimal amount of noise pollution. In Amsterdam, the Schiphol Airport designed a series of ditches and hedges near the runway that deflects the aircraft noise and has reduced the noise by 50% (Hansman, 2015). By building an airport with certain noise reducing features, there would be no decrease of flights or the issue of public demands to lower noise pollution. Regarding aircraft, designing them so that the engines produce less sound, such as hush-kits, is another way to tackle the issue at the planning and designing stage (Visser & Wijnen, 2008). A hush kit slows down the exhaust of an aircraft and is built with sound absorbing materials (Mola, 2005). By updating older aircraft with hush kits and designing newer aircraft with them, the other more costly and inconvenient solutions would not be necessary.
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Hansman, H. (2015, May 27). This Crazy Land Art Deflects Noise From Amsterdam’s
Airport. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved August 20, 2022, from
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/crazy-land-art-deflects-noise-from-
amsterdams-airport-180955398/
Mola, R. (2005). Hush Kits. Smithsonian Magazine.
Retrieved August 20, 2022, from
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/hush-kits-8747402/
Visser, H., & Wijnen, R. (2008). Management of the environmental impact at airport
operations. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. Retrieved August 19, 2022, from
https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/lib/
erau/reader.action?docID=3019371
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