Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Air Traffic: Planes on final approach to San Jose International Airport streak over Willow Glen in a time-lapse photo taken on a Friday evening. A watchdog group reports a rise in noise complaints from the Willow Glen area.
Airport officials scratch heads over increased airplane noise complaints
Citizen's group says it has been getting more calls than usual about noisy planes overhead
By Kate Carter
Willow Glen residents may be hearing things roar in the night, but San Jose International Airport officials aren't exactly sure why.
Airport representatives cite a number of explanations for an increase in airplane noise over homes in Willow Glen, but have no real solutions.
More Willow Glen residents have been contacting Citizens Against Airport Pollution about airplane noise above their homes in the past months than they did three to five years ago, said CAAP Chairman Kenneth Hayes.
"We've had an increasing number of phone calls from Willow Glen residents about noise," he said.
CAAP is a 10-year-old watchdog group of residents primarily in the Rose Garden neighborhood of San Jose. They are affected by the noise and car traffic from their proximity to San Jose International Airport and are particularly concerned about the airport's expansion and its noise control program, commonly known as the airport curfew.
Hayes said that planes don't fly over his house, but they do fly over Willow Glen on their approaches to or takeoffs from the airport in the southerly direction.
To find out why Willow Glen residents are experiencing an increase in airplane noise, Hayes said he talked to flight standards district officer Terry Christenson, who told him the reason may be two-fold.
The glide slope monitor, a device which helps pilots to maintain the angle of their approach to land at San Jose International, has been deactivated for the past several months because of the expansion construction at the airport. Without the monitor, pilots choose their own angle of entry and may be coming in lower to the ground, or making adjustments to their slope. This could create more noise in the residential neighborhoods along the southern entry path near Willow Glen. Hayes said that Christenson told him the monitor would not be operational until the middle of 2001.
Also, pilots are allowed to vary their outflight pattern after they have achieved a certain altitude and if they have sufficient visibility. This would permit pilots to change direction over Willow Glen and cause a larger disturbance.
Hayes personally experienced such a directional change as a passenger on a flight coming into the airport from the south. He said the plane was coming in over the county fairgrounds at about 5,000 feet, when, instead of landing, the pilot pulled up and circled around the neighborhoods.
Hayes said he was concerned about the noise such a maneuver would create for nearby residents. After everyone had cleared the plane, Hayes said he went and spoke to the pilot, who told him congestion on the runways prevented him from landing and that it happened to him about once a month at San Jose International.
Hayes later spoke to Christenson about the incident who gave him some explanations, but none that Hayes found satisfactory.
"As far as I'm concerned, none of them reassured me that it would never happen again," Hayes said.
Christenson did not return phone calls for comment.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Director's Chair: Air traffic controllers Fred Steinberg, left, and Steve Henson direct several hundred arrivals and departures during a typical day at San Jose International Airport. About 500 to 1,000 planes a day land and take off at the airport.
However, the airport's air traffic control tower manager, Patricia Meza, said that the increase in noise may have more to do with bad weather and winds than airport construction.
She said that more planes than normal have been taking off to the south in recent months, which could be the reason for an increase in complaints by residents south of the airport.
Meza said that the glide slope monitor wouldn't significantly affect pilots' approaches to the airport and thus noise shouldn't increase without it. She also said that the monitor is due to be reactivated as soon as December, once it's been flight-checked.
Regardless of the reason for the noise, residents aren't happy about it.
"Planes are becoming more numerous and noisier," said former San Jose Mayor Janet Gray Hayes and wife of Kenneth Hayes. "Something's happening over in Willow Glen. But, according to the airport, everything is hunky-dory."
She said that CAAP is also receiving more reports of planes overhead during the curfew hours.
The airport curfew restricts certain airplanes from taking off or landing at the airport between 11:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The planes that are affected are classified by weight and include most major commercial and cargo planes, said airport operations supervisor Enrique Guadiamos.
Planes are allowed to break curfew for reasons outside the control of the pilot, such as weather, traffic, or air traffic control delays, or for mechanical reasons. In these instances, the pilot must inform the airport of the reason for violating the curfew in order to be considered compliant.
Guadiamos said planes flying to and from San Jose International during the curfew hours actually decreased over the summer. He said between July and September there were 161 compliant operations and 38 noncompliant operations during the curfew, whereas from April to June, there were 202 compliant operations and 40 noncompliant operations.
Guadiamos also said that from July to September last year, there were 185 compliant operations and 20 noncompliant operations.
He said there has been an increase in noncompliant operations during the curfew because there have been more cases in which the airport could not verify if a flight was in compliance or not.
When an airline doesn't comply the first time, an airport official meets with the pilot on arrival and informs him or her of the curfew. The city attorney's office takes over if the airline persists in noncompliance.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and the owner and operator of his GulfStream V jet, Wings and a Prayer Inc., are involved in a lawsuit with the city of San Jose over the enforceability of the curfew. The GulfStream V is prohibited from flying during the curfew hours, but Ellison's jet has a number of documented violations. The suit is scheduled to be heard in federal district court in January, city attorney Rick Doyle said. He also said that Ellison has had only one curfew violation since their legal problems began.
Regardless of the protocol of flying during the curfew hours, however, airplane noise continues to affect residents.
"With the compliance or noncompliance, it still affects people at night," said Enrique Guadiamos airport operations supervisor with the airport. "It's still something we have to work on with operators here."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
