Aircraft noise from the Twin Cities' MSP International Airport increased 30% from 2014 to 2016, according to analysis of airport authority data. The hardest hit community is St. Louis Park, where the number of people significantly impacted by aircraft noise increased 177% in that timeframe.

This information comes to light at the Federal Aviation Administration is thought to be preparing its return to MSP, in order to again attempt to deploy its NextGen flight departure technology. Here we provide evidence of how the FAA uses NextGen to  "hide" harmful levels of noise over new populations with the help of bogus standards, unreleased data, and the willful avoidance of "unhelpful" analyses. We believe the FAA will follow the same game plan here in the Twin Cities, and we aim to prevent that. 

In this report we call for a clear, reasonable target for the reduction in aircraft noise based on a relevant benchmark. We call on the airport authority to provide greater transparency on this issue by regularly releasing data that they already produce, but do not disseminate. Finally, we call upon Governor Dayton to step up his game on the issue of environmental protection and noise pollution.

​10 minutes, updated June 13th, 2017

This update to the Real Impact series provides the first black and white proof of how the FAA's NextGen program has increased the significant impact of aircraft noise by 80% in New York City since 2010.

Specifically, I use FAA data and the Port Authority's 2016 Part 150 study to build a Noise Exposure Map that shows the extent and location of the changes, which result in more than 1.2 million people being impacted by harmful levels of aircraft noise, up from  ~690,000 in 2010.

This increase is directly counter to the FAA's narrative that NextGen is reducing the impact of noise. Furthermore, the FAA already generates data that demonstrates how it deceives Congress and citizens, but it fails to share that data. 

A primer on how aircraft noise is measured and evaluated in the US versus how it is done across the world.  The quick take is that the standards used by the Federal Aviation Administration to evaluate noise are 40 years old, and there is plenty of information to show how we should update that approach. That includes:

• lowering the threshold for the significant impact of aircraft noise to 55 dB DNL
• consider using the alternative logarithmic metric known as CNEL (as is done in California and across Europe)
• making regular use of single event metrics like Nx, which are much easier to understand, and much more relevant to how people actually experience noise

​14 minutes