Fed up with airplane noise, neighbors form new group to press for change

A snapshot of an hour’s worth of southbound takeoffs from Reagan National Airport shows the consistent path planes take over the Fort Hunt area. (From FAA slide)

When the FAA implemented the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) at Reagan National Airport in 2015, people living in the Fort Hunt area immediately noticed.

Instead of the occasional flight passing over their house, there was plane after plane after plane. The increased air traffic brought more noise than residents were accustomed to.

“I was like ‘what the heck is going on’”? said Mike Rioux, who has lived in the Mason Hill neighborhood for 27 years. “Before NextGen, it was equal opportunity noise. Now it’s very concentrated, [and] those who get it are getting constant exposure.”

Because of NextGen, jets taking off to the south from Reagan are now being guided down the Potomac River and consistently breaking west over neighborhoods like Villamay, Hollin Hills and Mason Hill. Rather than spreading the aircraft out over different areas or flying farther down the river, NextGen — designed to make flights more efficient — routes the jets through specific waypoints, which put them over the same area over and over again. 

Residents say the noise has become a quality-of-life issue, with the procession of flights sometimes starting around 5 a.m. and going as late as 1 a.m. 

Now a group of residents, with the support of Mount Vernon Supervisor Dan Storck, have banded together to form the South Flow Alliance, a group that looks to increase pressure on the FAA to move faster on addressing the noise issue.

“When we moved here in 2012, [Hollin Hills] was quiet, with occasional flights over, but nothing too disruptive,” said Bill Brown, a South Flow Alliance member, who noted that the noise is so bad that his family has resorted to wearing ear plugs at times.  “Now we are under a river of airplanes, flying over every 30 seconds at peak times, with no stop and start between them.”

The FAA is aware of the concerns of residents impacted by the NextGen change. A year ago, Rep. Don Beyer (D-8) facilitated a meeting between FAA representatives and residents fed up with the noise.  But nothing has been done to reduce the noise since the meeting, despite assurances from the FAA, according to South Flow Alliance members and Storck.

“The FAA stated that they would address the issue within 9-12 months,” Brown said. “The year anniversary is coming up this June and nothing has been done. This is the reason for our May 10 meeting. Our goal is to organize people to put public pressure on the FAA to follow through on their promise.”

Storck, who lives in the Riverside Gardens neighborhood, wrote a letter to constituents saying he understood the noise problem firsthand and signaled his support for the South Flow Alliance. 

“Designed to increase fuel efficiency and increase the number of flights in and out of airports, NextGen flight paths are similar to a robotic assembly line that sends airplanes along one conveyor belt, traveling over the same neighborhoods over and over, often at low altitudes and sometimes at a rate of one airplane every 30 seconds for hours on end,” Storck said in his letter.

The alliance believes that they have a workable solution to the noise problem. The key is having aircraft go farther down river before breaking west, which would allow the planes to reach higher altitude and avoid highly populated areas.

A conceptual design that pushes flights farther down the river before turning right has been drawn up by the FAA. But but any change in the flight patterns will take time, said Rioux, who is the Fairfax County Mount Vernon District representative to the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority Airport Noise Working Group. 

“They have to do analysis, a lot of simulations,” said Rioux. “It’s a pretty complex problem.”

Making things more complicated is the that the Fort Hunt area is not alone in being affected by the NextGen change. Virginia residents north of the airport in Virginia, as well as groups in Maryland and D.C. have also complained to the FAA about increased noise. 

Brown said the alliance is concerned that the FAA has put more resources into addressing the north flow noise problems than the south flow.

“The FAA has focused all of their attention on addressing the North Flow noise problem, and has postponed work on the south flow problem as a result,” Brown said. “One of the SFA’s primary goals is to get the FAA to address both north and south flow noise at the same time.”

The South Flow Alliance interest meeting will be May 10 at Walt Whitman Middle School. For more information see the South Flow Alliance’s Facebook page.