"...noise complaints have increased significantly since the new departure headings went into effect but that it's too early to tell if there's a correlation."

are you effing kidding me?? i swear there is a maximum IQ score of 70 if you want to hold a position of authority in this country.
also, this guy, and anyone should be able to write whatever the hell they want on their roof as long as they own it.

"I wanted to have little things that were shooting the plane down"

This is where he loses my compassion. Idiots respond in idiotic fashion.

Just to clarify that they actually spell out FUCK, but the picture in the article (and on here) is edited because society is so sensitive.

bravo...

That's amusing. :)

Is that a sweet 70's pop-up trailer in the driveway?

I bet they haul that up to the Poconos in the summertime, string up lights around it that look like little chile peppers.

During the Cold War some Air Force dudes painted giant insults in Russian on top of the hangars so that the Soviet satellite image analysts would have something to read. The Soviets complained throught their ambassador that such rudeness was contrary to the spirit of detente, and the signage was removed.

I lived very near a Naval Air Station for a year, and the jet noise was no joke. Window shaking, things falling off walls, wake you up in the middle of the night LOUD. Good for this guy, he's my new hero.

A few years ago, I visited my brother who was living in Snowmass, CO. If I remember it correctly, on the road from Aspen to Snowmass was a barn with an enormous hand flipping the bird painted on the roof. The local story was that the owner of the barn's wife had left him for an airline pilot or something, and this was his attempt at sweet revenge. Pretty damn funny, even if the story was B.S.

@blondegrlz: i lived about 25 miles away from a naval air station before. it was loud as hell! those planes would punch it shortly after take off... usually around 3 or 4 in the morning. i couldn't take it... i had to move.

The township manager is checking the ordinances?
What's the problem?

fu fu fu fu fu fu fu

Are the feds going to come after me with a bar of soap now?

I love it, but...I'm sure the guy will be arrested as a terrorist because he is "interfering with air travel" or some such phony charge.

What's disturbing about the photo is not that it was altered to protect the children (that's just pathetic), but that they photoshopped it in such a way that you don't realize it was edited. This is the most troubling part about the current state of censorship technology. You can redact but make it appear intact (take that, Jesse Jackson!). They should have put black bars or pixellation some other obvious form of obscuring the picture.

Oh, and the picture of the plane should have been larger. :-)

I just wonder, who was there first, the homeowner or the airport. I'm guessing the airport was first. Don't like it? Move.

Sorry, but with all of the important stuff going on in this world, I think planes flying over your house and making noise is about the least of anyone's concerns outside of this family. Life's tough. get used to it or move. From what I hear the housing market is primed for buyers. Good luck selling yours though.

Well, unless the FAA is reading the newspaper or The Consumerist, I doubt much will come of it. Of course, should this make its way onto CNN...

Wimp. I live about a mile north of an airforce base, right under where they take off and land, and from about 8 am to 5 pm, they're launching F-15's and all kinds of jets. You just get used to it after awhile.

Best quotation from the article:
"I wouldn't write anything like that, but I'm a 75-year-old woman and it might be difficult for me to jump up on the roof," one neighbor said.

I do have to say, though, that I've seen both sides of this. I realize how loud airplanes can be, but I've also had close-calls at airports where the flight was delayed, and then we were told that we might not be able to fly because curfew was approaching.

I feel awful for the people in this article, though!

Clearly he is a threat to national security. He's probably on a plane to Gitmo right now.

@fearuncertaintydoubt: That is odd. Why bother to make it look like it wasn't censored? Why not just a black bar? Heck, you can do that in MS Paint.

@citking: Jeez, guy, give him a break. The article says the flight patterns were changed, so it wasn't a problem when he bought the house, but it is now.
@pepe prawn: I asked an Air Force pilot why the planes were always flying in the middle of the night, and was told that there's a dawn/dusk window where they can't fly because of increased bird (!) activity. Apparently getting a seagull in your engine is very serious. So they either fly during the day, or before sunrise.

@fearuncertaintydoubt: For what? It's a violation of free speech to arrest you for sentiments like this. People who have flipped cops off have gotten the subsequent arrest wiped from their records due to the First Amendment. You can express this sentiment as much as you like on your own property and since you aren't harming anyone there's nothing to arrest for.

Editing photos such that you don't realize the edit, and failing to disclose the edit, is a huge no-no in journalism. There's a tiny "photo altered" disclaimer, but IMO that's not enough -- they need to explain what they did and why. It's just bad journalism to worry that someone will get offended. Journalists are there to report the truth, not pander to crybabies.

(note: I've done coursework in photojournalism and am an amateur photographer, so this stuff is a big deal to me).

@citking: There in lies the point of the exercise. Government agency changes rules, resulting in homeowner being inconvenienced. Homeowner tries to complain, but gets nowhere with government agency. Decides on novel way to complain.

The fact is these people (and their neighbors) are going to be able to move, because they will never be able to sell their house, which is the single biggest asset they have. Yeah, you had to be pretty dumb to live within ten miles of an airport, but once you do, you have the right to expect the FAA to give you ample opportunity to lodge a complaint about their policies. Frankly, the government should start buying out houses around airports and demolishing them, to keep people from moving into them in the first place. Just my opinion.

@mrmysterious:
Thanks for pointing that out.

Does anyone know what it means when you see a kid walking around in a t-shirt that says:

" f.u.c.k. "

Does it stand for something else, or just fuck?

Gotta love the people who move next to an airport and then bitch about the noise. Its just like th epeople who build a house right next to a river and then bitch when there is a flood. He never should have moved there if he didnt want noise.

@blondegrlz: I understand that the flight patterns changed. If he doesn't like it now, he should take action by (re-)moving himself rather than trying to move the airport (so to speak). Bring Mohammad to the mountain; don't bring the mountain to Mohammad.

@NefariousNewt: I understand he is inconvenienced and I am not saying the FAA has done anything right yet. But if he is complaining simply because of the noise when he knew there was an airport nearby he's being unrealistic. He probably got the property for a low price and, when the decision was made, he groused. When you live that close to the airport it's like spinning a roulette wheel. He bet on black and got red. he needs to deal with it and move on. Rather than expecting the world to come in and comfort him, he needs to man up and move or find some sort of solution. yeah, it sucks the FAA isn't helping. Guess what? Go on to option #2 now.

@citking: Its his fault they changed the flight pattern without allowing him to protest it (which is required by law) Im guessing your one of those guys who thinks its A OK to have your city use eminent domain laws to build a Walmart where there was once a residential area too huh.

@jimv2000: Believe me, I'm sensitive to what you say. I'm a pilot at an airport that opened in 1926 and that is under constant pressure to be closed from yuppies who moved in over the last 10 or 15 years -- some buying houses right off the departure end of the runway. That being said, read the article. The couple have lived in the house for 10 years. The noise started with recent changes in the airport's departure patterns. Check out Google Maps. They live over 2 miles from the airport.

@Falconfire: In your example, the "Walmart" is the airport. It was there first. They don't like it? Move.

@citking: But as you pointed out, he's going to have a heck of a time selling a house directly under the flight line. I have never landed at an airport without first flying over several neighborhoods, so saying no one should live within 10 miles is ridiculous. On the other hand, when they built Dulles Airport outside DC, it was "the middle of nowhere" and the housing came later, so those people can suck it. This guy has a genuine issue, although if the flight pattern was changed for safety reasons, I don't think his peace and quiet should matter much.

@tk427: The shirt probably says F.C.U.K, which is short for French Connection, UK, a clothing chain.

@tk427:

They are wearing shirts that say FCUK - its stands for French Connection UK - its a clothing company..

@citking: The flight pattern wasnt though, and they dont just "up and change" it takes a ton of paperwork and public hearings that the FAA avoided going through.

@blondegrlz: They use safety as a euphemism. Living around the flight pattern for Liberty International (aka Newark) most often its money that dictates a change in the pattern, not safety. Odds are the pattern was over some expensive neighborhood. Happens all the time in the Newark/JFK/LaGuardia area. 9/10 times its money that caused the landing and approach pattern to change.

There's a sign on the roof of one of the buildings in a small community up north here in Manitoba that says 'White Man Go Home'. Made me laugh the first time I saw it.

Anyways, back on topic here... I'd love to know which came first - the airport or the house. If it's the house, then perhaps he has a valid complaint. If it's the airport, well then it's his fault, and he's just another NIMBY to me. I don't see where the departure procedure he's talking about here has been amended - the only departure on file from PHL dictates a turn to heading 240 until 3DME from the end of the runway (it's taken from a localizer, but I doubt many people will know what I'm talking about here). It appears to get planes to fly down the Delaware before they get over the noise-sensitive areas.

@blondegrlz: As much as it sucks, I have to agree with citking. The airport has been there, in one form or another, since 1925. Sure, the flight plan over this guy's house might be new, but Philly International is a US Airways hub and one of the few direct portals to Beijing from the US. It's a damned busy airport (which I avoid).

A complaint to the FAA is the way to go, but Ridley is less than 4 miles away from the airport (as the 747 flies) and I don't think that any amount of social engineering is going to change his situation.

My suggesting is to build a bunker basement underneath the house. Not for everyday living, but for bedrooms and a rumpus room. It's comfortable. It's energy-efficient (especially if they turn the lights off and the heat down upstairs when they head down). Plus it can be built to be sound proof.

Push comes to shove, get an estimate and take the City to court. He might win.

A number of years ago, outside of a small airport, a farmer got fed up with all the pilots buzzing his animals during landings & take-offs.
So he painted on his barn roof, "Welcome to ABC", which was the next airport over just to confuse them.
Some of them did think they were at the wrong airport & I remember there were complaints, but don't remember the rest of it.

@blondegrlz: Oh yeah, birds in engines are very dangerous. They can tear up propellers and all sorts of parts.

In college I was near a train line and during my first few months of freshman year, I wasn't used to it. I'd wake up whenever the train went by in the middle of the night. It wasn't flight path kind of loud, but it was loud enough to annoy me until I got used to it. When my fiancee moved to the D.C. area, he had to get used to being around Dulles airport, and the constant airplane noise.

"But Anne E. Howanski, Ridley Township manager, isn't so sure Hall has the right to invoke that particular word on his own house, even if it isn't visible from the street.

"I will have to check our ordinance on this," she said. "It appears to be an obscenity and we will be in touch."

Is it wrong that I kind of want to punch Anne in the face? And then in the stomach? And then in the face again?

@lincolnparadox: Yeah, I just looked up the airport history and I'm betting 1925 trumps whenever that house was built. No matter where you put an airport, some people are going to hear airplane noise. I feel bad for him (esp when it comes to resale value of his home) but what can you do? I just didn't like citking's original attitude with it being the guy's fault for buying a home there. But like I said earlier, I lived with F-15 jet noise for a year, and if I could learn to sleep through that, he can sleep through regular old planes.

I need some GPS coordinates :-)

They should definitely keep it up there for long enough for Google Maps to capture the image.

sweet we should all start writing on our roofs and then look at them on google earth.

I live about 20 miles as the crow flies from Logan Airport in Boston. I'm apparently under one of their alternate flight paths that is only used when the winds are blowing in an unusual direction. More often than not it's around 3:00 in the morning when I'll wake up and think there's a jet landing on my roof top.

Having said that, if these people got their way then the whole airline industry would come to a halt since airplanes wouldn't be allowed anywhere. There's a group called "Stop the Noise" that's trying to get laws passed to require pilots to get permission of homeowners before flying over their property. Although currently only targeting general aviation, if it sets a precedent then commercial air traffic could eventually be affected as well. For more details check out [www.gadefensefund.org] .

@Black Bellamy: Digital Equipment Corporation had the phrase "CVAX - When you care enough to steal the very best" in Cyrillic on their microprocess chip masks. They knew they were getting smuggled into Russia during the Cold War, and had a sense of humor.

[micro.magnet.fsu.edu]

lived in the flight paths of both JFK and Laguardia in NY, and well, I got used to it. On most days I hear 747s revving up their engines before takeoff, and I still remember that the Concorde would land at 8:12am every weekday morning. It is not as horrible as you think.

@bearymore: That wouldn't be Long Beach, would it? Sounds about what's happened there.

Check this video, you're gonna love it. Courtesy of Starterup:

[www.starterupsteve.com]

Hard to believe that such a universal word could be so offensive. It means so many things!

For all those who say that it's their fault they chose to live next to an airport, consider this:

My apartment is 2.1 miles from a major airport. I chose to rent there because I can hear NOTHING when I'm inside! When I'm on my balcony, I can hear and see planes taking off. But as soon as I'm back inside, it's peace and quiet. Why? Because the flights take off in the opposite direction, and planes very rarely fly right over my apartment.

Were the flight paths changed, it would be easy for me to change apartments. But in this type of housing market, it will be impossible for them to sell their house.

I can attest that they'll get used to it, though, as my parents live about 300 feet from busy railroad tracks. I don't even hear them anymore, and I only notice a train is coming by when the walls start shaking. I can sleep right through it, easily.

@IphtashuFitz:

That 'Stop the Noise' thing is interesting. Good idea for the homeowners, bad idea for us 'plane drivers. I already spend an hour planning flights...now having to actually call a civilian group and get permission to overfly certain areas (I fly a Fairchild Metro, and it's louder than some jets) would just be a pain.

I only have one question: Was the airport there when they moved in? , If so then screw em! I hear this crap all the time in Chitown, the airports here have been around since the '20s and people who built their house last year expect to have peace and quiet, living NEXT to an AIRPORT! Move or shut the hell up!