Flight path frustration

Some residents remain elevated about plane noise



EARPLUGS ARE NO HELP—Newbury Park residents have complained about newfiight paths that bring low-flying planes over their homes and rob them of their sleep.

EARPLUGS ARE NO HELP—Newbury Park residents have complained about new flight paths that bring low-flying planes over their homes and rob them of their sleep.

Lisa Renshaw is finding it hard to sleep these days. She describes herself as a zombie at work because noise overhead is keeping her and her Newbury Park neighbors awake at night.

“Starting at 3 or 4 a.m., there’s a parade of ginormous planes that come in from Asia,” she said. “Some planes you can barely hear at all, but some are just fingers on a chalkboard.”

Complaints about noise from commercial airliners continue to reverberate out of Newbury Park, prompting the city to create a web page devoted to the issue and designate a department head to monitor the situation.

Critics blame the FAA’s SoCal Metroplex Project for creating a noisy “jet freeway” over the city’s western edge—Dos Vientos in particular. In April the project altered flights paths into LAX in the name of greater efficiency.

The FAA originally told the Acorn that the new approach route, which was moved more to the west, should not have led to such a noticeable impact.

But in an email sent this week, FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor acknowledged a second flight path change—this serving flights from Hawaii, Asia and other locations to the west—with planes flying considerably lower than they did on the pre-April route.

“An analysis of (the new) flight tracks show aircraft fly southwest of the Dos Vientos neighborhood at altitudes between 10,000 feet above sea level (MSL) and 11,000 feet MSL,” Gregor wrote, noting that the prior elevation of planes on the old path averaged between 11,000 and 13,000 feet MSL.

In addition to the Metroplex shifts, flight paths have been affected by runway work at LAX, said longtime Conejo Valley school board member Mike Dunn, a Newbury Park resident who says he is also losing sleep.

“I’m sleeping with earplugs and they’re not working, and I’ve got insulation in the attic, and I can still hear (the planes),” he said.

Dunn said he’s hearing flights at all hours and has clocked as many as 19 planes passing overhead between 4 and 6 a.m.

A spokesperson for LAX said the pavement work on the fourth and final runway was completed in August, so any rerouting that resulted in flights over Newbury Park during construction is now over. He said flights will continue to be rerouted periodically when weather or maintenance dictates.

In the meantime, the City of Thousand Oaks has put up a page on its website dedicated to the topic at toaks.org/faa.

“We’re not getting a large volume of calls, by any means, but enough we thought it was important to put info on the website,” said Mark Towne, Thousand Oaks community development director. “Clearly, it’s not within the city’s purview; it is in the FAA’s purview.”

Still, the city is monitoring the situation to see what additional action may be warranted, Towne said.

The page provides quick links to contact the FAA, as well as background information on the Metroplex project. It also has information on how to reach local state and federal representatives and a hotline to log a complaint about a specific flight.

So frustrated are some Newbury Park residents that they are using apps downloaded to their phones to track flights. The apps note the flight number, airline, destination, origination and elevation of the plane.

Residents who have contacted U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley’s office said staff members were responsive and sent them forms to fill out.

The Congresswoman’s office has filed official inquiries with the FAA on behalf of constituents requesting that the agency address the increased noise concerns of homeowners in the impacted neighborhoods, a member of her staff said. Brownley has also insisted that FAA officials meet with the community to hear their concerns and to discuss options for re-routing aircraft and minimizing the noise pollution.

Gregor said residents with noise complaints should contact the noise office of the airport the planes are going to.

He said his agency is in the “post-implementation phase” of the Metroplex project.

“During this phase, we analyze all the new routes we have implemented to make sure they are working as intended,” he said.

Any change couldn’t come soon enough for residents like Vanessa Roccki, a single mother who says her work and home life are being affected by the noise.

“Last night it woke me up at 12:47 a.m. out of a sound sleep,” she said Wednesday. “Even my kids are hearing it, and that says a lot because my kids can sleep through the A-bomb.”

She said neighbors discussing the problem via Nextdoor.com are to the point they’ve discussed chipping in to hire an attorney to fight the problem.

They wouldn’t be the first.

Cities in Orange County have filed suit against the FAA, and the City of Phoenix has just received a ruling on an appeal in its case.

On Aug. 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals in a 2-1 finding vacated orders for new flight paths there and remanded the matter to the FAA for review.

This story was updated at 1 p.m., Sept. 7, 2017 with comments from U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley’s office.