Spoiler alert: The answer is not ‘The Third Runway’. However, you might call the current situation for residents in certain neighborhoods around Sea-Tac Airport a ‘Perfect Storm’.
What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?
Yes, there has been a great deal of growth in the number of daily operations.
First, there is the fact that in 2012 Delta Airlines made Sea-Tac their main hub along with Alaska Air. So that made Sea-Tac home base for two very large airlines. And starting in 2012, the daily operations count definitely did jump.
Then there is the fact that King County had been experiencing an economic boom; not just with Amazon and ‘tech’ companies and passenger travel, but also with exports. The State Of Washington is the third largest exporter of goods in the United States and Sea-Tac Airport has been a big part of that success.
And also, the Port of Seattle’s attempts to drive tourism began to bear fruit. A little known fact is that the State of Washington had not exactly done a bang up job in this regard. The Port considered tourism an intrinsic part of its mission and began enthusiastically pumping resources into tourism programs throughout Washington State.
Those factors (more airlines, regional growth, increased exports, tourism) have increased the frequency of daily operations from around 850 a day in 2009 to 1250 a day in 2019. A whopping 47% increase.
The Big Lie
But the increased number of flights is not the main reason you feel like the current situation is intolerable. There are two other reasons, which have to do with concentration, ie. where the flights are taking off and landing. One type of concentration is easy to understand, the other a bit more complicated. Neither will make you happy.
The first big change in ‘concentration’ is in the geographic distribution of flights. But to explain that, we need a bit of history.
Too Close
Some history: one reason the Third Runway was deemed so necessary in the 90’s was that the second runway was built a bit too close to the first runway. Really. There are various FAA safety rules that limit take-offs and landings when two runways are so close together. If one looks at the operations totals before the Third Runway was built, Sea-Tac was actually running almost as many operations in 1999 as they are in 2019! Even then they knew how to jam a lot of flights onto those two runways. If the first two runways had been built further apart (or is it farther? :D) one could argue that, with today’s technology, a third runway would not have been necessary.
Anyhoo, when the Third Runway came on-line, the fact that it was farther away from the First Runway allowed for a much greater degree of flexibility in scheduling take-offs and landings. No longer did Air Traffic Controllers on one runway have to worry about what was going on at the other runway.
Now everyone in the area remembers 1The Big Lie, “We will only use the Third Runway for bad weather or in ‘overflow’ or emergency situations.” In addition to being a promise they were not legally able to make (see our article on ANCA), the people who signed that document knew full well that the Third Runway was too damned convenient to not use all the time. It’s irresistible.
So the Third Runway has had the net effect of helping to concentrate flights on either the First Runway (for 2/3rds of take-offs) and the Third Runway (for 2/3rds of landings).
NIMBYism
It’s an unfortunate reality that many of the loudest complaints about ‘the airport’ are really complaints that so many flights moved from the east side of the airport to a new location west along Puget Sound: right over their houses under the Third Runway.
It’s no coincidence that the majority of current and prior activism in fighting the Third Runway was and continues to be people live under the Third Runway.
Comparatively few people under the First Runway (east) complain, even though they continue to have just as much noise. Perhaps this is because they’ve had so many years as ‘boiled frogs’–they’ve simply had more decades to become acclimated to the pounding.
And ironically, some people who live under the Second (middle) Runway are the big (cough) ‘winners’ in all this. Beyond a mile from the runway, they now experience less noise than before!
NextGen For Dummies
Beyond the choice of runway, the other type of concentration has to do with changes to the flight paths leaving from and arriving to those runways. These changes falls under the FAA branding Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).
NextGen isn’t one thing. It’s actually a blanket term covering a whole suite of different technologies including computer-control and GPS which is referred to as Performance Based Navigation (PBN). Working together they concentrate the flight paths to as narrow a track as possible (ie. a straight line) on take-off and approach. This makes the rest of the area a LOT quieter for everyone not under the flight path. A lot of neighborhoods only a few blocks away to the left or right of a flight path will be noticeably quieter. The majority of people not directly under the flight path really do benefit from less airplane noise. But NextGen makes life a LOT worse for everyone who is directly under the flight path.
Another great ‘benefit’ of NextGen is that the technology allows the airlines to land planes a lot closer together (as little as forty five seconds apart) using another series of technologies, the best known being something called Wake Recategorization (Wake Recat) Contrast this with the standard three minutes apart from ten years ago. What this does is create a constant ‘wash’ of sound.
Follow The Money
One of the most common demands from residents is along the lines of “Why can’t you simply take-off and land along big highways and try to avoid neighborhoods?” Well, a straight-line take-off and landing also saves a ton of fuel and that saves the airlines millions of dollars every year. In other words, the current NextGen model is efficient. And as we’ve said so many times, the two watchwords of all FAA policy are “Safety and efficiency”. Meaning ‘safety of passengers and efficiency for the airlines’. Changing routes is slightly less efficient and that means that, under Federal Law (keep referring back to ANCA, it truly is the root of all evil) the airlines have no legal duty to alter their routes to make residents happier. Not to mention the fact that they have no financial incentive to do so either.
Yes, but the planes are so much quieter
Before winding up, we need to address one objection you’ll still hear from people, usually older residents and members of the aerospace industry. “The planes are so much quieter now, quit whining!” Which is to say that the design of more recent aircraft like the Boeing 777 really are a lot quieter than older Stage 3 planes like the 747. And if one does live in a neighborhood with relatively few flights, this change in fleet mix can be a dramatic improvement in the daily average noise calculations the FAA uses when monitoring a neighborhood.
But for people directly under the flight path, this is a canard because the sheer number of flights and their concentration now overwhelms any improvements to aircraft design.
The reason has to do with the messy business of how human’s perceive noise. When a plane goes overhead, we perceive the sound with a certain amount of ‘annoyance’. The sound of a typical modern airplane flying overhead is perceptible for around two minutes; it approaches quietly, gets increasingly loud, then gets increasingly quiet as it moves away from your position. That’s two minutes. During that time, your body experiences a certain level of instinctive and automatic stress in response to a very loud noise. (Think the approach of hoof-beats from horses or a thunder storm.) Over time, you learn that the airplanes are a normal part of life and the body (sort of) adapts. But in order for your body to adapt, there needs to be a period of ‘rest’ between flights which allows your nervous system to recover. In the past, flights might go over a typical home once every 3-5 minutes at peak hours.
However, with the current flight paths and traffic levels, residents under the flight paths now routinely experience a flyover once every 45 seconds. And that means that while the last flight is still quite loud, the next flight is approaching which creates an additive level of noise and prevents the body from having that critical rest period to recover from the loud noise. In short: during peak periods, there is no rest. The planes are one loud wash oft noise at an average level that is beyond a safe level in terms of long-term health.
The failure of the current laws to account for this lack of rest between flights is what creates the greatest long-term damage to human health. There is simply no way to mitigate against it other than by reducing the exposure to these very loud sounds.
What we think: Redefining Capacity
As with so many airport issues, the Federal and State laws are unambiguous. ANCA is written specifically to optimize ‘efficiency’ and ignore the effects on residents under flight paths.
But beyond the legal issues, changing routes is the ultimate ‘not in my back yard’ issue. People who previously had ‘quiet skies’ deeply resent now having to experience the pain that people under the old flight paths seem to have gotten used to. When daily operations reach a certain level there is really no way to ‘spread the pain’ without creating conflict between residents in various neighborhoods. So it’s the ultimate NIMBY issue. Everyone wants the planes to go ‘somewhere else’.
We believe that when an airport reaches that level of traffic; ie. where there can be no reasonable distribution of flight paths without creating intense local conflict, the airport has, by definition, reached its capacity.
In other words, our first goal should be to insist that the FAA definition of an airport’s essential ‘capacity’ be altered to include its effects on the surrounding neighborhoods.
The various ‘mitigations’ that have been proposed (and to a small extent implemented) over the years have not been able to keep up with the rapid increase in flights. Sound insulation programs and filtration systems are band-aid solutions at best and focusing our efforts on more band-aids creates a tacit acceptance that neighborhoods under flight paths will never be afforded anything approaching a healthy living environment.
As politically ‘impossible’ as it may seem, the only long-term solution is to advocate for an absolute cap on the number of flights that any airport can accommodate.
1It wasn’t really a lie. There were a series of statements, as late as the 2010 ‘informal’ agreement which were never worth the paper they were printed on. But the public interprets these sorts non-binding agreements as gospel.
I live in the Pinehurst area of northeast Seattle. The planes have become unbearable over our dead end residential neighborhood! I have sent so many complaints to SeaTac for destroying the quiet we had for 38 years. We have approx. over 700 flights per day over our house! I do not understand how the FAA expects anyone to be able to put up with
this. I am very very concerned about
all the emissions we are now breathing in! We want the FAA to get rid of these horrible non stop corridors and dispurse the planes out
as they were!! We did not ask to be under these flight paths and never ever would have purchased a house 25 miles from SeaTac if we knew this would happen! One day no flights the next day bombarded with
planes! There was never a environmental study done!!! PLEASE help us out!!!
I just recently moved to north Lake Forest Park, about 600ft above sea level, which brings me that much closer to the airplanes. They sometimes fly so low I can actually see the airline logo on the tail! This is outrageous! A walk in the park is not nice anymore, spending time in my yard is not peaceful or relaxing, it’s an aircraft highway 30 miles away from the actual airport.
Let me know if there is an existing group we can all join to stop this madness!!!
05-23-2023: I live on the South Hill, Puyallup WA. About 30 miles South from the airport and almost in a direct line from it. The elevation here is about 535′ and the airport elevation is about 433′. I have been tracking the jets that take off and land over me and the tremendous thundering roar they make for the last 3 years. Do not be fooled by them saying these jets are quieter, the huge number of flights is a constant and draining roar on your senses. There are many times these are so low that I feel like I could touch them. The data from these jets show them as being about 6,000 to 10,000 feet high, but then you need to subtract your elevation to get a real sense of how high they are in relation to you. And when I see these very low jets I find it hard to believe they are as high as shown. There is no distribution of flights to / from the south, it is like there is this narrow pathway they are only allowed to use. Start spreading out these jets, I would like have a day or more of not hearing roaring jets overhead.
I live in south of NW Trek and it’s awful! Admittedly the planes are 10-15k feet but I am an hour from the airport! What changed? It wasn’t like this even a few months ago….was it?
In June 2023 it suddenly started – a plane every 5min. Granted, not like living next to the runway but how far must a person go to get quiet skies? I can’t hear anything else – not traffic noise or anything. I gave up everything to move to a quiet place about 10 years ago. My home was perfect for a decade, until the summer started….dry enough to be outside but too loud! I am too far out for Comcast or fast internet speed but inside my house I can still hear a plane every 5 minutes! What has the world come to?
Can someone tell me why this happened way out here?
I live in the Covington area and for the past Winter and now Spring I have jets flying over my home that are too loud sometimes they shake our home and vibrate the windows. Since I have lived here 37 years I understand that the planes are not to fly lower than 2000 feet because we also have a small airport near our home. When I can see every detail of the undercarriage of a jet and their symbols I know they are flying too low. I also have flights that are taking off north then turn to the Cascade mountains to go south. The flight paths should be over the sound.
We live in the Kingsgate/ Bothell area, and in the past 4-5 years we have experienced in huge increase in air traffic. AND we have flights going to Paine Field as well. What I resent are planes coming from the Southeast that fly north to do a “U” turn over my house to get in line, sometimes crossing over planes arriving from the Northeast. When that happens, one plane flies even lower and louder.
What upsets me is that planes arriving from Asia and Southwest are able to “U” turn over Elliott Bay. The flights are chosen so these planes don’t fly over Medina or Clyde Hill or Mercer Island.
This last weekend at Volunteer Park, for the Outdoor Theatre festival weekend, we were treated to great performance of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’. (This is right under the most densely packed approach path during south flow operation)
Here is how Act 3, Scene 2 played out from the beast, Caliban’s perspective:
“Be not pacified; the sky is filled with roaring,
Sounds, of thunderous jets, that both excite and startle.
Sometimes a thousand screaming planes
Will pierce through my ears; and sometimes their engines
Are so loud that even if I had just woken from a deep slumber,
They would thrust me back undercover to my nightmare.
The sky it seemed, would split open in squall line;
Ready to descend upon me, so that upon waking,
I yearned to dream of calm once more.”
Clearly, the concentration of flight paths along the north-south meridian though some of the most densely populated parts of the city, is having an impact. With this much exposure, dreams turn into nightmares, and normal people will take on the beastly aspects of Caliban! This can be fixed readily with the GPS system guiding / queueing planes along more dispersed paths, or focusing on areas of less impact, for example, Elliott Bay or I90 / I5 corridors.
Complete absurdity.. The days we get the day off but when the jets are really humping over my house I cannot hear myself think let alone even hold a conversation… One plane has not flown over my house before the other 1 how started in sometimes parallel to each other where the noise is amplified double! This is profit over people.. Seatac is operating over capacity at the expense of our wellness and the FAA technology is not considering noise pollution below at all.
I’ve lived in Seattle First/Capitol Hill area for over 20 years. This year is the first I’ve really found it intolerable, I’ve been considering moving out of Seattle. I live on 13th, which has apparently become a jet highway when you watch the tracker. Planes mid descent make a lot of noise, it’s a sort of screeching that penetrates closed modern double paned windows. I no longer have the privilege of silence in my home, which seems incredibly unfair given the distance from the airport. I don’t expect things to change at all, but would caution anyone considering a move to Seattle that it seems to care very little for comfort of residents vs expansion.
Here is a video I took of 3 airplanes flying over my house at the same time! The one just went over , ….then immediately there was another directly over my house running parallel to another plane!!!! and the noise was so loud that the jet noise was bouncing off each other so it’s not just 1 plane noise I have to bear but 2 at the same time…..CONTINOUSLY!!!!!!!! Complete absurdity!!! is there any chance they at the runways could be reconstructed to run a different directions so the planes can approach over Elliott Bay?
https://youtu.be/e_TLQzyls30?si=VDRUa8Z8T70bz9Y2
SeaTac just keeps adding more and more and more planes in the corridors over northeast Seattle, it has become a living HELL! No peace walking no peace working in my yard and no peace inside my house all I hear are planes constantly every 40 seconds!!! FAA put the planes over the sound not over densely populated residential neighborhoods!!!!!!! We are all going to get cancer from breathing in all these horrible ultra fine particles from all these planes that never ever stop!!!!! Definitely profit over people!!!!!!!
I’ve contacted our district 5 rep Cathy Moore about how much worse it has become lately in North Seattle. I actually received a response. If you live in district 5 and are experiencing an increase in airplane noise please contact her. The more people, the more they will pay attention.
https://www.seattle.gov/council/moore
If the FAA has put billions into the NextGen and satellite guided landings at SEATAC, why are they ONLY using it for flight traffic on the west side? ALL flights from the south and south east are condensed and directed north up the east side of Lake Washington and “zippered” in with all the south west and north west traffic. They then fly down over the neighborhoods in a constant roar of jet noise and fine particle pollution. ONLY the south west traffic is satellite guided and when traffic allows, the planes turn sooner (over Downtown or Magnolia ). HOWEVER, even when there are NO OTHER planes in the sky, the east and south east planes are STILL directed by HUMAN traffic controllers to continue north up to the top of Lake Washington before turning and coming down the condensed flight path! They SHOULD be directed to turn over the Medina area (which is about even with the west side turn point) but $$$$$ SOMEHOW $$$$$ that doesn’t happen. Supposedly the whole point the FAA made about “safety and efficiency ( less fuel consumption and impact on neighbors ) was behind the NextGen and the billions of our tax dollars spent. OUR port even said they do not see changes on the east side since it will concentrate planes over neighborhoods that will generate LAW SUITS! NO shock, but we less $$$$$ people just don’t matter so condense the flights over them. Another interesting fact is when the winds change and flights take off to the north, planes DO turn east over the Media area but ONLY until 10:00 pm when they are directed to turn west and up the Puget Sound to turn once again over the neighborhoods in the north (all be it at least they are at 10,000 feet by then). STILL causing noise and pollution. This happens because they say there is less negative impact (sound) on the neighborhoods…..again $$$$$$ talking not touted policy is in play! ALL these planes now fly further north before turning south to fly to our southern most cities. Pretty sure that does NOT save fuel or lessen pollution impact. I DID NOT BUY a house in the flight path yet here I am!
The same issue has happened over Long Island in New York. Those under these illegally condensed flight paths are condemned to a life of unending noise and health hazards. I am a member of PlaneSense4LongIsland and we should join forces and get national media coverage. We need help. This is a health crisis.
We have lived in Woodinville for 48 years. Although the sound of airplanes overhead has been a constant for a long time, recently it has significantly been increased. This is impacting our quality of life. I wonder if there is anything we, as impacted locals, can do?