He's A Former Astronaut Living In Georgetown North Of The City

When Roberto Vittori moved his family from Italy to the Washington D.C. area, he bought his house in the Hillandale neighborhood north of Georgetown. He thought there might be some noise from aircraft operating out of Ronald Reagan National Airport, but it wouldn't be too bad.

Then came NextGen, and a shift of flight patterns. The noise became intolerable, the former NASA and ESA astronaut claims.

So, he began writing to the FAA to complain. A lot.

But there is a discrepancy in how many complaints have been filed by the former space traveler, who last flew into space in 2011, according to the website The Outline.  Vittori will admit to some 3,000 complaints since the changes in the flight patterns were implemented.

But the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority says it has received some 6,500 complaints from a single resident of the Foxhall Neighborhood west of Georgetown, and does not mention a Hillandale resident.

So, either the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority has vastly under-reported the number of complaints, or it over-reported the number of complaints received from Vittori ... and got his location wrong.

Alternately, Vittori hasn't kept track of how many complaints he's filed, or the MWAA is trying to obscure the real information.

Vittori reportedly emailed the MWAA and asked directly if he was the person who it says has filed all those requests under the Freedom of Information Act. He has yet to receive a response.

Vittori said he has gone to the expense of replacing all the windows in his house with thick, noise-abating glass, but still describes airplanes flying over at night as being like having a vacuum cleaner running next to your bed.

The website reports that Vittori has stopped filing complaints. The noise is still there, but he's convinced his campaign was going nowhere.

So he's going. Or at least trying to. He says he'll move his family out of the Georgetown neighborhood to someplace quieter.

(NASA image)

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