Small Minority of Reporters Accounts for Majority of Complaints

It's not news to those who've spent their time instructing, but sometimes a perfect confluence of obsession, zoning, and property ownership result in an obsessive, all-consuming need to tattle on the aircraft above.

Generally, it falls into two rough camps: Those who move to the outskirts of the big city to enjoy larger homes and more affordable real estate, who inevitably react in shock when the small airport 3 blocks away sends off a constant stream of Cessnas at 0500 Saturday morning. The second falls in a similar vein, in that a buyer happily moves or lives under the approach and departure path of a major international airport, and grumpily complains that the heavies just can't be quiet enough. The former's domain is the front lawn chair, where they sit with binoculars in hand and notepad at the ready, vigilant for the next distinguishable tail number to report for "flying too low", no matter how actually legal it is. The latter is a big different, but the Aussies evidently have their pattern down:

Airservices Australia logged a single resident's noise complaints in Perth more than 20,700 times throughout 2023, accounting for more than half of the entire country's noise reports in all. She wasn't the only reporter in the country with such an outsized effect, with the runner-up accounting for 4,071 complaints throughout the year.

The data was gleaned from an Australian senate inquiry surrounding the effects of aircraft noise on city life. Like every effect of aircraft operation, noise has become a handy tool for those who want to claw back real estate and shut down operations in their local airfields. Playing up the negative effects can prove to be an effective tool when pressuring feel-good lawmakers to crack down on operations nearby.

FMI: www.infrastructure.gov.au