News
Oral Argument Scheduled in Maryland v FAA
Oral argument in Maryland v FAA is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 14,
2019, at 9:30 a.m. at the federal courthouse located at 333 Constitution
Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. |
Recent Developments
Please click on the following links for recent developments:
- Our Elected Officials Send Letter to the FAA Administrator, and Request a Meeting, June 24, 2019
Rep. Jamie Raskin yesterday joined 28 other Members of Congress in requesting that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigate "how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has considered community noise impacts while implementing the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) in major metropolitan areas," including the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. - Recent Court Filing in the DCA Lawsuit: |
Maryland v. FAA: Petitioner's Brief Filed on January 16, 2019
The State of Maryland on January 16, 2019 filed a Petitioner's Brief in Appellate Court, challenging FAA’s arbitrary change of aircraft flight paths to Reagan National Airport. The Montgomery County Quiet Skies Coalition (www.mocoquietskies.org) applauds Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Attorney General Brian Frosh for taking legal action to protect Maryland citizens and resources from the damage and suffering caused by highly concentrated noise and emissions from airplane overflights into Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA). Maryland’s legal action challenges the FAA’s deeply flawed decision in 2015 to move and simultaneously consolidate multiple flight procedures for airplanes approaching DCA into a single flight path over Maryland’s citizens and resources. As stated in Maryland’s legal brief filed last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals (D.C. Circuit), the FAA in altering and consolidating the flight paths “provided no public notice of its plan, performed no noise analysis, and did not evaluate the potential impacts to historic resources, parks, or recreational areas.” The brief further notes that there is “no evidence that the FAA performed any environmental analysis” before altering the approach paths to DCA from the north. “The FAA has never issued a public decision document explaining why, when, or how it revised the … approach procedures,” the brief says. “Instead, the FAA published the revisions only on a technical website maintained by the FAA for pilots, airlines, and air traffic controllers.” The FAA’s altered flight path, the brief states, had the effect of shifting the brunt of the noise from aircraft approaching DCA “from west to east away from Virginia and into Maryland.” The brief is a central part of Maryland’s petition for review in the Court of Appeals about how the FAA went about altering the approach flight paths, a move that has had adverse effects for thousands of people in Montgomery County. Montgomery County residents, thousands of whom purchased their homes before an airplane superhighway was effectively and arbitrarily built over their neighborhoods, without their knowledge or input, hope that the Court will agree with Maryland and require the FAA to perform the legally required noise and environmental analyses, and to work with the State of Maryland to mitigate the impacts of DCA's aviation traffic on all affected communities. Please click on the links below for: -A copy of the State of Maryland's January 16, 2019 State of MD Opening Brief -A copy of the January 23, 2019 MCQSC News Release Regarding MD v FAA Opening Brief -A copy of the January 10, 2019 MD v FAA Schedule Amended Order for Revised Briefing Schedule A copy of these documents is also available on the Downloads and Templates tab under the "LAWSUIT_MD Lawsuit Court Documents (DCA & BWI)" folder. |
FAA's Reply to State of Maryland's Response -- September 10, 2018
Please click here to read the PDF file: FAA's Reply to State of Maryland's Response |
State of Maryland Files Its Response to the FAA's Dismissal Motion -- August 31, 2018
Yesterday
(8/31/2018), the State of Maryland filed its response to the FAA's Motion to
Dismiss Maryland's Petition for Review. You can view and download the State of Maryland's August 31, 2018 Response Filing and Exhibits by clicking on the links below: Maryland Response: August 31, 2018 Maryland Response to FAA's Motion To Dismiss PDF copies of these documents are also available under the folder "LAWSUIT_MD Lawsuit Court Documents (DCA & BWI)" on the Downloads and Templates tab. |
MCQSC Send Letter to US Senators in Support of Amendments to S.1405 to Address Excessive Noise Impacts from Aviation -- August 27, 2018
MCQSC sent a letter on August 27, 2018 to the U.S. Senate on behalf of the members of the Montgomery County Quiet Skies Coalition that explains in detail the reasons why communities across the U.S. strongly support amendments to S.1405 to address excessive noise impacts from aviation. A copy of MCQSC's August 27, 2018 Letter is available by clicking HERE and is also available under the "Action letters, Templates" folder on the Downloads and Templates tab. |
WSJ Article: Airport Noise Complaints Are Skyrocketing -- August 26, 2018
The Wall Street Journal published an article about airplane
noise on Friday: A copy of the article is available FYI by clicking here: "Airplane Noise Complaints Are Skyrocketing" News Article. The article talks about the Airnoise Clicker, which we discussed at the most recent MCQSC meeting. It is yet another tool to complain and in fact may be preferable to the MWAA app, which has been out-of-order much of the time, including the past week. Even the online form was out of order last night. We have notified MWAA about the recurring problems.
We know how many people are negatively impacted because we hear from the residents of MoCo, but we must continue to get more of our aviation-impacted neighbors sending their complaints to MWAA. Please encourage anyone you know who is impacted to submit complaints.
FYI, our Noise Working Group members plan to verify with MWAA that they actually receive and track the Airnoise Button complaints. We will discuss this issue at the 10/11 MCQSC meeting.
In the meantime, complain now! Use the app or the online form (whenever they are working). |
Aviation noise in Southern California - interesting parallels with DCA -- August 8, 2018
Airport noise — from La Mesa to La Jolla | San Diego Reader
There are some interesting parallels with our local situation.
.... a new rapprochement between recently tone deaf aviation officials and irritated residents in the flight paths may now be in the offing. After two years of Federal Aviation Administration missteps in implementing new flight patterns, the agency and the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority have hired consultants to work with local residents to determine changes to alleviate some of the latest noise problems.
As the residents and the consultants work together, the FAA has a word of warning. No change shall be accepted that causes noise to neighborhoods that haven’t yet been hearing it. The FAA might have thought to set the example.
“We bought and moved into our La Mesa home in June 2015,” says Marie Knox, “and there weren’t any commercial airliners that we could hear or see over or near the house. We could see them out our front window, a good distance south, going in to land, but could barely hear them. Then, in November of last year, the week of Thanksgiving, everything changed overnight. |
FAA pulls out of BWI Roundtable and DCA Community Working Group -- July 18, 2018
Over the last few days, the FAA informed the DCA Noise Working Group and the BWI Roundtable that it will no longer participate in discussions about new flight paths and procedures with either group. According to information conveyed to us through the BWI and DCA airport authorities, FAA stated that it is pulling out because of the Petition for Review filed by the State of Maryland on behalf of the former and the Administrative Appeal filed on behalf of the latter.
Our Congressional delegation has requested a written explanation from the FAA before considering next steps.
We will share more news when we have it. Meanwhile, here are the articles about this subject that appeared in the Baltimore Sun (yesterday) and the Washington Post (today).
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/anne-arundel/bs-md-bwi-noise-folo-20180716-story.html
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Aircraft noise complaint numbers for 2017
Complaint numbers to MWAA re. flight noise and disturbances for 2017 are summarized on the attached spreadsheet. Please click here for a copy of the 2017 Complaint numbers: 2017 Complaint Numbers. A copy is also available under the "Noise Complaints Data" folder on the Downloads and Templates tab.
Montgomery County complaints have increased by a factor of over 700, or 72,000 percent since the flight paths changed in 2015.
Even though Montgomery County's numbers demonstrate the huge increase in noise, we all know that many more people are impacted who are not filing complaints.
Please share the complaint website or app with your neighbors and encourage them to use it.
Details for submitting complaints (it's easy!) are on our website under the "Take Action" tab. https://sites.google.com/site/208xxquietskies/about |
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