What is Aircraft Noise, and how is it generated?
Noise is defined as unwanted sound that may result in disturbance and annoyance.
Aircraft noise is caused by:
- airflow around the aircraft fuselage and wings,
- Noise from the engines, with different aircraft producing different noise levels and different noise frequencies and tones. In general, the loudest area of the aircraft is right behind the engines, and they are loudest during takeoff when the engines are being worked the hardest.
It is important to note that annoyance is a personal experience, what might be annoying to one person may not be annoying to another. Despite this, the airport takes noise monitoring seriously and has an active program to monitor analyze and report on the aircraft and background noise level in the local community.
What influences aircraft noise?
Aircraft noise can sound very different depending on a number of factors including:
- Whether the aircraft is an arrival, departure, flying to its destination, performing training, or even acrobatics.
- How high aircraft are above the ground.
- How far away the aircraft is laterally from the observer.
- The weather, which can increase or decrease the experience of noise depending on certain conditions. Weather can also affect where aircraft are in the sky since aircraft take off and land into the wind, affecting which runways are used.
Whilst these factors influence the sound output from the aircraft, it is our local soundscape (or the day-to-day noise that we all experience) that influences how much, or how little aircraft noise we receive.
For example, if you live in a noisy area, potentially within a town or city, or close to a road, the background noise level from those sources is likely to mask the sound of aircraft noise. Conversely, in a quiet area the masking effect isn’t present and the same aircraft is likely to be more noticeable.
