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Noise Complaint Summary

see how the number of Complaints varies each month

Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) receives many complaints each day about aircraft operating at and around the airport. The number of complaints and their origin often varies by the time of day, day of the week, and even time of year. In the spirit of transparency, we want to provide the community with a comprehensive view to analyze the noise complaint data we receive each day.

View the Data

Below is an interactive report that provides summary statistics about the complaints received by the airport including:

  • How many complaints were received, from how many people (the complainants), and from what area (zip code)
  • What was the general reason for the complaint
  • The periods (day of month and hour of the day) in which complaints were received

The most recent month is shown however, you can access previous months using the slider-down in the top left-hand corner.

View full screen

Want to make a noise complaint?

Try our Noise Complaint App to submit your concern directly to the OAK Noise Office.

Noise Complaint App
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OAK Noise and Operational Summary

View the Noise and operations data

The Airport Noise and Operations Monitoring System (ANOMS) is operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, continuously tracking and recording noise levels and aircraft flights to and from the airport. The system uses data collected from air traffic control radar systems, airport data feeds, and noise monitoring terminals to build a detailed picture of the noise level produced by flights operating around the airport. All of the collected data is analyzed and presented in the report below.

An aircraft overflies a noise monitoring terminal

Aircraft Noise Summary

The airport has a number of fixed or temporary noise monitors deployed in the local area, generally under or near flight paths.

The data collected by the monitors is presented in the following dashboard which displays:

  • The location of the noise monitors
  • Detailed information on the collected noise data, including the distribution of peak noise events and if these were caused by arrivals or departures.
  • The top noise-producing aircraft and airlines for the selected time period and filters.

Learn more about how aircraft noise is monitored and captured.

Operational Summary and Directional Flow Summary

These dashboards show the number of operations per day and per runway based on a variety of parameters:

  • Period: provides a deep dive into the number of operations at the airport per day and per month.
  • Select: the report data can be filtered by time of day and operation type (arrivals or departures).
  • Category: summarises the number of flights at the airport for the top 15 airlines, aircraft types, and destinations.
  • Trend: outlines how the number of operations per day per month compares in the selected month to the past 2 full years.

View the Data

The dashboard below is automatically updated every month and you can access data from previous months using the drop-down in the center of the report header.

View full screen
Aircraft Noise Summary
Operational Summary
Directional Flow

User Notes:

Click the page navigation buttons to view the Aircraft Noise Summary, Operational Summary, and Directional Flow Summary. You can view the dashboard in full-screen mode by clicking the box in the upper right corner of the dashboard window.

Want to see more?

View live flight tracks and noise levels using our WebTrak Flight and Noise tracker.

WebTrak
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Aircraft Noise

What Affects the way I hear Aircraft Noise?

Noise is defined as unwanted sound that may result in disturbance and annoyance. Aircraft noise is unwanted sound that is generated from some sort of aircraft operation, whether it be from landing, en-route, departing, or even from flight operations on the ground. Aircraft noise can be anywhere, but many factors ultimately influence how much, how it sounds, and how we hear it.

Noise Generation

Aircraft noise is created by airflow around the aircraft fuselage and wings, as well as noise from the engines. Different aircraft types and engine combinations produce different noise levels with different 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. But, aside from different flight operations, aircraft configuration also influences how much noise is produced. Aircraft noise sound levels can be very different depending on a number of factors relating to the aircraft including:

  • Whether the aircraft is an arrival, departure, flying to its destination, performing training, or even acrobatics.
  • The engine type and number of engines used. Propellor engines sound much different than jet engines. Even different models of a similar type of engine often produce different sounds at varying noise levels.
  • The airframe configuration at the time. ‘Dirty’ aircraft configurations like when flaps or landing gear deployed can generate more noise and at different frequencies which may sound more annoying to a listener.

Noise Transmission

Where the aircraft is and the general conditions affect how the noise travels to you. Aircraft noise sound levels can be very different depending on a number of outside factors including:

  • 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 conditions. Weather can also affect where aircraft are in the sky since aircraft take off and land in the wind, affecting which runways are used. Learn more about OAK’s various flight patterns and runway use conditions here.
  • The local terrain and infrastructure, which can dampen or amplify noise depending on what lies between and around you and the aircraft. This phenomenon is more prominent when coming from aircraft operating at low altitudes or on the ground.

Hearing the Noise

While the generation and transmission of noise 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.

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 analyse and report on the aircraft and background noise level in the local community.

Want to see more?

View live flight tracks and noise levels using our WebTrak Flight and Noise tracker.

WebTrak