One corner of American society where regulators and lawyers do about 10 times as much work, measured in dollars, as primary producers: aircraft operations from places other than public airports.
What has typically happened in Massachusetts is that a property owner will get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to land an airplane or helicopter. The FAA looks at the question of safety and, to a lesser extent, noise and impact on neighbors. Then neighbors or town officials look at the gleaming aircraft in someone’s backyard and try to shut down operations via zoning laws.
After at least four years of litigation, the question seems to have been resolved by a May 2016 decision of the Appeals Court in Hanlon v. Town of Sheffield (15-P-799). Essentially the holding seems to be that the town has to seek approval from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s aeronautics division prior to shutting down someone’s FAA-approved operation.
Related
Tangentially related: Netflix has a film called “SlingShot”. Not only is it an inspiring story about engineering, but it features Dean Kamen’s incredible residence (including attached helicopter-garage)
Finally, someone trained in STEM advocating STEM.
I am far removed from your corner of the world, real-estate- and otherwise, so not a party in any zoning dispute, but it seems to me that, because of periodic noise, if not downdrafts(?), VTOL aircraft pads have NO PLACE in residential settings. So your attempt to present it as “neighbors or town officials look at the gleaming aircraft in someone’s backyard and try to shut down operations via zoning laws” sounds plenty insincere to me.
FTR: I live in a quiet old-buildings neighborhood, yet for the last couple of years can not keep windows open in the summer because of the persistent central-AC fan noise from the chimney pot on the roof of the building opposite mine (in winter the noise is dampened somehow by the snow). Short of suing the owners, and convincing the court that their “better ventilation solution” much lowers the utility of, and ultimately the value of my property, I CAN NOT DO ANYTHING (LEGAL) ABOUT IT. So I decided to sell & move, with that reason weighting heavily on my decision.
So, no, I would not permit recurring heli take-offs and landing in my vicinity either, even had someone cordoned off a large-enough safe space for it (and there is one such little used square nearby, once a horse guard company’s exercise ground, now a grassy low shrubbery park meadow in front of a state administrative building… its immediate neighbors just stopped a proposal to corral of a corner of it for a potentially noisy kindergarden playground there. So a helipad would stand no chance at all).
Ianf: I’d much rather have a (small) helicopter do 10 operations a week a block away than deal with 6 hours of screaming kindergartners a day or 24/7 industrial fan hum. (and I like it quiet)
superMike: I noted your acquiescence to max specified helicopter ops disturbance of silence (=a written license), and, should I ever go into the real estate brokerage biz in your vicinity, I’ll sure use it as a proof of the leeway extended by one friendly neighbor towards my clients’ intent to garage their helicopters there. Let’s hope they use really small ‘uns, rather than pooling their resources together to time-share a larger, roomy, secondhand Chinook or similar unit.
@ianf 1:38 p.m.
You are presuming that your property value should be a concern of others.
If you can’t stand the risk then don’t buy.
The typical private helicopter owner might do a maximum of 30 operations per year. If we assume 5 minutes of noise per operation, that’s 2.5 hours of noise for the neighbors (probably closer to 1 hour after the novelty of having a helipad wears off). Given that these helipads are typically on fairly large lots, the actual amount of noise experienced by a neighbor will probably be less than from some motorcycles, lawnmowers, or leafblowers, all of which might might be closer.
It would be nice to live in a quieter society but if the goal is reducing noise in wealthy neighborhoods it would probably be more effective to go after leafblowers.
I live in a neighborhood in Phoenix near a local business guy who has a private helicopter. We never notice his take offs and landings. But we do hear tons of police and shuttle choppers that go back and forth over our house (from the airport 6 miles away) to transport people to the car races and other big sporting events in other parts of town. The issue is altitude, choppers are just low so they make lots of noise if you are close to their flight paths,
But the choppers are quiet versus al[ the local yard guys. Currently it is BUZZ BUZZ almost every day. So my wife is on a HOA campaign to get the yard guys to only come on a single day to reduce the noise the rest of the week.