Americans still spend a lot of time fighting each other regarding aircraft (mostly airplane) noise near airports (e.g., see China building 66 airports in the next five years; Californians work to close a busy airport). I’m wondering if it will turn out that technology was making the fight irrelevant. The buzzing family airplanes and trainers could soon be replaced with quiet all-electric planes (see the Airbus E-Fan, for example, or the Pipistrel Alpha Electro). Larger jet-powered airplanes may become considerably quieter with technologies such as geared turbofans. (Economist). As the U.S. population grows (due to immigration and children of immigrants) perhaps there will be a combination of more air travel and more houses and apartments crammed close to airports. However, it seems as though this trend toward a larger population is more gradual than the trend toward electric light planes and quieter jets.
Readers: What do you think? Are these airport noise fights a bit like a circa 1900 fight about horse-drawn carriages?
Related:
- analysis of the extent to which noise complaints are made by a handful of neighbors (one household in northwest D.C. accounted for 78 percent of the noise complaints regarding KDCA (Reagan National))
Dunno, is Santa Monica airport closing because of loud jets late at night, or because of soaring real estate prices?
Energy density isn’t going to be high enough for batteries to replace hydrocarbons. It can work for cars, but electric planes are always going to have short flight times & low payloads. The model industry leads FAA certified planes by a half century & electric models still have the same flight times as 10 years ago.
Even if all future aircraft were electric powered or otherwise quiet starting tomorrow (and that is far from happening) the legacy fleet would continue flying for decades. The average age of Delta’s 747 fleet is around 25 years, so the aircraft that are being delivered today will still be flying in 2041. And some private aircraft are much older – there are pre-WWII (80 yr old) Piper Cubs still flying.
Most noise comes from the prop, so being electric doesn’t change anything. With one exception, the GI – possibly the loudest airplane on the planet.
As someone who lives near a large urban (though allegedly “third-world”) airport I’m very interested in quieter planes. But they’re not going to be electric. What caught my eye was Pratt & Whitney created quieter engines a couple years ago that are ready for deployment now for single aisle type planes like A320neo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G. There were reports that they are working on others for widebody planes too. I can’t wait.
The improvements will do well to offset increased traffic. The pure electrics seem to be only applicable to training and local recreational liveries. Not a great impact.