The latest effort by neighbors of the airport in the state’s biggest city are making noise again – about jet noise.
This noise-abatement thing has been circling the Portland International Jetport for roughly as long as there’s been a runway in the middle of Maine’s most densely-populated area.
In other words, people who live in the flight path say they wish the jets would just shut the hell up.
Yet of course they’re some of the same people who like to hop on those jets to, well, jet down to Florida midwinter.
So that’s really how this works.
A new noise-abatement plan, meanwhile, has just been unveiled to coddle the grounded.
The theory goes like this: Pilots are requested to fly an “S” pattern to avoid sending their noise to the peace-and-quiet loving folks in their ticky-tacky houses below.
The new noise-abatement plan comes on top of a longstanding request that pilots flying into the Portland airport try to stay over the Fore River to avoid the ‘hoods.
Longtime commercial captain and now aviation analyst John Nance told The Maine Wire pilots try to adhere to noise rules when it’s safe, even though they may occasionally “roll our eyes” in silent protest.
“Airlines try to be good neighbors and yes, once in a while a pilot might roll his eyes, but the airlines will do our best – weather permitting,” Nance, a decades long pilot for Alaska Airlines and, before that, the Air Force, said.
He said his experience has been that people who complain from the ground about jet noise are the same ones who just love to get on a plane and go where they want to go.
John Cox, also a retired veteran of the left seat, for United Airlines, said in a separate interview “‘S’ turns close to the runway could adversely affect the stability of the approach.”
But Cox said he’ll keep an open mind pending his being able to examine the specifics of the new noise rule.
Airport spokesperson Zachary Sundquist told WGME-TV that “whatever approach they feel they need to fly to safely land the airplane is going to be the approach that gets flown.”
What is the point of this article? Poke digs at people who travel on airplanes? Quote an obscure pilot who doesn’t fly from PWM? Get to use the meaningless term about ‘tricky tacky houses”. Guess you’ve got to be incredulous about something, it is the click bait formula.
Try living in Wiscasset with the race track.
“This noise-abatement thing has been circling the Portland International Jetport for roughly as long as there’s been a runway in the middle of Maine’s most densely-populated area.” As with BGR, the airport was not built in the middle of town: town grew out into the willywacks and surrounded the airports.
I grew up in So. Portland, right off of Rt.1 near Rigby yard. We were right in the flight path for PWM. Road, rail and air noise. You get used to it. 🤷♀️
Similar to the working harbor situation. Things like, you can’t start your lobster boat until 9 am type stuff.
Planes coming into and leaving airports make noise. If you don’t like the noise, don’t live near an airport. It’s 2026. Odds are that the airport was there long before the people who now complain about it.
Why not use anti noise generators on the flight paths ?
I grew up in SoPo near the Coast Guard base and right under the flight path for runway 290. I used to love looking up and watching them approach the runway. It was fun and the noise never bothered me as it lasted for such a short time. If you don’t like noise why would you move near an airport? I guess if you don’t like the noise you should move. SoPo has become a lot more genteel since the days I grew up there. Back then they changed the approach so that it was more over the harbor and then down the Fore River. Still the people who lived on the Western Prom complained.