Button offers instant gratification for those plagued by airplane noise

I rented near a train line for which I was told stopped running in the evenings as it was a passenger line, and only special circumstances had cargo trains coming through. Shortly after I moved in the cargo trains started running full time between 1am to 5am when they gave way to passenger trains on the line. Another thing not mentioned is routine rail maintainence vehicles work at night and they are pretty loud too. The proximity was ridiculous so I expected some noise. But I was not given correct information and it quickly changed anyway.

> “if you knowingly purchase a residence under a flight path, you lose any privilege of complaining about the noise”

Flight paths aren’t always static. Neither are the volumes of traffic using a given path, or the times of day when planes are flying on particular paths.

Aircraft noise is a mild annoyance when you have occasional flights during the day, but becomes life-ruiningly bad when you have departing 747s and A380s making turns over your house every few minutes at around midnight. Despite living more than 15 miles from the airport in an area of London that wasn’t previously known for aircraft noise.

In my case I was renting and could move, but if you were stuck with a house you owned (and couldn’t easily sell) it would be an awful situation to be in.

> Actually I think people frequently don't know.

Indeed. I bought my first house under a major flight path and didn't know it.

Call me stupid, but I didn't know the traffic patterns. Namely that most traffic to the Salt Lake City Intentional Airport goes on a north-south route, and I lived due south of the airport. (The patterns are due to the surrounding Salt Lake Valley.)

So despite being 15+ miles from the airport -- further than most of SLC, where I had lived for years -- the air traffic at my house was incessant at the busy flight times.

I'm not sure that was anyone's "fault" except mine, but anyway, yes, I believe people frequently don't know.

Fortunately, I grew used to it.

>>> maybe if this were the case it would exert a large enough downward pressure on property values that the current owner would be forced to resolve the issue before selling.

This is exactly what the current owners are trying to resolve via their complaints.. which is why their complaints are valid, even if they didn't live at the residence before the issue arose.

Edit: Hence the logic holds that if complaints are required to reduce an externality, and you simultaneously hold that complaints are only valid if they are made by residents who have lived there before said externality began, then places would only become worse.

> flight paths are a known known. Maps exist. Noise level maps exist. Airport locations, runway directions, departing and arriving flight paths (and altitudes!) all exist.

I think it's not so unusual for people to just ... forget about this. Especially if they've never experienced it, or if the house isn't close to an airport at all. Moving can be a stressful experience; not infrequently moving has some sort of time constraint (family expansion, new job, etc.) or is due to a bad experience (divorce/breakup being a common example). There are loads of variables, and can't possibly check up on every one of them.

I once lived in an apartment where I couldn't properly open the windows. Of course I had a viewing before I agreed to rent the place, but it never occurred to me to check if I can open the windows. Not being open the windows is annoying on hot summer days. Not being able to sleep at night had a massive impact on the quality of your life. There have been a number of studies about the effects of noise pollution, and it's a lot more harmful than people think. Housing and a good night's sleep are basic human needs; even more so than health care. As I said before, we can't always need to accommodate everyone, but I don't think that concerns about them should be dismissed lightly.

Ideally, the landlord/agency should have an obligation to find out and tell people these sort of things. Maybe that's already the case in some jurisdictions? IMHO selling people a house above a plane route without informing them is like selling people a house where you know the roof is leaking but aren't telling people. Do you check if the roof is leaking? Do you ask? Probably not. And the roof is just one example, there are many more things to check. To have a free market you must have good access to information, so you can make an informed decision.

Also remember that situations change; here is actually an example from the D.C. area (not sure how related that is to this one, perhaps it is?): https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/former-astronaut-fil...

> The problem for Vittori's neighborhood is compounded by the fact that the airport recently adopted a new flight navigation system known as NextGen to help cut carbon emissions and reduce fuel consumption. This brought planes directly over his Georgetown neighborhood.

Other airports have massively expanded, and/or are misleading about the information they give out. A good example of this is Amsterdam airport (Schiphol), which had expanded a lot in the last 40 years, and has been misleading people about how much noise the planes make.

Honestly, I think blaming the tenants for "not doing their homework" is just not very constructive. As I mentioned before, someone will live there, and someone will have the draw the shortest straw. I don't have a good solution for airplane noise, but I don't think that "just don't live there" – which is basically your proposed solution – is really a solution at all. It's just waiting for the sucker who will forget to check the airplane paths, or the person who just can't afford anything else.

> Or.. move somewhere else?

Not always so easy depending on the area and requirements (e.g. closeness to job etc.), and not everyone has the money to just move whenever.

In my case, the housing market is crazy in the city I was living in (Bristol, UK); I tried finding something else but there wasn't too much on the market that fit my requirements, and it was a lot of effort.