Faced with a chorus of complaints from Palo Alto about airplane noise, San Francisco Airport is drafting new routes that would allow aircrafts to fly higher and veer closer to the Bay as they pass the city.
The airport is in the early stages of implementing its new Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS), navigation technology that relies on the airport's broadcast station to transmit GPS signals that are more precise than those coming from a satellite. The FAA approved GBAS last year and SFO is now in the process of designing new flight procedures that take advantage of its newfound precision.
According to the airport's website, GBAS uses its broadcasting capabilities to correct the "inherent errors" in satellite-based data that result from factors like changing atmospheric conditions and satellite positions.
"Uncorrected, GPS is accurate to about 40 meters. With GBAS, the accuracy improves to within 2-3 centimeters," the website states.
Now residents and airport officials hope the new system will help them address a topic of common frustration: airplane noise. For years, Palo Alto residents have complained about the airplane superhighways that formed over their homes after the Federal Aviation Administration consolidated flight paths as part of its NextGen initiative in 2014. Now, SFO administrators hope the new system will clear the way for new flight procedures -- ones that increase the distance between residential neighborhoods and airplane paths.
"Our goal with the innovative procedures is to increase altitude, drop the speed restrictions and … allow the aircraft to accelerate over the Bay where, if it needs to deploy a deceleration device, it will deploy it over the water and not over the residential areas," Paul Hannah, a consultant with SFO who is helping to implement GBAS, said at the Monday meeting.
Specifically, SFO is considering a new flight procedure in which planes traveling north from EDDYY waypoint, which is over Los Altos Hills, remain higher as they pass the SIDBY waypoint and other Midpeninsula communities and veer further into the Bay than they do today as they approach the airport. With the GBAS system, planes would be able to fly at an altitude of 5,400 or 5,500 feet, well above the current altitude of 4,000 in the SIDBY area under the current procedures.
While the change could help, Hannah cautioned that the scope of the current exercise is limited. His team is only evaluating approach procedures at the moment and not arrivals and departures. Some of the ideas that residents from Palo Alto and other communities have been proposing in recent meetings could still be explored, he said, but it won't be until the later phases of FAA approval.
For some Palo Alto residents, the latest efforts by SFO to address the noise issue continue to fall short. While airport officials had pledged to carefully gauge noise and compare measurements from the current system to measurements from GBAS, local advocates pushed for more precise data. Local plane advocates urged the airport to provide measurements for specific flights rather than aggregate data that averages out the impact of many GBAS and non-GBAS flights. SFO officials countered that releasing measurements for specific plans could lead to an imprecise picture because of fluctuations in weather and other factors that may skew the results.
"I hear all this scientific data but I don't see any relief in sight," Palo Alto resident Tom Shannon, who lives under SIDBY, told airport officials.
Shannon said that on Saturday and Sunday afternoons he typically sees seven to 12 flights per hour go over his yard, most of which are at altitude below 4,000 feet. The frequency dips and then increases again between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. The cargo planes follow at 4 a.m., he said at the hearing.
"We have windows open in summer time with weather like today and it wakes you up," Shannon said.
Why, he asked, can't the area have three SIDBY-like corridors so that the planes don't continuously hit the same vector?
Jennifer Landesmann, a longtime plane noise activist, criticized SFO for its "piecemeal" approach at solving the airplane noise issue and urged staff to measure the cumulative impacts of its policy changes.
"I appreciate everybody's effort, but the only way we'll be able to really help anyone is by actually getting to something that appears to be fair," Landesmann said. "Right now, I'm just not feeling that yet."
Comments
Registered user
Old Palo Alto
on Jul 18, 2023 at 11:05 am
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2023 at 11:05 am
Gennady - Thanks for the article. One correction - the Saturday and Sunday afternoon flights coming across SIDBY can range anywhere from 7 - 12 approaches / HOUR! That can work one's nerves when trying enjoy a lunch or dinner on a backyard deck not to mention the long-term negative health impacts. SFO defines its area of impact as San Mateo County. How then does the SIDBY intercept get placed in Crescent Park in Santa Clara County? Time for some SIDBYs to be installed over southern San Mateo County! How is it that Palo Alto has no representation on the SFO Roundtable? Co-opting a phrase from Patrick Henry, a founding father, "Jet noise impact without representation is tyranny!"
Registered user
Palo Alto Weekly staff writer
on Jul 18, 2023 at 11:06 am
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2023 at 11:06 am
Thank you for clarifying, Tom. The story has been corrected.
Registered user
Duveneck/St. Francis
on Jul 18, 2023 at 1:28 pm
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2023 at 1:28 pm
What it seemed to me to have happened…20+ year resident:
(Admittedly avoiding the mumbo jumbo of Nextgen, etc.)
Some of us recall not too long ago…there were flights over us, sure, but nothing like how it is now!
I think…
Atherton and EPA were assisted by San Mateo County to shift SFO mainstream air traffic just a bit south, but so vast majority now goes over Palo Alto. See flight apps.
Approaches over us change slightly but at times it’s crazy constant over Palo Alto. It was NOT like this before!!
SFO, which is “owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco,” cares a whole heckuva lot more about opinions of adjacent San Mateo County than it does about Palo Alto.
I admit FAA is a federal agency, but I assume they have a SF or SFO or west coast office? Do they care to be fair to an array of cities and counties even within a relatively close geographic area!? It could make a difference and be fair.
Palo Alto is situated at the very northern part of Santa Clara County. This county does little to aid/represent the interests of Palo Alto.
I haven’t used my flight app recently.
By all recollection: the night (and a day one, too?) Korean cargo plane with route LAX to SFO and then back to Korea is a 747, very loud and excessively LOW.
Airbus planes are horribly noisy. Like A321.
Uninformed commenters say:
The airport was here first.
What, you don’t fly on commercial planes?
Quit complaining about modern transportation.
Well, the situation clearly CHANGED and it’s been very bad and unfair to Palo Alto. Where are our elected and appointed representatives?
Registered user
Old Palo Alto
on Jul 18, 2023 at 2:45 pm
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2023 at 2:45 pm
SIDBY, in the middle of Palo Alto, is the Initial Approach Fix for several arrival procedures into SFO. It serves as a navigation point on the arrival path, as well as the point where planes can descend below 4000 ft. Over 200 flights per day cross directly over or near SIDBY.
It was not part of the FAA’s original NextGEN redesign of SFO arrivals in 2015, but it was bundled into two later updates that were presented by the FAA as being responsive to recommendations by the regional Select Committee organized by our Congressional representatives. The first of these modified the SERFR arrivals from the South, and the second shifted arrivals from the Pacific from San Mateo County to over Palo Alto.
When the City of Palo Alto objected to the latter during the FAA’s short appeal period, the FAA asserted the it had not changed its previous path, as evidenced by a technicality — that there were no defined path for ether because neither connected to a fixed Initial Approach Fix. Then, almost days after the appeal period ended, the FAA made a technical modification, which could be appealed, to connect the new path to SIDBY as its Initial Approach Fix,. Many of us thought this slight of hand by the FAA violated their own procedures and gave Palo Alto ground to sue. City Council in closed session chose not to, and has to date refused to disclose why not and who voted for and against.
SIDBY is an invisible GPS fix over Eleanor Pardee Park, but the City should put up a physical memorial at this location to mark our loss of peace and quiet.
Registered user
Old Palo Alto
on Jul 18, 2023 at 4:14 pm
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2023 at 4:14 pm
Anyone who thinks the SFO air traffic over Palo Alto hasn’t
changed, should look at the track density maps on the SFO Roundtable site and compare Slides 5 and 7. Not only did Palo Alto get more traffic, it is more concentrated. Web Link
This unprecedented concentration of noise comes with health risks for our community . As the recent NYT article noted, Noise Can Take Years Off Your Life. Web Link
SFO Airport hasn’t done anything to mitigate the concentration of airport traffic over Palo Alto, for 8 years. The GBAS modification they are proposing still concentrates traffic over Palo Alto. It will only be used by airlines with the capability and only when traffic is light. It’s not going to do anything.
SFO can request the FAA make real changes that would reduce the concentration and fix the excessive noise of the three converging routes. Palo Alto City Council needs to insist that they do so.
Registered user
Menlo Park
on Jul 18, 2023 at 4:32 pm
Registered user
on Jul 18, 2023 at 4:32 pm
I've never understood why multiple routes weren't included in the NextGen program. Before precision approaches, natural variations and tolerances following beacons spread out the planes over several horizontal miles. But with them all following a precision route, the noise is concentrated. Good for some, BAD for others.
To be clear, precision approaches are a definitive improvement. More efficient. More quiet overall (less engine use to follow the stepwise controller inputs). But we need to work on this part now.
Hopefully adding some alternates along with modifying them bayward will help.