TL;DR
People opposed to airports are not really annoyed by the noise, or worried about pollution or crashes. They are, instead, afraid of the shadow that the airplane makes on the ground.
ahem
The smaller airports in this country are under constant attack, by the people - it should come as no surprise - who don't use them. People buy houses next to them and wake up one day and ask,
"Who put this airport here?? It wasn't here yesterday! Where's my torch and pitchfork??"
The people then write letters to their city council representatives and a long, expensive legal battle ensues (no pun intended.) Eventually the airport must be shut down, due to sheer exhaustion.
Why do people do this? Why do they hate airports so much? Ignoring why they moved there in the first place, why don't they wake up and say, "Oh cool! We're near an airport! We can go flying any time!" ?
People claim there are many reasons:
Noise
When a jet airplane takes off, there's little argument that it makes a lot of noise. There's no mystery to it: Engines designed around a constant explosion going off in mid-air tend to squeak a little.
This makes one wonder: Why didn't the people buying the houses know about the airport with all the noise? Do the planes have a "stealth mode" that they enable during Sunday open houses ?
Hardly. Jet operations - or even propeller operations - simply don't occur that often. Even the busiest airports only have a take-off on average every 10 minutes, and that includes little propeller planes. The fastest an airport can launch a jet is basically every 2 minutes. In the grand scheme of things, you're more likely to hear a chopper or muscle car pass before an airplane.
Clearly the issue isn't noise.
Crashes
Airplanes crash. Occasionally. If you're under it when it does, you're going to have a bad time.
But does it really occur that often? The embattled airport of Santa Monica is a fairly busy airport with about 300 operations per day. Yet, it only experiences on average one crash per year.
Note that this includes non-fatal non-damaging off-airport landings.
Compare this with the streets around your house. On any city block, there is a crash every week. In any city, there are thousands of crashes per year and, for example, Los Angeles sees about 300 deaths per year.
But that's not all! People even get into cars, and go traveling in them on these roads! In fact, they hurl themselves at life-threatening speeds! They even do it *across the paths* of other drivers! Why, you can't go a single block before crossing what's called an "intersection" where dozens of other drivers are speeding too - *perpendicular* to their path!
But not being in a car doesn't save you. Los Angeles also recently received the honor of being the deadliest place in America for pedestrians.
With such devastation, it's a wonder anyone puts their house so close to such "arteries of death"!
Clearly the issue isn't crashes.
Pollution
What do the environmentalists claim kills more people than car crashes ? Pollution from cars, trucks and airplanes.
"Airplanes! There they are again!"
People dislike the pollution produced by airplanes, but apparently don't mind the pollution from cars and trucks. Why is this?
Surely it can't be the amount. Taking Santa Monica again, the city might experience 150 take-offs a day (again, including the little prop planes.) (Airplanes don't burn much gas landing.) The airplane will travel down Rose, and over the ocean never to be seen again. That's what? 2 miles?
Compare this with the thousands of cars driving all over the city, each covering dozens of miles. To get to work, my own car travels through 10 miles of Santa Monica, and again when I go home.
And of course, I'm not alone. The commute includes so many cars, that the West Side has some of the worst traffic in the world.
The 10 and 405 intersection are also in Santa Monica (maybe Mar Vista) carrying its share of the cargo trucks coming out of Long Beach, along with buses, etc.
"But isn't the pollution from a single plane spread over a wider area ?"
Yes, and this makes it less potent. If you want to get technical, the parts per million (PPM) is much lower.
Again, the airplane's contribution is tiny.
Clearly the issue isn't pollution
What then is the problem ???
The only reason that I can think of, why people hate airports and airplanes, is that they are afraid of the shadow that the airplane makes as it passes over them.
I'm not being coy. There is research to back me up. When a shadow passes over us, it produces a visceral, primitive reaction in our lizard brains. It is powerful and uncontrollable.
When a shadow passes over us, our instinct is that a predatory bird is about to pounce on us and eat us. Think of all the prairie dogs and chickens who dive for cover when a hawk or eagle passes over. They can't hear the raptors coming and so have to keep a look out.
To see this for yourself, find a pool of water containing mosquito larvae. Wave your hand over the pool and watch the larvae run (well, wiggle) to the bottom. If you do it long enough, you will drown them.
We evolved from the same scampering rat that these other animals did, that same first mammal who had to run in fear from much taller dinosaurs. That same panic reaction wells up in us when a shadow crosses us.
When you look at it this way, it's really no wonder why people hate airplanes. They cause us a lot of stress.
How do we fix this ?
The solution is to remove the shadows obviously. One way to do this would be to produce so much pollution - as much pollution as Hong Kong - that the sun never shines. It is widely known that people in China do not fear airplanes. In fact, the Chinese word for airplane translates roughly as, "What's that noise above us?"
Another solution comes from the comic book world, of all places. If the airplanes were transparent, they obviously wouldn't produce a shadow. Yes, I'm suggesting we should license the invisible jet technology from the Amazons of Themyscira, who Wonder Woman is a member of.
No, that would never work because we'd never find their invisible island.
Therefore I would propose that we just get over it.
