A message from James Baker, a member of the HB Air Traffic Noise Working Group and long time activist of the jet noise issues in HB:

With the massive flight expansion of Long Beach airport and the implementation of the FAA Nextgen project, the city of Huntington Beach has become inundated with air traffic noise to unprecedented extent. The Nextgen implementation changed flights from the traditional scattered or fanned-out approach patterns to a concentrated corridor approach. Because of this change, residents outside of the new flight corridor are experiencing somewhat less noise while those living under the new "super-highway in the sky" are inundated with nearly all flights passing overhead.
The nextgen implementation is a national problem. Many cities, counties and one state have sued the FAA.

It gets even worse. If you are bothered by aircraft noise and eventually sell your home, you must legally declare this in your real estate disclosure section. I have an unsubstantiated report of a recent lawsuit where a seller did not disclose and was later sued for $100k in damages. In my opinion, due to this nation-wide noise crisis, the FAA may eventually be required to either change back to a fanned-out, high altitude approach model and/or compensate impacted individuals. This will be a long road as nothing in the government happens quickly, especially where liability is concerned.

There are few actions that an individual may pursue that have merit. One of these is to utilize the complaint system at Long Beach Airport. Although the airport itself cannot go against the FAA, filing complaints is extremely important for everyone impacted. It establishes an official record that does two important things: 1) it officially establishes the extent of the problem due to the number of individuals complaining and 2) provides those individuals with an official log of detailed complaints to establish the magnitude of impact to each household.

Not surprisingly, airport authorities don't make it easy to file noise complaints. Each complaint requires a ridiculous amount of detail about the aircraft, time of day, your information, etc. This complexity discourages many from filing. However, now there is an answer that makes filing official complaints a one-second job. Please visit www.airnoise.io and sign up. For a one-time fee of $30, you will receive a small electronic button. Every time an aircraft flies over, press the button once and the detailed complaint form is automatically generated and submitted to airport authorities. In addition, there is a separate record of all your complaints for you to access as well as statistics for your area. There is a $5 per month account fee that is worth every cent. Every impacted member of the community needs to take action. There is no organization focused on taking care of this for you. If compensation ever comes to bear, you will need official documentation to back up any claim.

James Baker