Given the lack of cooperation over the past six years by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), airport authorities and the airline industry to properly address the increase in air traffic noise over our communities, a result of consecutive changes in flight paths and aviation procedures (known as NextGen, also Performance Based Navigation, PBN), this petition aims to encourage the public to participate in a one-year punitive boycott of all airlines.  The boycott may be extended for additional one-year periods in response to continued inaction by the FAA, airports and airlines.

What are we asking you to do?  The campaign requests that you avoid *unnecessary* air travel for a period of one year.  We encourage you to vacation locally and to invest in your communities instead, particularly during the economic recovery from the effects of the pandemic.  For those of you who are “road warriors,” we encourage you to refrain from unnecessary business travel, opting instead to benefit from the widely available and highly effective web conferencing technologies.  Flying less is an environmentally responsible choice to make.

What does the campaign aim to achieve?  The desired outcome from the boycott is a better seat at the table with the FAA and pronounced improvements to the disastrous implementations of NextGen.  Preferably, we seek an outright reversal of these implementations altogether.  Our aim is to bring immediate relief to the millions of impacted households in the thousands of now-overflown communities that find themselves directly below NextGen’s so-called “Noise sewers.”

What is the background on this?  Seemingly overnight in 2015, air traffic shifted, and unbearable aircraft noise suddenly rained down upon our once-tranquil communities.  The FAA, airports and the airlines have since turned a deaf ear to our entreaties for change, opting instead to resort to finger-pointing and to sending impacted community groups around in endless circles.  Many frustrating years have now passed, with no relief in sight.  Impacted communities across the nation have pleaded with the FAA for corrective action, to no avail.  Dozens of letters have been written to the FAA by Congressional representatives, while impacted residents have submitted tens of millions of noise complaints to local airports.  The result has been little to no useful response from the FAA, airports nor airlines.  We deserve a better result.

Why target airlines?  The campaign aims to apply indirect pressure on the FAA by applying direct pressure on airlines.  There remains a strong suspicion that the airline industry colluded with the FAA (bolstered by sneaky congressional legislation in 2003 and 2011, presumably co-drafted by aviation lobby groups) to surreptitiously move flight paths to where none had existed before, over thousands of residential neighborhoods that had never experienced aviation noise previously.  NextGen flight paths allow airlines to maximize revenue by ostensibly improving their profit margins per flight and packing the skies with more and more airplanes, with little to no regard for the impacts on those at ground level.  Questionable environmental impact review results (“No significant impact”) were presented in the lead-up to the implementation of NextGen.  In addition, blind-sided impacted communities were not adequately notified nor allowed enough time to respond before the flight path changes were “published” and implemented.  The changes brought by NextGen benefit airlines alone at the expense of the overflown communities.  Six years in, it continues to become clearer for whom the FAA is working, having become a captive agency to the industry it is intended to regulate.

How do we expect to win?  Our campaign aims to pressure the airlines by impacting their bookings and, consequently, their routes and operations.  This should wreak havoc on airlines’ revenue, slot system allocations at airports, seasonal planning, etc., causing chaos between airlines and airports.  Subsequently, we expect the industry to redirect pressure back onto the FAA, urging the agency to repair the relationship between aviation and the communities.  The desired conclusion remains to reverse NextGen and revert to the legacy, pre-NextGen, flight paths that had served us well for decades.  It's simply the right thing to do.

Know thy power!  Please sign this petition and share it with friends and family.  Let us come together to effect the corrections for which we have been pleading since 2015.  It is time to take back our skies and to win back the peace, health and quality of life that have been stolen from us by an aviation sector run amok.

We thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Your friends at Keep It Down Up There

www.keepitdownupthere.org or www.kidut.org