South End residents hoping new device will help curb roar of airplanes

BOSTON — One Boston neighborhood is raising a ruckus over the roar of low-lying planes departing from Logan.

South End community leaders say an increase in departing flights is sending more planes soaring overhead, earlier than ever before. Fed up neighbors are hoping the installation of a new device will help address the annoying problem.

Neighbors living underneath the flight path along Washington Avenue told Boston 25 News that they now brace for the unrelenting sound of roaring planes every morning beginning at 5 a.m.

A new instrument set to be installed in the South End could soon help convey why the annoyance factor there is so high.

"Hear it pretty early in the morning and they go off pretty regularly," said Andrew Fees, a South End resident. "Within every half a minute or so there's one taking off."

As Fees' morning routine takes off, so do the planes. He says he hears every one that soars overhead.

"The flight path, they must not have gained much altitude by the time they get to the South End," Fees said. "It's just noisy because it's so frequent they come and come and come."

Fees has lived in the South End for 13 years and said he can't ever recall this many planes roaring over the neighborhood so early.

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"I have my office in the back part of the house," he said. "And sitting in there, you just hear them one after another after another after another."

Community leaders tell Boston 25 News that an increase in international flights at Logan is contributing to more morning departures from runway 27, which sends planes hovering above the South End and some other Boston neighborhoods.

"It's not like living in Winthrop or the other side where you’re used to it," Fees said. "It's sort of an unusual thing."

Not wanting this nuisance to become the norm or get worse, neighbors have been giving airport officials an earful. And it appears they're being heard loud and clear.

The FAA and Massport are now planning to install an aircraft noise monitoring device in the South End to measure the impact of low-lying planes.

"Hopefully the monitor will show [that] there's some issues, and they need to change that," Fees said. "It's always a concern that it will continue to get worse."

There had previously been one of those aircraft noise monitoring devices in the South End, but it was decommissioned in 2015 during the construction of the Ink Block. The South End representative on Massport's Community Advisory Committee says he’s organizing a coalition with other neighborhoods to keep tabs and compare notes on the issue.

Cox Media Group