Shifting flight routes rattle southwest valley

Tuesday, July 30, 2002 | 10:59 a.m.

Neighbors in a largely rural area of the southwest Las Vegas Valley are dealing with an unwelcome guest: the noise of large passenger jets flying above them.

The residents near Windmill Lane and Durango Drive live in a rural preservation area, with large homes on acre-sized pads. Since October, residents say, the jets from McCarran International Airport have flown a lot lower over their homes, rattling their windows and doors.

Kevin Kinsler, a retired airline pilot, said he believes the increase in departures over his home -- and over land nearby that he would like to develop -- is due to flights shifted from airspace above the upscale Spanish Trails subdivision.

He said Clark County Aviation Department planners and the Federal Aviation Administration made the departure changes in the days after last September's terrorist attacks.

"They're killing us," Kinsler said. "Every airplane goes over our house. All of us in this neighborhood were never notified."

Kinsler said he has other disputes with the airport, including a lease agreement to nearby airport-owned land that he rejected because it would have given the airport an easement over the land he owns.

Kinsler said, and Aviation Department officials confirmed, that he calls the recorded hotline for airport noise complaints nearly every day.

But Hilarie Grey, department spokeswoman, said her agency does not plan arrival or departure routes.

"The Aviation Department does not set the route," Grey said. "We do have the noise hotline and we do forward the information to the FAA, but other than that we don't have much impact."

Grey said the area is part of the department's Cooperative Management Agreement, which means that it is likely to experience higher noise volumes from the airport. She said the area has been included in the CMA for years.

"We try to be as good as a community partner as we can for all areas impacted by the airport," Grey said.

She said the airport officials have not noticed an increase in the number of complaints from the area, a part of unincorporated Clark County called Enterprise, except for calls from Kinsler.

But other residents living nearby confirmed that they have heard and felt the big jets flying over them more often.

"Every plane goes over us, it seems like anyway," said Sue Masi, who has lived in the neighborhood for about six years. "It has been getting worse. A lot of them come real low too, and they are really loud.

"We have horses. Sometimes when we're on our horses and they're low and very loud, it's nerve-racking because we never know what the horses are going to do."

She paused in her conversation as a jet thundered overhead.

"There are times, early morning, later at night, we really notice it a lot," Masi said. "I think they just put us right in the pattern."

FAA spokesman Jerry Snyder said his agency did change departure routes for the jets last October, but it was not related to the Sept. 11 tragedy.

"It was fully and completely for efficiency, to reduce congestion and to help improve safety," Snyder said.

Noise is not a direct factor when the FAA contemplates arrival or departure routes from McCarran or other big airports, he said. Snyder added that concerns from Spanish Trails residents had nothing to do with planning the routes.

"Not only would that be inappropriate, it's also against the law," he said.

Anytime the federal agency shifts routes to and from an airport, some people will experience more noise and some will hear the aircraft less, Snyder said.

The growing population of the Las Vegas Valley means that some people are going to hear more of the jets, he said. The population growth means that more aircraft will fly into McCarran, and that means the FAA will have to adjust the routes, Snyder said.

The Enterprise residents could soon gain some relief. A test of new routes planned for August would shift 30 to 40 percent of the departing flights back to pre-October configurations.

Snyder said the tests, originally planned for April, were delayed because of coordination issues with the FAA office in Oklahoma City, and could be delayed again. But for now, the goal is to begin testing the new routes next month.

Not all Enterprise residents have been bothered by increasing jet noise.

"I haven't noticed it where I live," said John Hiatt, chairman of the Enterprise Town Advisory Board, which advises the Clark County Commission on land use issues.

He said everyone in the southwest part of town hears the planes sometimes.

"If you look at a plot of where the planes have gone, for thousands of trips, they are essentially everywhere," he said. "But over the last couple of years, the airport noise has gotten a lot better."

Hiatt said some might have gotten additional relief from jet noise because of the decrease in the number of flights since last September.

But he advises anyone thinking of moving into Enterprise to consider the issue carefully, because some people are more sensitive to jet noise than others.