Letter: Airport noise affects those living far away

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007 | 8:12 a.m.

Opposition to the right turn by flights leaving McCarran International Airport is not about, as some have suggested, the haves vs. have nots , not about planes that "just" fly late night and early morning, and certainly not about any lack of pride in our Air Force .

What the opposition is about is a lot of ordinary, hard-working people who chose to live almost 15 miles from the airport because of the relative peace and quiet and because they did not want to live in the path of airplanes.

Obviously, if we chose to live under the flight paths of McCarran or Nellis Air Force Base, you would not find us "whining."

The opposition is also about FAA misrepresentations. The FAA represented that the impact would be less than that before 2001. In fact, the impact is far greater.

The right - turn flight path seems to be over a much narrower corridor than pre-2001. The planes are flying 24/7, oftentimes two to three minutes apart.

As opposed to reaching the quoted minimum altitude of 2,000 feet, countless planes are flying alarmingly low - sometimes scattering flocks of birds. As to important fuel savings, how much fuel is being saved with the planes flying 25 to 30 miles out of their way?

You cannot tell me that the FAA cannot, at a minimum, come up with a compromise to lessen the impact on our area .

My guess is that those readers, who think our complaints are unjustified, would be the first and loudest "whiners" if they were in our situation.

Pam Cherney, Las Vegas