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An airplane flies over the Carol C. Harter Classroom Building Complex at UNLV on Thursday. An uptick in air traffic over the campus has not gone unnoticed by some at the school, but the runway repaving that is to blame is set to end May 1.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- Panel hears arguments in McCarran flight path case (10-23-2008)
- New-route noise lights up airport hotline (5-11-2008)
- Too noisy for neighbors (11-1-2005)
In the past few months the airport has turned UNLV into “Jet-Wash Tech,” aka “Runway U.”
At least that’s how professor Vernon Hodge sees it — and hears it.
“Almost every day the planes scream over the campus every 30 seconds,” by Hodge’s count. “I can even hear them in my office in the massive cement Chemistry Building, beating the windows” (which are behind cement shields).
“Universities are famous for peaceful settings that aid in inducing a creative atmosphere,” Hodge continued.
Having worked at UNLV for more than 25 years, though, Hodge knows his school has always had the airport as its neighbor. McCarran, just southwest of the campus, had been the county’s commercial airport for nearly a decade by the time the university opened on Maryland Parkway in 1957.
Hodge’s gripe is that the noise has gotten so much worse.
The reason: On Nov. 1, the airport shut down one of its two east-west runways to replace its asphalt with a more durable concrete surface. That means more flights are taking off from remaining airstrips, including two running from south to north that send planes roaring over UNLV.
In January, the most recent month for which McCarran provided figures, northbound departures numbered 11,605, more than seven times the January average for the previous four years. In December, when Hodge e-mailed his complaint to the Sun, northbound departures numbered 11,780, nearly six times the December average for the previous four years.
The good news for the campus community is that work on the decommissioned east-west strip is scheduled to end May 1, after which the volume of air traffic over UNLV should fall back to levels seen before the runway closure.
Randall Walker, Clark County aviation director, said he understands why people complain about the noise. But he points out that the direction planes go is not arbitrary. The Federal Aviation Administration decides where to send the jets. Landing and departure configurations, designed to maximize the number of flights able to come and go, take into account the strength and heading of the wind.
Back when UNLV opened, the airport had fewer daily flights. The first university buildings sat on the side of campus farthest from McCarran, and as UNLV professor Eugene Moehring writes in his book on the school’s history, “the occasional propeller flights of 1955 hardly posed a problem for instruction in classrooms along the west side of Maryland Parkway.”
Over the years, however, as Las Vegas grew, UNLV added buildings to the south and west, closer to the runways and the noise. As Walker put it, “The university kind of expanded itself into this problem.”
On campus today, how much you notice the din of the air traffic depends on several factors — which way your office or classroom faces, how thick the walls of your building are, how long you’ve been at the university (students and employees alike report that after the initial shell shock, they learn to tune out the airplanes).
One recent afternoon, senior Jamie Gifford reclined on a bench by the main library, absorbed in her copy of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and unfazed by passing jets producing sounds ranging from moderate rumblings to chainsaw-esque whirring. Like many on campus, Gifford says she has not noticed a change in the number of flights overhead. The planes haven’t bothered her, except on rare occasions when teachers held class outside. “We couldn’t hear,” she said.
Likewise, Helen Wing, an assistant professor in the Juanita Greer White Life Sciences building near Hodge’s chemistry building, pays attention only if a plane emits an “unusual” sound.
To the west, however, in the Carol C. Harter Classroom Building Complex, some people find the air traffic harder to ignore. Jefferson Kinney, for instance, inhabits an office with a window facing the Thomas & Mack Center, from behind which airplanes emerge, looming large.
Kinney, an assistant professor of psychology, stood in the parking lot behind the complex with a Radio Shack decibel meter one recent Monday. A US Airways plane passing overhead registered at 92 decibels on the ground, about the volume of a lawnmower for its operator. Less than 30 seconds later, another jet flew over the campus at 80 decibels. Soon after, a 90-decibel American Airlines flight went over.
But the noise is actually louder over by Life Sciences, where Kinney maintains a lab and an Allegiant airliner thundered by at 97 decibels.
Kinney sounded apologetic when complaining about his airborne tormentors. “I know that the reality is that we live in a tourist city with an airport in the middle of town and that these flights are necessary for our economy,” he e-mailed the Sun in late February.
Nevertheless, like Hodge, Kinney wondered about the worsening racket.
“There are numerous studies on the effects of chronic loud noise on stress levels and overall physiological function,” Kinney noted. “If the noise is loud enough to set off a car alarm, then it cannot be a good thing for people walking around campus.”
Sun reporter Joe Schoenmann contributed to this story.
How much of a problem is this? The article cites a few professors, everyone else tunes it out.
This is nonsense and always has been. Someone builds under an airports flight path because of cheap land, then complains about overhead flights. Hello?
A developer builds homes next to a freeway because of cheap land. Homes are sold and the new owners complain of noise. Then it is decided that you and I need to pay to build a sound wall to comfort the development.
The alternatives? Close the airport. I say, UNLV deal with it.
The noise has been unusually loud and frequent - thanks to the runway resurfacing. I personally think jet aircraft are cool and love to hear their roar, but there are several classrooms where the interruption is real. It's nice to know that this is just a temporary uptick in the northern departure volume though. Nerves are frayed enough on this campus as it is with the budget crisis, people need to know there will be some relief come May.
Amazing...
...a school built on the financial backbone of tourism, gambling and travel - and now we're getting complaints of "noise from the airport"...
Not only that, but which was there first and who chose to locate themselves nearer to each other???
Absolutely amazing... Not only this, but if there is any campus I've been around that has about nothing to do with "peace and calm from its natural surroundings", it's UNLV... If this campus was supposed to be about "peace and calm", then it'd be located around Red Rock, someplace in Summerlin or on the outskirts of town - which of course would completely defeat the purpose of its centrality...
There is only one reason we exist in this town and the infrastructural elements that have brought us all here - the gaming industry... If we DON'T have a jet overhead every 30 seconds, we are in trouble... If they begin to be every 60, 90 or 120 seconds, we are in even more trouble than we already are...
WE NEED THOSE PLANES FLYING OVERHEAD INTO LAS VEGAS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE - ESPECIALLY RIGHT NOW!!!!
This Professor Vernon Hodge is probably the type that also wants everything fixed, but hates taxes - or voted for a President that wanted "change" but refuses to pay $3.00 gallon for gas or stop watering his luscious emerald-green turfed backyard...
Either get with the show and realize that UNLV is placed currently where it is out of retroactive nature and is convenient to pretty much everybody in town that wants the opportunity of "higher education" and that each of those planes has the potential to bring another 150 cash-spending, gambling, show-hopping, restaurant patronizing, guests that support his and all our paychecks - or move on and get out of our town... Maybe he's qualified to teach at Pepperdine, Stanford or Harvard - been to all of them and believe me, they are MUCH more tranquil, peaceful and serene... Oh yeah, and they cost just a TAD bit more and are a LOT less accessible to the common-folk akin to UNLV that really want to advance themselves regardless the planes, trains and automobiles...
As a UNLV student, I have to admit, the planes are definitely really loud and consistent. Eating lunch at the student union plaza, you'll hear and see more then a couple planes during your lunch. While doing homework at the Lied library you'll hear the planes and seemingly feel them, as you sense the sound even over your headphones. Even after getting used to it, there are times when your thinking, woah what the hell is that?!??!? You can hear planes even over some of the sun's UNLV basketball videos within the Thomas and Mack. As a student, it hardly distracts from getting work done, however it definitely is a huge annoyance.
If it's such a nuisance, how about bulldozing UNLV and using the land for remote parking? McCarran was there first -- by about 15 years.
"WE NEED THOSE PLANES FLYING OVERHEAD INTO LAS VEGAS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE - ESPECIALLY RIGHT NOW!!!!"
OMG, I TOTALLY AGREE. Except you apparently didn't read the article, the accompanying infographic, or even bother to look at the picture. That plane isn't LANDING, it's taking off.
It's leaving.
The flight paths that the campus is complaining about is the DEPARTING flights, which were rerouted directly over campus. Prior to this, they were ARRIVING flights, which no one complained about... because they're much quieter.
And who cares if they're complaining? It's a temporary nuisance.
Geez, people. Read the story before you get on your high horse and start making a fool out of yourselves.
Uh - I think in order for a plane to take off, they need to LAND first...
...and yes, temporary is the whole base to the article, so again WHY is Prof. Hodge complaining so LOUDLY other than to either fill empty column space in the paper or just to complain...
I agree with you and YES, I (and probably "we") DID read the article, and as such the reason the complaints are more of an annoyance than anything more...
WAAHHHHHH!!!!!
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