At the start of the Biden administration, FAA seems to be considering genuine noise regulatory policy changes, but is facing a set of daunting fundamental challenges in doing so. These challenges start not with technical issues1, but with assumptions and value judgments underlying the 70-year old societal goals that FAA's aircraft noise exposure regulatory policies still reflect. It is ultimately up to Congress, not FAA, to decide whether airports remain the best and highest use of valuable urban land, and whether the interests of individual airports are more critical than efficiently meeting regional demand for air transportation services such as express cargo. It must also be decided whether annoyance is still the most useful summary measure of community response to aircraft noise exposure, and if so, whether annoyance due to aircraft operations is caused exclusively by acoustic factors. Does simplistic (and demonstrably incorrect) "one-size-fits-all" prediction of annoyance prevalence rates remain a useful way to characterize community response to aircraft noise at all airports?
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