[JCM9]

Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport that has a high density of people, precisely to limit casualties during an event like this. Industrial would be permitted while residential and commercial use is not.

Scarily there are communities that have ignored such logic and permitted dense residential development right next to an airport.

[silisili]

UPS actually bought and destroyed thousands of homes near their end of the airport about 20 years ago, under the guise of 'noise', but realistically for expansion of warehousing. Now, I guess I feel slightly less upset by that (my childhood home was one of them).

[xhkkffbf]

Same thing happened to a friend who lived near the Albany airport. They gave him some song and dance about how it wasn't safe for people. But then after the deal was all done, they ended up selling the land to one of those hotel companies that wanted to have 100+ people sleep there each night. But they weren't permanent residents so it was different.

[Ferret7446]

Both can be true at the same time (or all three if you include safety in addition to noise).

[silisili]

True, but rather doubtful. UPS has owned that part of the airport for longer than I've been alive. As a kid, yeah sometimes a plane comes over but nobody really seemed to care.

Fast fwd 15 years and now the city is telling us how unsafe it is to live there, passing out studies about how airplane noise will ruin your life, etc. And they made the buyout 'optional', knowing they'd railroad the holdouts, which they did. They'd tear down every house and the road leading to your house as they went, until the holdouts gave in.

All of a sudden my neighborhood is gone. And that awful, noisy, unsafe to live in place...is full of workers in cheap steel warehouses. I guess it's more safe for them.

Many people may not realize, but UPS and Ford absolutely own Louisville. If either says jump, the city government will ask how high?

[jacquesm]

> Fast fwd 15 years and now the city is telling us how unsafe it is to live there

I think their point just got made in a way that can't be ignored.

[silisili]

Fair point!

Oddly enough the pamphlets they kept sending out focused on irritability, poor grades, confusion, sleep problems, etc, and never mentioned the possibility of being fragged by a wayward jet.

I say that only partially in jest, looking at a map now, we were only 2 or so miles as the crow flies from the end of their runway and in the direct path..

[jacquesm]

On a long enough timescale even improbably things will happen. The pamphlets would not mention that possibility because that would imply that the operator thought that a crash was possible, which would have caused their whole operation to be reviewed. By pointing out all but that, and by focusing on things that they could point at without having proof that living in the path of an active runway is risky (it is, take-off and landing are the most risky phases of flight) they were trying to get their way and check off a possible future headline without being seen as alarmist or engaging in risky behavior.

I'm trying to imagine this same thing happening with a subdivision in the same location where this plane crashed and the headlines that would have generated. As bad as this is, that alternative disaster would have been on an entirely different level.

I also hope that as a result of this crash there will be a global review of the placing of airports, especially the ones that are pretty much in cities with the flight path directly over houses during final approach and just after take-off.

This is a good example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiPyrfEuOeo

And yes, they're space constrained. But, given enough time...

[Moto7451]

Jets are also simply too loud for homes under the takeoff path in standard use. There’s what amounts to a ghost town next to LAX due to this and the history of the airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_del_Rey,_California

Burbank Airport has quiet hours and has left a bunch of commercially zoned area under that takeoff path.

I’m in Atlanta now and they bought up a lot of land around the airport when redeveloping it and do similar zoning tricks for the buffer. One of the buffer zones is the Porsche Experience. It’s loud as heck when you’re on the part of the track closest but not bad where the corporate HQ and paddock is

[fortran77]

I grew up 3 miles (as the crow flies) from JFK Runway 31 R / 13 L in Cedarhurst, New York

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Cedarhurst,+NY+11516/John+F....

[themadturk]

I recently toured SEA. The third (western-most) runway there is too close to homes to use regularly for takeoffs due to noise. Though the FAA has made the Port of Seattle no promises, they apparently do tend to use the third runway as much as possible for landings only, and not late at night as much as possible.

[tharkun__]

I just looked that up (Atlanta) on https://noise-map.com/ and man, that's way not enough zoning tricking in my book. Not that it's much different in other cities (or countries).

[alright2565]

There's no need to zone for airport noise in Atlanta because the highway passing through the city center and hotrodded cars already are much louder and more disruptive in practice. I wish I was joking.

Also, the map you're looking at there is relatively low resolution. I would suggest looking at it in https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/; make sure to switch the "Modes:" to "All Modes"

[jcurbo]

That's wild, I was in LA recently for work and drove by that area and wondered what was up with the street grid. I figured it must be something like this given the airport.

[duped]

Meanwhile, ORD is surrounded by residential areas and they're building a new tollway perpendicular to the runways

[caseyohara]

MDW immediately came to mind as an airport closely surrounded by neighborhoods. I've always wondered what it's like to live in one of those neighborhoods. Is it a perpetual nuisance or do you get used to it?

[tharkun__]

Not at MDW but there are plenty such places and yes, some people do "get used to it". But there are studies that show that you increase health risks from such levels of noise even if you get used enough to it so that you can sleep through them. Search for increases in problems of cardiovascular health from car and plane noise.

And some people just won't really get used to it. I've lived near airplane noise and I never got used to it. I also don't sleep better with white noise. I sleep worse.

[mindcrime]

First time I was ever on a flight that landed at Midway, I was pretty freaked out by the visuals as we were descending. It's like ... "we're going to land on a house... we're going to Land On A House... we're going to LAND ON A HOUSE!! ... OMG, there's a runway <phew>".

[rpcope1]

It's amazing that towns don't see this sort of thing and think "huh maybe it's not a good idea to put apartments right on top of an airport", but I guess they don't. Longmont is in trouble with the FAA because they OKed a bunch of apartments right at the end of Vance Brand that would be right in the path of aircraft struggling to gain altitude out of the airport. Naturally there's a vocal contingent of people around here that think this is the airport's problem and not the town or greedy developers, and that all the airports (except DIA) should be shut down.

[potato3732842]

You can always come up with some pretext to justify things by ignoring the other side of the equation.

How many lives do the man hours spent commuting, or toiling away to afford higher rents waste?

IDK how the math pencils out, but an attempt ought to be made before drawing conclusions.

[Retric]

None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing. The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water often by building airports on reclaimed land.

What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send larger airplanes to a new airport, but it’s not free and there’s no clear line when things get unacceptably dangerous.

[nostrademons]

San Jose does. You can, in theory, walk to downtown from the airport; it's about an hour and a half via pedestrian trail:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zhZdA5tWGAKunM2e8

(This is widely considered a misfeature of San Jose - it limits the height of buildings in downtown San Jose to 10 stories because the downtown is directly under the flight path of arriving flights, it limits runway length and airport expansion, and it means that planes and their noise fly directly over key tourist attractions like the Rose Garden and Convention Center. If we ever had a major plane crash like this one in San Jose it would be a disaster, because the airport is bounded by 101 on the north, 880 on the south, the arriving flight path goes right over downtown, and the departing flight path goes right over Levi's Stadium, Great America, and several office buildings.)

[Retric]

There’s roughly a mile of roads, green spaces, and river between the airport and downtown San Jose which an absolutely identical accident would impact. It’s not very wide, but pilots aren’t going to aim for buildings if they can help it.

So while downtown being in the flight path is a risk there was some method to the madness which caused that alignment.

[jonas21]

San Diego's airport, on the other hand, has the a bustling restaurant district, an interstate with frequent bumper-to-bumper traffic, and a dense residential neighborhood all within a mile off one end of the runway -- and a popular shopping area, an elementary school, and a high school within just over a mile from the other end.

In addition, the terrain rises in both directions (so sharply on one side that planes can't use ILS when landing from that direction).

[DiggyJohnson]

The fact that San Diego operates essentially downtown with a single runway is a marvel, even if it does cause issues. I hope they get the tram extension one day.

[Retric]

Agreed, and clearly there’s a bunch of much safer options. The north island air station base is close and almost comically better.

[Johnny555]

The Las Vegas Airport is very close to the strip, surrounded by residential neighborhoods and hotels about 1/4 - 1/2 mile from the airport, and UNLV university is about 1000 feet in a straight line from one of the runways.

[bdamm]

San Jose Airport's walkability and bikability is actually wonderful and I always take the opportunity to walk or bike there when flying into SJC.

[Arainach]

>None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_International_Airport

It's hard to project growth. Things build right up to the limit of the airport for convenient access, then the area grows and the airport needs to grow - and what do you do? Seattle-Tacoma is critically undersized for the traffic it gets and has been struggling with the fact that there's physically nowhere to expand to.

[Retric]

Zoning is one option to direct growth, but you can move airports. Chicago is right next to a Great Lake and there’s relatively shallow areas ready to be reclaimed etc.

Obviously you’re better off making such decisions early rather than building a huge airport only to abandon it. Thus it’s called urban planning not urban triage.

[Arainach]

Move them to where? Cities large enough to merit an airport generally either have development which has expanded around them or physical features not conducive to development (mountains, lakes, etc.).

It's easy to say "just build bigger elsewhere" but unless you go dozens of miles out and add hours to every trip to/from the airport there's no options.

And no, "just fill in every body of water" is not an option. It doesn't work at all in many cases, is hilariously expensive in all cases, and has enormous environmental impact.

[Retric]

I’m specifically suggesting using reclaimed land if they relocated the airport because the cost seems to work out for Chicago, though obviously an in depth analysis is necessary. Still just looking at the depths combined with lakes not having the downsides of open oceans makes it promising. Unfortunately we’re talking about a huge airport so moving anywhere gets incredibly expensive.

The ultimate reason so many cities use land reclamation for airports is open water does not lose property value by being near the airport. Thus a given greater metropolitan area regains not just the physical land of the airport but the increased property value from all that land that’s no longer next to an airport.

[potato3732842]

>Zoning is one option to direct growth

My magic crystal ball named "the past 50yr of history" says it is unlikely to be the success you envision.

[DiggyJohnson]

There’s a real convenience to an airport not being 50 minutes away

[eitally]

Congonhas (the original Sao Paulo airport) is right in the middle of the city.

There was a significant crash there in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054

[matt-p]

In all honesty most countries in europe have at least one airport in a city centre. I mean look at lisbon, RKV, BHD/LCY (even glasgow,LHR to some extent), BMA, NCE.

[alexjplant]

I live in San Diego and can watch planes come and go from my apartment rooftop. I've also walked to and from the airport to stretch my legs before and after flights.

Somewhere I have a GoPro video of me on my motorcycle waiting for a freight train at a crossing in traffic while a 747 flies overhead ("Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"). It's a pretty transportation-dense area.

[vel0city]

> Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing

Ever see Dallas Love Field?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/A94EdexYwfpyeMxa7

Lots of airports are pretty much immediately adjacent to their city centers.

[gwbas1c]

> The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water.

That works in costal areas, but not inland.

There's no large body of water near the Louisville airport.

[Retric]

The Ohio River is a large body of water fairly close if someone was going to relocate Louisville airport.

[WorldMaker]

The Ohio River is a mile wide at Louisville, but that still doesn't wide enough to classify it "large body of water", especially because it is a river that moves relatively quick for its width and then hits falls/rapids just downstream of Louisville.

But also there's a lot of urban and suburban development you'd have to displace to even consider moving the airport near the Ohio River for most miles both up and down stream of Louisville.

[Retric]

Tradeoffs. Physical land under the airport is lost either way, but land near the old airport becomes more useful where the river itself couldn’t have buildings in either situation. Thus moving it near a river or other large body of water is a long term net gain.

As to a crash, ditching into an industrial area isn’t significantly worse for the passengers than ditching into a set of rapids, but the rapids are far better for the general public.

[johann8384]

It's not even a mile wide here. The widest spot I measured just east of the falls was 0.75, at Utica it is 0.34 and at Westport it's 0.39.

[mywittyname]

I don't think effectively damming (alternatively, rerouting) the Ohio River is a solution to relocating an airport in Louisville. That's a wildly ambitious undertaking compared to most other land reclamation projects.

Yeah, the terrain around Louisville poses a challenge for placing an airport, but they could do like Cincinnati does, and have their airport located across the river. Or place it between Frankfurt and Louisville. Or do like Pittsburg and make the terrain flat enough for an international airport.

[gwbas1c]

That's a thimble: When I zoomed out on the map the airport was huge and the river just a few pixels wide. Otherwise I wouldn't have made the comment I made.

[Retric]

Airports are far larger than aircraft, which enter and leave from the end of runways.

Rivers have a nice property where they tend to be the lowest thing around because water flows downhill and are quite long. For approaches from other directions half the time you end up crossing the river at some angle which acts as a buffer zone, thus reducing the total land lost as a buffer zone.

[wongarsu]

Inland it can work if you have a river. London City Airport would be an example

[ilamont]

> Nobody puts airports inside city centers

Taipei Songshan, Boston Logan and the old Hong Kong Kai Tak to name a few.

[Retric]

Boston Logan is surrounded by water to the point only one end of a single runway isn’t aimed directly at water soon crosses water. The city center requires crossing a bridge. Taipei is a little worse but its only runway is going next to a river here and aimed at a park on each side.

Hong Kong Kai Take would be a solid example except it closed in 1998 because of how the city grew. Look at maps from 1950 and it doesn’t look like a bad location for a small airport.

[ilamont]

> The city center requires crossing a bridge.

It actually requires using tunnels or a boat. I used to drive a cab and the I93 + Callahan/Sumner tunnel route was hellish. The Big Dig helped a lot, although sometimes that can get pretty backed up too.

> Look at maps from 1950 and it doesn’t look like a bad location for a small airport.

Generally, airports that are close to major urban centers were developed prior to 1950, including all 3 examples named. Songshan was opened during Taiwan's colonial period as the “Matsuyama Airdrome” serving Japanese military flights (https://www.sups.tp.edu.tw/tsa/en/1-1.htm).

For bigger cities with these old central airports, larger airports were opened later in many cases. I don't think that will ever happen in Boston, although satellite airports in neighboring states like "Manchester-Boston" or TF Greene in Rhode Island try pretty hard.

[Thorrez]

Probably also due to noise.

[SilasX]

Yeah I was going to say, that sounds like a much more salient reason not to live near an airport than the possibility of that rare crash.

[pksebben]

Fresno here. If this had happened at FAT (FYI now? We have dumb names) the casualties would've easily hit three digits from initial impact, and then whatever else burned afterwards because CA==tinderbox.

[eitally]

Same with SJC, no matter which direction they were taking off.

[pkulak]

Midway comes to mind: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GRUXJVdUPQMWkZNU6

[andrepd]

The pollution and noise probably has health effects many times more significant than the sum of extremely rare crashes like these.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport that has a high density of people

Queens, NY has entered the chat…

[chronciger]

>Queens, NY has entered the chat…

You’re correct, but at least LaGuardia airport generally has takeoffs over water.

LaGuardia aircraft landings may happen over dense apartment buildings, but less likely for catastrophic damage (glide path, less fuel, engines are <10% throttle, etc)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

It also has JFK, on the South side.

[globular-toast]

Some of the larger townships in Cape Town are right in the flight path too. Not many white people there either.