The Anne Arundel County Council could join federal, state and local officials considering new flight patterns at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

The council is mulling a resolution that would urge the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees air traffic control at the airport, to revert to routes used prior to the implementation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System in 2015.

According to The Capital Gazette,

The $35 billion system, NextGen, was developed to cut down on flight delays and carbon emissions. But residents of communities surrounding the airport in Anne Arundel and Howard counties say it has also led to persistent noise from planes that disrupts their daily life.

The result, argues Resolution 31-17, is “a negative impact on the quality of life for a large number of Anne Arundel County residents, some many miles away from [BWI], far outside the Airport Noise Zone designated by the state of Maryland.”

The resolution cites “numerous calls and emails from citizens directly affected by the change in flight paths, with Anne Arundel County neighborhoods increasingly affected by noise and light nuisance from low-flying aircraft for almost 24 hours a day.”

“Any savings realized by the NextGen system should be balanced against the growing impact on local communities,” the measure concludes, before urging the FAA to “revisit the NextGen flight pattern and, wherever possible, revert to the former flight paths as soon as practicable.”

The FAA did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.

 

 

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