FAA Reworks Philly's Noise-Cutting Plan

"While the FAA is boasting that their mitigation report mitigates the additional noise caused by their plan, they shouldn't even implement the plan, because there is no significant operational benefits from it," he said. "We should be talking about eliminating the noise, not mitigating it."

The FAA's airspace-redesign plan has been endorsed by the CEO Council for Growth, a unit of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, as a way to help the regional economy by reducing airline delays.

The fresh analysis was part of a report prepared by FAA contractor Mitre Corp. that found that different procedures could be used for takeoffs from all five of the airports the agency has been studying. The other airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark and Teterboro, N.J. -- are in the New York area.

The FAA began working on changing the airspace over the Northeast nine years ago. The agency held a series of public meetings last year before it issued a draft version of its environmental-impact statement.

The FAA will hold five public hearings on the noise-reduction study, one each in the states affected. Hearings in the Philadelphia area are scheduled for April 30 at Concord High School in Wilmington and May 1 at the Holiday Inn on Route 291, just west of the airport. The hearings will run from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

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