Airport Noise Pollution

According to China Press, more than 1,700 Beijing citizens have signed a petition to the China Aviation Bureau to complain about the noise pollution from the Beijing International Airport.  From 8am through 4am, an airplane passes every three to five minutes.  The noise volume is measured at 65 to 75 decibels.  The people are restless, the children cry at night, television and mobile phone reception are disrupted, and so on.
 
How bad can it be?  After all, I am someone who lived and attended school under the landing path of what had been universally regarded as the most dangerous airport in the world -- the old Kai Tak International Airport, Hong Kong.  Every minute, an airplane passed at a very low altitude.  I lived with that for more than a decade.
 
Here are some fond memories for old times' sake:
 





 
Watch YouTube for an extreme Kai Tak landing video clip.  You can even buy a set of 6-hour-long DVDs of nothing but Kai Tek landings.
 
Here is my personal favorite part -- the red-and-white 'checkerboard' that I could see from my classroom as well as my bedroom windows.  The pilots were supposed to take a visual aim at the red-and-white-painted checkerboard on a hill top; upon reaching that point, it was then necessary to make a right turn and head for Runway 13.  Surprisingly, there were very few accidents over the years.  Although Kai Tak Airport has been decommissioned and the IGS13 landing is history, the checkerboard is still there as part of Lok Fu Park.

Below is a screen capture of the Flight Simulator experience.  The green patch in front of the checkerboard is Kowloon Tsai Park, and my school is just a few hundred feet away.  I canot identify my house because the buildings here are clearly generic and unspecific.  You can watch a Flight Simulator video at Google Video for a Concorde landing.