With each new spring in Dearborn comes the annoying sound of airplane noise overhead. We’ve written on these pages here many times before about the need to notify the Wayne County Airport Authority if residents are bothered by aircraft noise and this year is no different.

To help limit airplane noise over Dearborn residents need to contact the Noise Complaint Hotline at 734-942-3222 or email Michelle Plawecki, noise manager for the Wayne County Airport Authority, at michelle.plawecki@wcaa.us

Dearborn has been battling the noise from Metro Airport since 1989 when the airport began rerouting flight paths over our city.

There may be some relief if recommendations stemming from a legal settlement with the airport and Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) are implemented.

Among the recommended changes the FAA is considering includes shifting aircraft departures to turn east sooner and reducing the number of departing flights over Dearborn. We will believe it when we see it as the FAA and the Wayne County Airport Authority for the last 10 years have done little more than shuffle papers and pretend to care about our noise complaints.

The two agencies continue to promise Dearborn that they are “seriously considering” a continuous descent approach for incoming aircraft, where arriving planes would come in at a higher altitude and then fly in at a continuous descent. Today, Metro air traffic controllers level incoming planes at about 5,000 feet when they are still 15 miles away from the airport, allowing them to essentially buzz all of our homes on the way to Metro and making us deaf in the process.

The reason we remain skeptical of this continuous descent actually taking hold is that implementing such an action would require an investment by the airport for the installation of more sophisticated radar to actually “bring in” a plane by radar. Older aircraft, not equipped with the proper equipment to communicate with the airport, would still have to land the conventional noisy way over our homes.

So for now, all we can do is keep calling the phone hotline and emailing Michelle Plawecki, noise manager for the Wayne County Airport Authority. The Airport Authority and the FAA need to know that Dearborn isn’t going to walk away from this issue any time soon. You’ll want to include in any email the time of day the plane was heard and whether it was a departing flight or an arrival.