BURLINGTON — Four F-35s took off from Burlington International Airport Friday morning, turning the expanded contours on the recently released noise map into a jarring reality for some local residents in the flight path.
The jets took off at 8:10 a.m., flying north over Winooski before heading west over Burlington and turning south. While some residents said they didn’t hear much of a difference between the F-35s and the F-16s that had previously been based at the airport, many noted a drastic increase in noise.
The F-35s made an unexpected diversion to the airport Wednesday to refuel, landing at 7:45 a.m. Airport officials said the timing of the landing, which coincided with the release of the noise map that shows many more homes would be affected by higher noise levels, was coincidental.
Jeff Royer of Colchester works at the Community Bank building on the corner of Kennedy Drive and Kimball Avenue in South Burlington near the airport. He said the noise from the F-35 takeoff was significantly louder than the F-16s.
“I’ve heard the old F-16s taking off for years, and they’re definitely loud, but this was a different kind of loud,” he said. “It rattled everything around us.”
Royer said he was neutral on whether the F-35s should be based at the airport. The basing has been controversial, with support from many local politicians and business leaders and opposition from residents primarily concerned with the jets’ noise.
Gene Richards, the airport’s director of aviation, said the airport had only received one complaint about the noise Friday, and received no complaints when the jets landed Wednesday. He said he was hearing from people who were saying the noise difference between the F-16s and F-35 was minimal.
“What I’m hearing from people is ‘It’s no different from what I heard before,’” Richards said. “It’s jet noise.”
Richards said the jets were not using afterburners, which increase thrust on takeoff and make the aircraft much louder.
But residents in the flight path, particularly those in Winooski, felt the noise was significantly louder than the F-16s, which wrapped up their mission in April after 33 years at the airport.
Cathy Resmer, a Winooski resident and deputy publisher at Seven Days, wrote a Twitter thread about her experience hearing the jets fly over her home.
“Feels like I just went to a loud rock concert and stood by the speakers for an hour,” she wrote. “I was really, really, really hoping to have a different reaction to those planes flying over.”
Andrea Olson of Winooski tweeted that she was in her backyard with her dog and could “feel the noise in my chest.”
“I live in the airport flight path and used to commercial landings/F-16 planes, but, wow, this was incredible noise-wise,” she wrote.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said he received three messages about the noise and heard the planes take off.
“From downtown Burlington, I could not tell the difference between today’s sound and how I remember the F-16s,” Weinberger said.
Richards said he was happy the region got the chance to experience the arrival and departure of F-35s since there has been rampant speculation about the jets.
“I think it takes a lot of the anxiety out of what we should expect,” he said.
The arrival of the jets aligned with the release of the noise map, the timing of which Richards said was “100 percent a fluke.”
The noise map showed that the total number of dwelling units exposed to average noise levels of more than 65 decibels will rise from 819 in 2015 to an estimated 2,640 in 2023, with the total population affected rising from 1,900 in 2015 to 6,125 in 2023.
The map expansion of the noise primarily affects Winooski and Williston, the towns directly north and south of the airport.
Terry Macaig, the chair of the Williston selectboard, lives a mile from the runway but said he did not hear the jets take off Friday morning.
Macaig said the expansion of the 65-decibel average noise into Williston primarily affects businesses, as there are not many residences in the affected area. He said the Williston selectboard would be meeting with airport officials to discuss soundproofing those affected businesses.
“I’ve been in the town for almost 53 years, there’s been noise and we’ve always dealt with it,” he said. “It’s going to be a problem for some people in town, but that’s going to happen and we just have to adjust to the new noise level.”
Richards said he did not expect any more F-35s to land at the airport between now and when the jets start their scheduled arrival in September.
“I think it was a real fluke that we had one, rarely do I get military diversions here,” he said.
