Analysis of the effect of numbers of aircraft operations on community annoyance

The general validity of the equivalent-energy concept as applied to community annoyance to aircraft noise has been recently questioned by investigators using a peak-dBA concept. Using data previously gathered around nine U.S. airports, empirical tests of both concepts are presented. Results show that annoyance response follows neither concept, that annoyance increases steadily with energy-mean level for constant daily operations and with numbers of operations up to 100-199 per day (then decreases for higher numbers), and that the behavior of certain response descriptors is dependent upon the statistical distributions of numbers and levels.