Brian Bromberg, 40, is a writer for Nickelodeon who supplements his income by writing fiction in the evenings. He moved to Jackson Heights from Manhattan about a year ago to be closer to his nine-year-old daughter, who had moved there with her mother.  At first, he savored the neighborhood’s diversity and the sense of community in his new surroundings. Then the planes overhead started to ruin his peace.  “It’s unbearable,” Bromberg said, “at 6 a.m. to have your bed literally vibrating because a plane is flying so low over the building.”

Many of Bromberg’s neighbors echo his concerns. Between Jan. 1, 2014 and June 30, Jackson Heights  residents filed more complaints about airplane noise than residents of any other New York City neighborhood, according to records of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees nearby LaGuardia Airport as well as John F. Kennedy International Airport in southern Queens.

The noise is so bad that some Jackson Heights residents have already been thinking about launching a class action lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates civil aviation, similar to a suit filed in June by the city of Phoenix. In May, the FAA said it would study the effects of aviation noise on communities near airports.

Many residents say life in the once peaceful neighborhood is frequently uncomfortable because of the airplane noise. “It is deafening,” said Melanie Brussat, a 38-year-old art conservator who has lived in the neighborhood for more than seven years. “Even when we close the window, we have to shout to hear each other.” Brussat says early morning jet noise often wakes up her two children, 5 and 2.  “We just have to leave the neighborhood if we don’t want to fight each other all day,” she said, adding that the noise is at its worst over the weekends when she and her family are trying to unwind.

Sarah Church, who has lived in Jackson Heights for almost 13 years, is so upset by the noise that she has filed 32 complaints with the Port Authority in the last two years. “There’s this chronic disruption of our lives, as we’re watching TV, as we’re talking, as we’re getting on with our lives,“ she said. “After a while, it begins to wear you down.”

Residents have also complained to their council member, Daniel Dromm, urging him to do something about the noise. In response, he sent a flyer to residents in early September explaining that the Port Authority had told his staff that the discomfort would be “temporary” and was caused by an FAA-mandated change in weekend flight patterns for “safety upgrades.”

The Port Authority could not confirm this to The Ink and when the FAA was contacted for comment, spokesman Jim Peters denied that there had been any change in flight patterns. In an email sent to The Ink, Peters wrote that in the last six months, “flight paths to and from LaGuardia Airport have not changed” and that “there have been no increases in the number of flights over Jackson Heights. “

In July, U.S Rep. Grace Meng introduced a bill called the Quiet Communities Act of 2015 that would give the responsibility of monitoring airplane noise back to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA had that responsibility before 1981, when then President Ronald Reagan decided to defund the agency’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control. The bill has been referred to the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.

Much of this community’s frustration stems from the sense that, despite their best efforts at making their feelings known, nobody seems willing to act on their concerns.  It is a criticism Dromm rejects outright. “I am offended by people who would say I haven’t done enough when I’m the only person who has done anything at all,” he said. “People should check the facts.”

For Eleanor Feldman Barbera, a psychologist and long-time resident of the neighborhood, the solution is simple. “Change it back to how it was before everybody started complaining.” she said. Others, like Bromberg, say the noise could eventually drive them out of the neighborhood. “This past weekend I had to seriously consider, when am I going to pack up and leave?” he said. “Many times I’ve said to myself I can’t live like this, I can’t ask my daughter to live like this!”

— Hasan Ali