An Incredible Aussie Air Complaint Statistic

This is amazing. There were a total of 51,589 complaints about aircraft noise in Australia last year.

20,716 of them were made by one person.

This seems like a lot of dedication. Or a really weird obsession. Or – most likely – both.

Regular readers will know that I occasionally blog about the invasive noise of tourist helicopters coming over our house (there’s actually one going over right now…). But I have nothing on this individual.

20,716 complaints a year is is 56.75 complaints a day.
Just under 2.5 complaints per hour. Every hour, every day.

We don’t have much information about this person, but we do know that they live under a flight path (shock, surprise) in Perth, Western Australia. And so we can do a bit more maths.

Because:

On average, Perth Airport (PER) has 103 departure flight(s) each day.

Of course, planes have to arrive before they can depart. But because planes take off from one end of the runway and land from the other, if you are under the flight path, you don’t have noise from 206 planes, just 103 – either the ones coming in or the ones going out.

And so this person lodged a complaint for every 1.81 flights going overhead.

Incredible.

Look, I know that aircraft noise is irritating, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that it can be bad for your health as well. But so can getting obsessed with complaining about aircraft noise (or anything else). And since Perth Airport has been around since 1944 – and even allowing for expansion over time – surely this person must have known what they were moving underneath?

Really, if it’s that much of a big deal to you (and it clearly is), just move house.

And if you think that they might not get a good price because of the aircraft noise, then simply use this logic to make sure you get a good price.