Noise is big business

Business aviation’s long-range struggle

The car park of one Australia’s most ubiquitous fast food outlets is a somewhat unusual venue to make a point about aircraft noise. But then this particular Kentucky Fried Chicken is close to the threshold of Sydney’s busy Runway 16 Left and, with a mobile phone flight tracker app to hand and a fascinated audience in attendance, why not?

First a Boeing 737, then an A320 followed closely by an A330 – all sufficiently loud to make any self-respecting aircraft watcher know they are alive – and suddenly, fourth in line, the star of the show: a whispering Gulfstream business jet.