Quiet Circle: Engage your neighbors

An easy way to enlist your neighbors in combating noise

Chris McCann avatar
Written by Chris McCann
Updated over a week ago

Your neighbors live right next door and they probably hear the same aircraft noise you do and are bothered by it, but they're not as motivated to do something about it as you are. How can you engage them help your community solve the noise problem? Create a Quiet Circle. 

What's a Quiet Circle?

A Quiet Circle is a group of neighbors who live near you who want to help make your community's voice heard over the roar but can only do so occasionally. You invite them to join your Quiet Circle via Airnoise, which sends them an email with an invitation link. Quiet Circle uses a light touch to engage them in the effort. It's best to talk to your neighbors first to see who's willing to help and to introduce the concept.

When you file a noise complaint, the members of your Quiet Circle will occasionally (no more than 15 times each month) get an email containing the details of the complaint you filed, encouraging them to also file a noise complaint if they were also bothered by that flight. All they have to do is hit 'reply' to the email and the system takes care of the rest. If they ignore the email, nothing will happen.

They will only be asked to file complaints against commercial and business aircraft. Since they only are asked to file complaints occasionally they won't be bothered very often, at most every other day. Even if you file 500 complaints per month your Quiet Circle members will only be asked if they also want to file a complaint up to 15 times each month. They will not received an email for every complaint you file, only a small, random sample of them.

There's no charge to you to create a Quiet Circle and no charge to them to participate, though this feature isn't available to free accounts. Your Quiet Circle members can opt out at any time.

How do I get started?

Login to your Airnoise account and click the "Quiet Circle" menu item. The first time you do you'll see this:

Click "Invite a Neighbor" to have Airnoise send an email to your neighbor to explain what Quiet Circle is and how it works. You just need to supply their name and email address as shown below, and Airnoise takes care of the rest. You cannot invite someone who already has their own Airnoise account.

The email that's sent to your invitees explains the concept and how it works, and looks like this:

How do I manage my Quiet Circle?

As you invite your neighbors and build your Quiet Circle, you have visibility into how it's going. When you click on the "Quiet Circle" menu item once you have invited someone you'll be see the list of people you've invited.

The people you invite may accept the invitation, reject it, or do nothing. Once they've accepted the invitation, they can opt out at any time. As the image above shows, you can see the status of each of your invitees as well as how many complaints they've filed and when their most recent complaint was made. 

What does it mean if it says someone is "too far" from me?

Quiet Circle is based on the premise that an aircraft that flies close enough to you to be bothersome is most likely noisy enough for the neighbors nearby to have noticed it, too. If they were bothered by it they can file a noise complaint as well. But someone who lives miles away from you is most likely too far away to have suffered the same intrusive noise, so we limit how far away Quiet Circle members can be to within 1/2 mile of your address.

We don't require you to supply your neighbors address when you invite them, so it's possible that they may live too far away to participate. If that's the case, once they provide their address in the sign-up process, if they live too far from you we'll let them know and let you know as well. You'll see "too far" in the invitation status screen above.

How do my Quiet Circle members file a complaint?

Airnoise will only share a complaint you've filed with any particular member of your Quiet Circle no more than once every other day. When the system informs them about the complaint you filed, they'll receive an email like the one below.

To generate a noise complaint your neighbor just has to "Reply" to the email -- they don't even need to type anything. When they reply to it, Airnoise will file a complaint for them against the same aircraft that you complained about with their address and contact information. The aircraft's position will also be reported relative to the location of your neighbor's house.

The members of your Quiet Circle can opt out of the service any time by clicking the link in the email. Once someone opts out, their Quiet Circle account will be closed and they will no longer receive emails from Airnoise. You also cannot invite them to join your Quiet Circle again. We do this to prevent bothering people who've already clearly expressed a desire to not participate. If someone accidentally opts-out when they didn't intend to, please contact us and we'll fix it for you.

Why are Quiet Circle Members limited to only 15 complaints each month?

The goal of Quiet Circle is to engage more households in the effort to combat airport noise, not to "run up the numbers." Many airport authorities use "unique households per month complaining" as a metric for how widespread the noise problem is, and this program addresses that. 

Also, since Quiet Circle is provided at no cost to the members of your group we have to necessarily limit the number of complaints that are generated as there is a small but measurable cost to generate and file each and every complaint. If someone in your Quiet Circle wants to file more complaints they can create a free or paid subscription in Airnoise of their own to join the fight.

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