Can you get used to aircraft noise?

Anyone who moves near an airport hears the same reassurance: after a few months you won't even notice the planes. Some people find that true. But research on getting used to noise, which scientists call habituation, draws two lines: between what you notice and what your body does, and between noise that stays the same and noise that changes.

The short answer

A review in The Lancet in 2014 put it briefly: people do tend to get used to noise, but how far varies from person to person, and it is rarely complete. What adapts and what does not:

Annoyance does not fade with the years

The clearest test comes from the UK's Aviation Night Noise Effects study (ANNE), a survey for the Department for Transport of 4,183 people living near eight UK airports, carried out between October 2022 and January 2023. Nearly half had lived in their home for more than ten years. The researchers compared people who had lived there up to 2 years, 2 to 10 years and over 10 years, and found no significant difference in how many were highly annoyed by aircraft noise at night. Their conclusion was that people do not seem to get used to night-time aircraft noise, though they describe the finding as indicative rather than definitive.

The wider picture points the same way. Over the decades, surveys have found more people highly annoyed at the same average noise level, not fewer. The review behind the World Health Organization's 2018 guidelines found higher annoyance in newer studies than in older ones at comparable levels, even at airports without big changes. In the United States, the FAA's national survey, published in 2021, found about two in three people highly annoyed at 65 dB DNL, where the older curve behind that threshold predicted about one in eight. Whatever the reasons, that is not what you would expect if communities were steadily getting used to aircraft.

The change effect: when flights or routes change

When noise changes suddenly, with a new runway, a new route or a jump in flights, people tend to react more strongly than the new level alone would predict. A 2009 review of studies of step changes in noise concluded that the weight of evidence, while not conclusive, supports this change effect, and that the extra reaction shows little if any sign of fading with time. The evidence is strongest for roads, but airports show the same pattern.

• Across airports. The review for the WHO's 2018 guidelines compared surveys at airports that had just opened, or were about to open, a new runway, such as Stockholm Arlanda and Amsterdam Schiphol around 2003, with airports where little had changed, such as Heathrow and Berlin Tegel in 2003. At the same average noise level, most of the surveys at changing airports found more people highly annoyed.
• Frankfurt. After a new runway opened in October 2011, the NORAH study found annoyance rose, peaked in 2012, then eased in 2013 but stayed above its 2011 level.
• Complaints. An expert panel writing for ICAO noted that complaints tend to follow unusual events and changes to operations, such as a different runway pattern or new flight tracks.

So if a new flight path or runway is proposed near you, expect it to be felt more than the noise figures suggest, at least for the first few years. How to respond to an airport consultation covers what you can do about proposed changes.

At night: sleep adapts, the heart much less

Sleep is where habituation is clearest, and also where its limits show.

Waking up does adapt. People who have lived with aircraft noise for years wake much less often than volunteers who hear the same noise in a sleep laboratory, and the ICAO expert panel put that gap down to habituation. In a laboratory study of 72 people over 11 nights, with up to 120 traffic noise events a night, the effects on sleep structure were subtle, most likely because people got used to the noise and became harder to rouse, both within a night and from one night to the next.

The heart does not adapt nearly as well. In that same study, the heart's responses to noise did not fade from night to night. In an earlier study of 24 young adults over three weeks, heart rate rose by about 30 beats a minute when a noise woke the sleeper and by about 9 when it did not, and these responses did not fade during the night. People who live near airports react too. The HYENA study measured the blood pressure of 140 sleeping residents near four major European airports every 15 minutes: in the intervals when a plane passed, systolic pressure was on average 6.2 mmHg higher.

The Lancet review notes that the body can react to noise events as quiet as 33 dB in the bedroom, and that these reactions of the nervous system habituate much less than the brain's arousals do. That is one reason researchers suspect night-time noise matters more for long-term health than daytime noise.

Keep this in proportion. These are short-term reactions, and what they add up to over years is still being studied: the WHO rated the evidence linking aircraft noise to heart disease as very low quality. Aircraft noise and sleep covers the sleep research in full.

Who adapts and who does not

The same planes affect people very differently, and much of the difference comes from the person rather than the noise.

• Noise sensitivity. In the ANNE survey, 1 person in 10 described themselves as very sensitive to noise. Among people with more than 47 dB of aircraft noise at night, the share highly annoyed was over 30 percentage points higher for the most sensitive group than for the least sensitive.
• Attitudes and trust. Reviews of annoyance studies find that fear of the noise source, noise sensitivity and age have the largest effects. Whether people believe the flights are necessary, whether they feel able to control or cope with the noise, how far they trust the airport and the authorities, and what they expect to happen next all matter too. In ANNE, people who disagreed that the airport was good for the local economy were more annoyed, as were people over 35 compared with those aged 18 to 34.
• Sleep and attitude. Around Frankfurt, people with a negative view of air traffic took longer to fall asleep and had less deep sleep than those with a positive view, although the researchers could not say which came first.
• Groups at risk at night. Older people, children, shift workers and people with sleep disorders are thought to be more likely to have their sleep disturbed by noise.

What this means before you move

The safest assumption is that you will not get used to aircraft noise, and that it will bother you about as much in a few years as in the first months. If it turns out otherwise, that is a bonus. In practice:

• Judge the house on its bad days. Visit when the wind sends planes over it, early in the morning and in the evening peak. How to check aircraft noise before buying a house sets out the full list of checks.
• Count the night flights. Night noise is where your body keeps reacting after you stop noticing. Look at how many flights pass between 23:00 and 07:00, and when the first arrivals come.
• Look for changes ahead. A new runway, a redesigned flight path or a jump in flights brings the change effect with it. Check the airport's plans and consultations before you commit.
• Know yourself. Noise sensitivity makes one of the biggest differences to annoyance, and you are the best judge of your own. If traffic or neighbours have bothered you in past homes, take that seriously.

You can replay recorded days in each runway direction on our free flight map to see what a bad day and a quiet day look like for a street.

If you already live under a flight path, sleeping under a flight path covers what helps at night.