Working from home under a flight path

Working from home under a flight path is mostly a problem of timing. A plane passing low drowns out a call for a short while, then the room is quiet until the next one. You cannot stop the planes, but you can choose where you sit, what your microphone hears, and when you book the calls that matter.

Pick the room that lets in the least

Noise comes in through windows, doors, vents and gaps, and with planes overhead, through the roof. That is why airport insulation schemes treat lofts and ceilings as well as windows: Heathrow's covers acoustic quilt in the roof space and upgraded ceilings, and the scheme Gatwick proposed for its northern runway includes bedroom ceilings where noise comes in from above.

So, if you have a choice:

• Work on the side of the house away from the flight path. The house itself can shield you a little from planes that are not directly overhead.
• Prefer a room with another floor above it. A loft room or a top-floor room under a thin roof is often the loudest in the house.
• Check the windows. Old single glazing, worn seals and gaps around the frame let in far more than good double glazing.
• Seal the small gaps. Manchester Airport's advice to neighbours lists sealing windows and frames, adding seals to doors, filling gaps where pipes and cables come through the walls, and swapping air vents for acoustic ones, without blocking ventilation.

Headsets, microphones and call settings

Much of what makes a call hard under a flight path can be handled with what you already own.

• Use a headset with a microphone close to your mouth. It picks up your voice far more than the room, so a plane outside comes through much less than on a laptop microphone.
• Turn on noise suppression. Most video-call apps have a setting that filters background noise from your microphone. If it has levels, try the highest, and test it while a plane passes.
• Use noise cancelling for listening. Active noise cancelling works best on steady, low-pitched sound such as engine drone, so it takes the edge off the rumble of a jet. It will not remove a plane passing low, but closed, well-fitting ear cups add passive protection on top.
• Mute when a plane is loud. A plane is loudest for a short spell as it passes. Tell regular colleagues where you live, so the pauses make sense to them.

Plan calls around the airport's pattern

What flies over your street depends on the wind: airports land and take off into it, so whether you get landings, take-offs or neither changes from day to day. On top of that, each airport has a daily rhythm.

At Heathrow, plan around the runway rather than the hour. From our recordings, the airport handles about 70 to 80 flights an hour from 07:00 until 22:00, with no quiet lunchtime. What changes is which runway the landings use. On westerly days, one runway takes landings from 06:00 until 15:00 and the other from 15:00 until the last departure, and the order swaps each week.

So if you live under one of the westerly approaches, over Chiswick and Kew or over Putney and Hounslow, for example, you get the landings either until 15:00 or from 15:00, and the pattern holds for the whole week. Put your important calls in the other half of the day. On easterly days there is no alternation: nearly all landings use the northern runway. Our runway alternation guide covers the details.

At other airports, the hour matters more. At many airports, traffic rises and falls through the day. From our recordings, Frankfurt averages about 90 flights between 12:00 and 13:00 but about 53 between 18:00 and 19:00, and Stansted has about 25 an hour between 09:00 and 11:00, against about 35 in the early morning and from midday. Those figures are for the whole airport; how many pass over you depends on the runway in use.

To find your own pattern:

• Look up your airport's page for its hour-by-hour traffic and how often each runway direction is used, for example Heathrow.
• Replay a few days on our free flight map, one in each runway direction, and note when the planes come over your street.
• Check the wind forecast in the morning. When the wind turns round, the runway direction usually follows.

Simple room treatment

Soft furnishings do two different jobs. Heavy curtains and carpets, both on Manchester Airport's list of suggestions, help a little against noise from outside. They help more with echo inside the room: a bare room with hard floors makes your voice sound hollow on calls and lets every sound linger. A rug, curtains, a bookcase and a sofa or bed in the room make your microphone sound clearer, even if the plane outside is just as loud.

Keep the door closed and sealed against draughts if the rest of the house faces the flight path. Ordinary trickle vents in the window frame are a weak spot too; acoustic versions let in much less noise while still letting in fresh air.

When to consider glazing

If planes still interrupt calls with the windows shut, the windows are the weak point, and no headset setting will fix what you hear between calls. The Association of Noise Consultants' figures for a typical small room give a sense of scale: ordinary double glazing with open trickle vents makes the inside about 21 dB quieter than outside, and acoustic glazing with acoustic vents about 31 dB. Every 10 dB sounds roughly half as loud.

Better glazing helps all day and all night, not just in working hours. Before paying for it:

• Check whether you qualify for an airport scheme. Heathrow's pays up to 100% of approved work for homes inside its boundary, and other airports offer grants. Our guide to airport noise insulation schemes covers who qualifies.
• Compare the options. Replacement acoustic glazing and secondary glazing suit different houses and budgets. Get quotes for both, and ask what noise reduction each is rated for.
• Plan ventilation at the same time. A sealed office gets stuffy and hot in summer; our guide to keeping cool under a flight path covers acoustic vents and cooling.