It started one day, when Teresa and I started hearing loud aircraft fly repeatedly over the ocean park area of Santa Monica. We found out later that the FAA and Santa Monica airport were conducting flight tests to reroute air traffic over our neighborhood in order to ease congestion over LAX.
After doing some research, we found some neighborhood groups [ List them here ] that were concerned about this, and they suggested we file complaints every time we hear an offending aircraft.
Thats a great idea we thought, we get to interact and log the problems with the FAA and they in turn being a responsible government body, will craft flying rules that protect our neighborhoods.
Wrong ! They make it difficult to file a complaint, using archaic methods like 'leaving a message' or sending an email with required information. Seriously, who at the FAA will parse those voice messages or read those emails and then do data entry into their database. Since the filing of the complaint is not immediate, the complainers might get things like the time of incident a bit off and you can be sure they will discount those complaints. Also since the complaints are not immediate, many of them don't get filed because one forgets to do it.
Anyways we thought it was time to bring community action, web2.0 and the mobile web together. Teresa being a talented 'use experience' (UI) designer, myself being in technology and media management enlisted a good friend Walid, a brilliant software designer to help us build a mobile app to help communties provide the FAA feedback on aircraft noise.
The first version is for the iPhone and targeted towards the Santa Monica area, but future versions might include the Android platform and be expanded to other communities affected by flight noise.
