According to this New Scientist report, there are proposals afoot to lower the noise of landing aircraft by getting the planes to adopt a gentler landing pattern. I’m all for that, dudes, having experienced a very interesting rollercoaster type landing at New York recently!

‘Instead of beginning the descent 17 kilometres away, the crew began their descents some 70 kilometres away and from a height of 11,000 feet, while maintaining an angle of descent of 3� and keeping engine power changes to a minimum…The teams measured the results with 14 microphones placed in neighbourhoods near the airport and found that compared with conventional 767 approaches, the noise dropped by between 3.9 and 6.5 decibels…What is more, the manoeuvre saved nearly 200 kilograms of fuel on each landing…