xrayalpha
I do take your point about redusing the noise to a minimum but the older types do have performance issues conected with silencers and some of the silencers reduce the climb rate, the result being that more people are disturbed by a slightly less noisy aircraft.
The issue here is not one of flying with as little noise as posable, most of use do so and the reasonable 95% of the population are happy with this, the issue is dealing with the uninformed and unreasonable.
Recently a friend of mine witnessed a person in a small south Devon village complaning about the noise of one of those aircraft from the airfield at the top of the hill, he had to point out to the lady that the Dash 8 was from Exeter airport ! further questioning revealed that the noise from the "little aircraft" did not bother her but her name had been put on the anti airfield petition in error as it transpired as the protest group had misreprisented the type of aircraft flying from the airfield.
The same airfield has had protests from a few very nasy people who attemped to use misinformation (see Above) and clever use of the law to get the airfield shut, there was no reasoning with these people, it was my view that it was an attempt to increase their property price by getting the airfield shut.
Persistent noise protesters are usually only interested in upping the price of their property and/or have too much time on their hands and just need some issue to give their lives some sort of meaning. Newly retired professionals are the worst they have the time and the nous to be a real pain !