Why is there so much airplane noise in north St. Louis County?

St. Louis Lambert International (STL) sits in the middle of north St. Louis County with three parallel runways aligned northwest–southeast, so its jet corridors run directly over Berkeley, Kinloch, Ferguson, Cool Valley and Normandy to the southeast, and over Bridgeton and St. Charles to the northwest. Per the airport's CY2019 noise report, traffic split 56.2% westbound flow versus 43.8% eastbound, so the noise burden alternates between the two sides depending on wind. Drop a pin on the map above to see how often flights pass over your address.

Which areas near Lambert are quietest for aircraft noise?

Areas off the northwest–southeast runway axis fare best — Maryland Heights to the southwest and Florissant to the north-northeast sit clear of both main jet corridors and mostly hear higher-altitude turning traffic. The worst-affected communities are those on the extended centerlines: Berkeley, Kinloch and Ferguson to the southeast, and Bridgeton to the northwest. The pin-drop map above shows the corridor edges street by street.

What happened to the Bridgeton neighborhood next to the airport?

Lambert's $1.1 billion W-1W expansion program, which built Runway 11/29 (opened April 2006), acquired and razed roughly 2,000 homes, six churches and four schools in Bridgeton's Carrollton neighborhood — widely described as one of the largest airport land acquisitions in US history. Much of that land still sits vacant, and the airport has since explored redeveloping it.

Why did Kinloch lose most of its population?

Kinloch — Missouri's first incorporated Black city — sat directly under Lambert's southeast corridor, and airport noise buyout programs starting in the 1980s purchased over 1,000 properties there. The city's population fell from about 4,455 in 1980 to 263 in 2020, a decline of roughly 94%. What remains of Kinloch is still beneath the arrival and departure paths today.

Do planes from Lambert fly over St. Charles?

Yes. When STL operates in west flow (56.2% of the time in 2019), departures climb out to the northwest, crossing the Missouri River over St. Charles typically at a few thousand feet. In east flow, arrivals descend over St. Charles instead. Farther out, St. Peters sees the same corridor at higher altitude. Use the map above to check the exact overflight count for your street.

Why do planes wake me up early in the morning near STL?

STL has no curfew, and early-morning arrivals — especially on Runway 29, which descends over Bridgeton and north county from the southeast — were the top night-time complaint theme in the airport's 2019 noise report. Night operations (10 PM – 7 AM) made up 14.1% of all operations that year, so overnight and pre-dawn flights are a routine part of the airport's schedule.

How do I file a noise complaint about Lambert Airport?

Contact the STL Noise Information Office at (314) 754-7409 or through the noise program page at flystl.com. Note that the FAA — not the airport — controls runway selection and flight paths, so the noise office logs and reports complaints but cannot redirect traffic. The airport operates 8 permanent noise monitors, all of which have recorded levels below the federal 65 DNL threshold in recent years.

St. Louis Flight Path Noise Map – St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL)

Name: Aircraft noise observations near St. Louis Lambert International Airport
Creator: Flight Path Noise
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Aircraft noise around St. Louis in October 2026

Loudest neighborhoods near St. Louis: Berkeley, Kinloch, Bridgeton, Ferguson. Quietest: Maryland Heights, Florissant, St. Peters. Busiest around 9 AM local time averaging 694 flights/day. Source: Flight Path Noise monitoring data, 30 days to 2026-10-19.

Flights by hour · last 30 days

12a6a12p6p

Average daily traffic

694

flights / day · 20,813 total

Busiest hour

9 AM

peak 95 dB

Loudest hour

9 AM

peak 95 dB

Loudest residential area

Cool Valley

69 dB avg · ~380 flights/day · Busy road

Close to the extended centerline southeast of the field; overflown by 30-flow arrivals around 1,500–2,500 ft

Does St. Louis Airport have a curfew?

No — STL runs 24/7; the only overnight rule is a runway-specific ban on jets using crosswind runway 6/24.

St. Louis Lambert International has no curfew — the airport and its control tower operate around the clock, and there are no mandatory airport-wide restrictions on night flights. The airport’s noise office tracks “night-time” operations (10 PM – 7 AM) for reporting purposes only; in 2019 those hours accounted for 14.1% of all operations, and early-morning arrivals on Runway 29 were the single biggest night complaint theme. The closest thing to a time-based rule comes from the FAA-approved Part 150 noise program, and it applies to one runway only — crosswind runway 6/24 is preferentially used for commuter and general-aviation traffic between 6 AM and 11 PM, and air-carrier and military jet aircraft are prohibited from using it between 11 PM and 6 AM. That keeps jets on the main northwest–southeast parallels overnight, but it is not a curfew — the main runways stay open to everything, all night.

Lambert’s noise story is written into the map itself: entire neighborhoods that once sat beside the runways no longer exist. The $1.1 billion W-1W expansion that produced Runway 11/29 in 2006 razed roughly 2,000 homes, six churches and four schools in Bridgeton — widely described as one of the largest airport land acquisitions in US history — while 1980s noise buyouts had already hollowed out Kinloch, Missouri’s first incorporated Black city, from thousands of residents to a few hundred. Today STL runs three parallel northwest–southeast runways with no curfew, splitting traffic roughly 56/44 between westbound and eastbound flow, so the noise burden alternates between north-county communities like Berkeley, Kinloch and Ferguson under the southeast corridor and Bridgeton and St. Charles under the northwest one. The irony locals still debate: after TWA’s collapse and American’s cutbacks, the runway that consumed a Bridgeton neighborhood opened into a much quieter airport than the one it was designed for.

Which neighborhoods are quietest — and which aren’t

STL operates three parallel runways aligned roughly 118/298 degrees: 12R/30L (11,019 ft, the longest, in the middle), 12L/30R (9,003 ft, the northeastern parallel) and 11/29 (9,000 ft, the westernmost — the W-1W runway opened in April 2006 on land cleared of Bridgeton homes). A fourth, crosswind runway 6/24 (7,602 ft) cuts across 12R/30L and is the least used; under the airport’s Part 150 noise program it handles mainly commuter and general-aviation traffic between 6 AM and 11 PM, and air-carrier and military jets are barred from it overnight.

Because all three main runways point the same way, exposure around STL is starkly directional — communities on the northwest–southeast axis get nearly all the jet noise, while places a few kilometers off-axis can be surprisingly quiet.

Area	Aircraft noise	Why
Berkeley	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Wraps the SE runway ends; under 30L/30R finals and 12L/12R climb-outs
Kinloch	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Beneath the SE corridor; 1980s buyouts removed ~94% of its population
Bridgeton	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Runway 11/29 sits on its former Carrollton neighborhood
Ferguson	✈︎✈︎✈︎	Just north of the extended 12R/30L centerline
Woodson Terrace	✈︎✈︎	Near the 30L threshold; sideline and close-in approach noise
St. Ann	✈︎✈︎	Abuts the southern boundary; ground-run and sideline noise
Cool Valley	✈︎✈︎	30-flow arrivals overhead at ~1,500–2,500 ft
St. Charles	✈︎✈︎	Under the NW corridor across the Missouri River
Normandy	✈︎✈︎	Longer-final arrival streams near UMSL
Hazelwood	✈︎✈︎	Off-axis but close; turns and runway 6 departures pass nearby
Bel-Ridge	✈︎✈︎	Inside the fan of SE-corridor traffic
Maryland Heights	✈︎	Southwest of the runway axis; mostly off-corridor
Florissant	✈︎	North of both jet corridors; higher-altitude turns only
St. Peters	✈︎	Far NW; departures several thousand feet up by here

The practical rule of thumb in north county: the farther you are from the extended runway centerlines — which run from roughly Normandy/Ferguson in the southeast to St. Charles in the northwest — the quieter your street. Maryland Heights and Florissant sit close to the airport as the crow flies but well off the corridors. If you’re weighing a house in Berkeley, Ferguson, Bridgeton or anywhere along the axis, drop a pin on the map above and check the actual overflight count for that address.

Flight patterns and runway use

Everything at STL flows northwest or southeast. Per the airport’s CY2019 noise report, traffic split 56.2% westbound flow — aircraft landing and departing toward the northwest on the 30s and 29 — versus 43.8% eastbound flow on the 12s and 11. In west flow, arrivals descend over Normandy, Cool Valley, Kinloch and Berkeley on their way to the runways while departures climb out over Bridgeton and St. Charles; when the wind shifts and the airport turns around, the pattern reverses. Runway 30L was the single most-used departure runway (21.1% of departures) and 30R the most-used arrival runway (16% of arrivals) in that report.

STL’s noise-abatement toolkit is unusual among US hubs in that it leans on land acquisition rather than routing rules. The Part 150 Noise Compatibility Program bought out and cleared homes in Bridgeton and Kinloch and funded sound insulation elsewhere; its main operational measures apply to crosswind runway 6/24 — preferential use for commuter/GA traffic from 6 AM to 11 PM, plus a prohibition on air-carrier and military jet use from 11 PM to 6 AM. There are no mandatory noise routings for the main parallels, and the FAA — not the airport — controls runway selection and flight paths. The airport operates 8 permanent noise monitors, all of which have recorded levels below the federal 65 DNL threshold in recent years — a legacy, in part, of how much of the loudest-exposed housing simply no longer exists.

Runway maintenance can reshuffle the pattern noticeably. When 12L/30R closed for reconstruction from May to September 2019, its traffic shifted onto 12R/30L and 11/29, and complaints spiked in the communities under those corridors — a preview of what any future long-term closure would do.

When is it quietest?

STL has no curfew, so the quiet hours are a matter of scheduling rather than regulation:

Overnight (10 PM – 7 AM): thinner but far from silent. The airport’s own reporting counted 14.1% of 2019 operations in this window — cargo, airline positioning flights and early arrivals all operate through the night.
Early morning: the most complained-about period. Arrivals on Runway 29, descending over Bridgeton and north county before dawn, were the top night-time complaint theme in the 2019 noise report.
Daytime: steady banks of departures and arrivals typical of a mid-size hub, heaviest through business hours.

Which side of the airport gets the noise on any given day depends on the wind. West flow (the 30s) is more common — about 56% of the time — putting arrival noise over the southeast communities and departure noise over the northwest. An east-flow day flips that. If you live under one corridor, roughly half your days will be noticeably quieter than the other half; the pin-drop tool above shows the hourly and directional breakdown for your exact spot.

How to check noise at your specific address

North county’s noise exposure changes block by block — Ferguson’s west side near the extended centerline hears far more than its east side, and Bridgeton’s remaining neighborhoods range from directly-under-29 to comfortably off-axis. To see where your address falls:

Search your address or postcode in the bar at the bottom of the map.
Drop a pin — click the location marker that appears.
Read the noise report that opens in the sidebar: average daily noise (Leq), peak observed dB, flights per day passing within 2 km, and an hourly breakdown.

The Noise Heatmap layer (orange/red = louder) makes the three- parallel-runway signature obvious — a bright northwest–southeast band through the heart of north county — and the Route Density layer shows how tightly the corridors hug the extended centerlines. If you’re comparing addresses in Berkeley, Ferguson, Bridgeton, St. Charles or anywhere in between, a pin on each takes about ten seconds and replaces a lot of guesswork.

Frequently asked questions

Why is there so much airplane noise in north St. Louis County?: St. Louis Lambert International (STL) sits in the middle of north St. Louis County with three parallel runways aligned northwest–southeast, so its jet corridors run directly over Berkeley, Kinloch, Ferguson, Cool Valley and Normandy to the southeast, and over Bridgeton and St. Charles to the northwest. Per the airport's CY2019 noise report, traffic split 56.2% westbound flow versus 43.8% eastbound, so the noise burden alternates between the two sides depending on wind. Drop a pin on the map above to see how often flights pass over your address.
Which areas near Lambert are quietest for aircraft noise?: Areas off the northwest–southeast runway axis fare best — Maryland Heights to the southwest and Florissant to the north-northeast sit clear of both main jet corridors and mostly hear higher-altitude turning traffic. The worst-affected communities are those on the extended centerlines: Berkeley, Kinloch and Ferguson to the southeast, and Bridgeton to the northwest. The pin-drop map above shows the corridor edges street by street.
What happened to the Bridgeton neighborhood next to the airport?: Lambert's $1.1 billion W-1W expansion program, which built Runway 11/29 (opened April 2006), acquired and razed roughly 2,000 homes, six churches and four schools in Bridgeton's Carrollton neighborhood — widely described as one of the largest airport land acquisitions in US history. Much of that land still sits vacant, and the airport has since explored redeveloping it.
Why did Kinloch lose most of its population?: Kinloch — Missouri's first incorporated Black city — sat directly under Lambert's southeast corridor, and airport noise buyout programs starting in the 1980s purchased over 1,000 properties there. The city's population fell from about 4,455 in 1980 to 263 in 2020, a decline of roughly 94%. What remains of Kinloch is still beneath the arrival and departure paths today.
Do planes from Lambert fly over St. Charles?: Yes. When STL operates in west flow (56.2% of the time in 2019), departures climb out to the northwest, crossing the Missouri River over St. Charles typically at a few thousand feet. In east flow, arrivals descend over St. Charles instead. Farther out, St. Peters sees the same corridor at higher altitude. Use the map above to check the exact overflight count for your street.
Why do planes wake me up early in the morning near STL?: STL has no curfew, and early-morning arrivals — especially on Runway 29, which descends over Bridgeton and north county from the southeast — were the top night-time complaint theme in the airport's 2019 noise report. Night operations (10 PM – 7 AM) made up 14.1% of all operations that year, so overnight and pre-dawn flights are a routine part of the airport's schedule.
How do I file a noise complaint about Lambert Airport?: Contact the STL Noise Information Office at (314) 754-7409 or through the noise program page at flystl.com. Note that the FAA — not the airport — controls runway selection and flight paths, so the noise office logs and reports complaints but cannot redirect traffic. The airport operates 8 permanent noise monitors, all of which have recorded levels below the federal 65 DNL threshold in recent years.

Sources and further reading

Noise Information — St. Louis Lambert International Airport — St. Louis Lambert International Airport (flystl.com)
CY2019 Noise Management and Airline Traffic Report — St. Louis Lambert International Airport
St. Louis Lambert International Airport — Wikipedia
FAA Part 150 Record of Approval — Lambert-St. Louis International Airport — Federal Aviation Administration
Lambert airport wants to redevelop Bridgeton neighborhood it razed years ago — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Kinloch, Missouri — Wikipedia

Data updated 2026-10-19 — live ADS-B monitoring, rolling 30-day statistics (methodology). Article text revised 2026-07-17.

30 dB	Whisper
45 dB	Quiet residential
55 dB	Normal conversation
65 dB	Busy road
75 dB	Vacuum cleaner
85 dB	Heavy traffic
95 dB	Motorcycle nearby

Flight Noise

Layers

Live Tracking

Filters

Saved Pins

Flight Noise — User Manual

What is this?

Live Tracking

Heatmap

Flight Paths

Point Analysis

Noise Level Reference

Filters

Tips

Share this map

Pins shared with you

St. Louis Flight Path Noise Map – St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL)

Aircraft noise around St. Louis in October 2026

Does St. Louis Airport have a curfew?

Which neighborhoods are quietest — and which aren’t

Flight patterns and runway use

When is it quietest?

How to check noise at your specific address

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

Other airports we track

🇦🇺 Adelaide, Australia

🇪🇸 Alicante, Spain

🇳🇱 Amsterdam, Netherlands

🇦🇺 Archerfield, Australia

🇬🇷 Athens, Greece

🇺🇸 Atlanta, USA

🇳🇿 Auckland, New Zealand

🇺🇸 Austin, USA

🇮🇩 Bali, Indonesia

🇦🇺 Ballina, Australia

🇺🇸 Baltimore, USA

🇮🇳 Bangalore, India

🇹🇭 Bangkok, Thailand

🇦🇺 Bankstown, Australia

🇪🇸 Barcelona, Spain

🇫🇷 Basel, France

🇱🇧 Beirut, Lebanon

🇬🇧 Belfast City, UK

🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany

🇪🇸 Bilbao, Spain

🇨🇦 Billy Bishop, Canada

🇬🇧 Birmingham, UK

🇨🇴 Bogotá, Colombia

🇺🇸 Boston, USA

🇦🇺 Brisbane, Australia

🇬🇧 Bristol, UK

🇧🇪 Brussels, Belgium

🇧🇪 Brussels Charleroi, Belgium

🇭🇺 Budapest, Hungary

🇦🇷 Buenos Aires, Argentina

🇦🇺 Canberra, Australia

🇿🇦 Cape Town, South Africa

🇨🇴 Cartagena, Colombia

🇺🇸 Charlotte, USA

🇹🇭 Chiang Mai, Thailand

🇺🇸 Chicago, USA

🇺🇸 Chicago O'Hare, USA

🇳🇿 Christchurch, New Zealand

🇩🇪 Cologne, Germany

🇩🇰 Copenhagen, Denmark

🇵🇪 Cusco, Peru

🇻🇳 Da Nang, Vietnam

🇺🇸 Dallas, USA

🇮🇳 Delhi, India

🇺🇸 Denver, USA

🇺🇸 Detroit, USA

🇺🇸 DFW, USA

🇶🇦 Doha, Qatar

🇹🇭 Don Mueang, Thailand

🇦🇪 Dubai, UAE

🇮🇪 Dublin, Ireland

🇩🇪 Düsseldorf, Germany

🇬🇧 Edinburgh, UK

🇳🇱 Eindhoven, Netherlands

Adelaide, Australia

Alicante, Spain

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Archerfield, Australia

Athens, Greece

Atlanta, USA

Auckland, New Zealand

Austin, USA

Bali, Indonesia

Ballina, Australia

Baltimore, USA

Bangalore, India

Bangkok, Thailand

Bankstown, Australia

Barcelona, Spain

Basel, France

Beirut, Lebanon

Belfast City, UK

Berlin, Germany

Bilbao, Spain

Billy Bishop, Canada

Birmingham, UK

Bogotá, Colombia

Boston, USA

Brisbane, Australia

Bristol, UK

Brussels, Belgium

Brussels Charleroi, Belgium

Budapest, Hungary

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Canberra, Australia

Cape Town, South Africa

Cartagena, Colombia

Charlotte, USA

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Chicago, USA

Chicago O'Hare, USA

Christchurch, New Zealand

Cologne, Germany

Copenhagen, Denmark

Cusco, Peru

Da Nang, Vietnam

Dallas, USA

Delhi, India

Denver, USA

Detroit, USA

DFW, USA

Doha, Qatar

Don Mueang, Thailand

Dubai, UAE

Dublin, Ireland

Düsseldorf, Germany

Edinburgh, UK

Eindhoven, Netherlands

Faro, Portugal

Florence, Italy

Fort Lauderdale, USA

Frankfurt, Germany

Funchal, Portugal

Gatwick, UK

Geneva, Switzerland

Glasgow, UK

Gold Coast, Australia

Hamburg, Germany

Hanoi, Vietnam

Heathrow, UK

Helsinki, Finland

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hobart, Australia

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Honolulu, USA

Houston, USA

Houston IAH, USA

Ibiza, Spain

Jandakot, Australia

John Wayne, USA

Kathmandu, Nepal

Keflavík, Iceland

Kraków, Poland

Las Vegas, USA