Residents said the worst part is that the work occurs each night, including weekends, between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., depending on the weather. 

The planes fly low enough that houses vibrate and people are shaken awake.
“Sometimes, it sounds like you’re right at the airport,” said Lloyd Logan, a former  Independence Air employee who is now a commissioner for  Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8C. He lives at the edge of Fort Carroll Park in Southeast. 

Although news releases were issued to local media and information on the construction is posted on the  Web site of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the communities under the new flight paths were not directly notified of the changes, said Kimberly Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the  airports authority, which operates National and Dulles International Airport. 

The airports authority levies a  $5,000 fine on companies whose planes exceed an 85-decibel limit set by the airport for approaching planes. The  Federal Aviation Administration regularly measures the sound of jets and gives the information to National, an airports authority spokesman said. 

But the sound doesn’t tell the full story. Dionne Brown, a commissioner for  ANC 8D, whose district includes Bellevue, likened the vibrations in her home to the early seconds of the  5.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the region Aug. 23.  

William McHugh, who has lived on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SW in Bellevue since April 2010, said the first time he heard a plane over his home in the spring, he thought it was going to crash.