The planes, the planes

I know I should be writing about the Bush Budget and how it continues to cut important domestic priorities — especially ones that he pledged to improve just last week — while still not repairing the deficit and debt that he’s built up over the last five years. Oh, and the budget doesn’t so much as mention the costs of the two wars, which as anyone who’s made a budget will tell you is criminally negligent.
Anyway. No, today I will find something else to complain about.
I live behind San Jose International Airport, a bit less than a mile behind the runways. I knew it was there when I bought the house, so don’t expect me to be one of those people who complain about jets all day. I hate those people, the ones who know what they are getting into and then complain about it as if they were taken advantage of.
Most of the time, the jet noise doesn’t bother me too much, especially when they take off to the north. But when the weather is murky, they take off to the south, and the noise is really loud here. Still, I can tolerate it. What really gets me is this: the regular old jets, the 7X7s, are not nearly as loud as the private jets. The private jets belonging to rich Silicon Valley luminaries the likes of Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs and the team plane of local sports teams. These smaller jets take off like the space shuttle, loud enough to rattle my house and continuing in that vein for minutes as they make their way downrange. Their sharp, loud roar sounds as if there is some kind of missile test going on.
What makes this worse is that the private jets don’t seem to recognize that there are curfew hours for the airport, something that the commercial jets tend to obey — after all, American Airlines would probably find it more difficult to avoid a heavy fine than, say, the CEO of Intel, who could just ignore it like a parking ticket.
The other night I was woken at 2:30 in the morning by an incredible noise. It sounded like a rocket, and when I looked out the window, it looked like one — another private plane taking off in the middle of the night, three hours after the airport curfew.
Which begs the question: if the airport has a curfew, why do they give permission for these planes to take off?