FRISAWhere FRISA stands
FRISA measures aviation's impact and helps reduce it — without taking the airport, or its neighbors, for granted. On the questions people actually argue about, here is exactly where we stand.
To promote Boulder Municipal Airport and the Front Range as a model for measurable improvements in sustainable aviation, by reducing noise, lead, and CO₂ for each certified pilot.
FRISA's integrity policy
Science states claims evidence can disprove, tied to data anyone can trace and reported whichever way the evidence points; a scientific institute exists to produce such claims and keep the record honest, above any finding's appeal, any funder's preference, or the institute's own reputation. Every FRISA researcher and every result is bound by the policy below.
1 · Full accountability, open correction. Every author answers for the whole paper — a byline certifies personal verification of the central claim, authorship without that verification is misconduct, credit claimed while blaming others is fraud, a proven breach removes rather than demotes — and every error is fixed or retracted in the open, promptly and dated.
2 · Reproducible in and out. Data, code, assumptions, and conclusion publish together and open — "available on request" is not available — as interactive HTML with every formula runnable and every chart redrawn from published data; the reference list holds only work a reader can likewise reproduce, clear of fraud, of papers resting on fraud, and of institutions that keep a fraudulent author on staff.
Reproducibility is the line. Work no reader can reproduce is not public science under this policy — off the reference list, without standing as prior art, treated as absent. An institution without a reproducible standard produces no public science by this definition, and the output can be set aside.
This policy follows the ICMJE authorship criteria, the ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (2023), and the Singapore Statement. The demarcation by reproducibility restates a long line — Popper on falsifiability, Feynman on "cargo cult science," the Royal Society's nullius in verba, Merton's "secrecy is the antithesis" of science, and Buckheit & Donoho's rule that a paper is "merely advertising" while the reproducible code and data are the scholarship. Patent law runs the same logic: a disclosure that fails to enable a reader to reproduce the result cannot stand as anticipating prior art.
01On the airport's future
FRISA does not work to close Boulder Municipal — or any airport. We think closure, without first building replacement capacity, is the wrong goal — for a concrete, arithmetic reason.
The federal 1,500-hour rule requires most airline-bound pilots to build roughly six times the flight time they once needed — much of it in the traffic pattern, over neighborhoods — before they can fly for a regional carrier. That training has to happen somewhere. Without roughly six times as many airfields to absorb it, the airports we already have simply carry six times the traffic.
The math is unavoidable: you cannot subtract airports and also subtract noise unless you first build the airfields that take the load.
Closing fields without replacements would also weaken the country. The pilots trained at general-aviation airports are the pipeline the United States depends on for national defense and for air transportation. Shrinking that pipeline is a national cost, not a local convenience.
So our work is not "fewer airports." It is better, quieter flying at the airports we have, plus more reliever capacity to spread the load — which is exactly what our first two programs do.
02On noise complaints — equal protection, and data pilots can use
The complaint record everyone argues over is biased by the tools that build it. Today's aircraft-noise apps let a resident report an airplane — but not a motorcycle, a leaf blower, a generator, or a barking dog. A log that can only record aircraft will always make aircraft look like the whole problem.
A reporting tool that captures all noise sources on equal terms — consistent with the principle of equal protection — so the comparison is honest instead of pre-loaded against aviation.
Complaints already exist, but they are not released with location — which leaves pilots powerless: you cannot avoid generating a complaint you are never shown. FRISA correlates complaints (with location) against flight tracks and segments and gives that back to the flying community, so pilots and instructors can see where their flying lands and adjust routes, altitudes, and times to generate fewer of them.
The same dataset serves neighbors honestly and hands pilots the means to actually do something about it. That is the opposite of a weapon — it is a feedback loop.
03On governance — both communities at the table
FRISA's board includes members from both the flying community and the neighborhood. Neither side runs it. We publish our methods and data openly, and we disclose our funding. The whole point of an institute is to be a place a pilot and a neighbor can both trust the numbers from.
04What we're doing first
These principles are why our first two efforts are deliberately concrete and small:
• A flight-score kiosk at McAir that gives pilots real-time feedback on their own flying — behavior you can see beats rules you resent.
• Getting to know Platte Valley (18V) as a quieter reliever, and building the community that wants to use it.