Lesley Lund makes good coffee, especially at 5:15 a.m.

That’s the sweet spot for when the jets start flying in Goleta.

“I will close my comments by inviting all of you, well maybe not all at once, to spend a week at my house and hear the jets for yourself,” Lund said at a recent City Council meeting. “I make a great cup of coffee.”

Airport noise is soaring once again as the most common concern raised about the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport’s Master Plan.

A team of officials and consultants from the airport gave a master plan presentation at last week’s meeting.

And even though Airport Director Chris Hastert and consultant Corbett Smith talked briefly about ways the airport is changing to comply with Federal Aviation Administration demands, as well as overall public needs and interest, the issue of noise continued to dominate the yearslong discussion over airport noise.

The good news? Airport noise is getting better. The bad news? It’s still annoying to many residents who have to hear the jets all day, and increasingly earlier in the morning and later at night.

One of the challenges is perception versus reality, science versus experience. Hastert said the level of noise is decreasing but acknowledged that the airport uses an average of all jet sounds. Averages don’t make a lot of sense to Lund and others who hear and experience the noise first-hand.

“It’s no secret that if you are out shopping in the garden section of Home Depot, eating lunch at the patio at Los Agaves, or Anna’s Bakery, maybe watching the AYSO soccer game at Girsh Park, you cannot hear yourself talk when the big jets are flying over,” Lund said.

Many of the residents in her neighborhood near Storke Road and Glen Annie have installed double-pane windows and “soundproofed their bedrooms,” she said.

Why do all this?

No one can get more than five hours of sleep uninterrupted, she told the City Council. Commercial flights begin at 5:07 a.m., land up until midnight, and then a private jet lands at 2:30 in the morning, she said.

Hastert said he understands that even though sound levels have dropped, according to the airport data, problems still exist.

“Just because we are showing that noise impact related to the master plan is going down cumulatively, we are not ignoring the fact that people are still annoyed by aircraft noise and there is still further work we can do,” Hastert said.

City Councilman Mike Jordan said he appreciated Hastert’s attention on the matter, as well as the creation of a noise compatibility working group to monitor concerns.

Jordan lives under a flight path on the Mesa.

“I just notice that there’s a real variance in both horizontal placement of the jets and also height, and either one of those can skew the noise to a much different level,” Jordan said.

The local airport does not have full control over flight paths and approaches. That’s left up to the Federal Aviation Administration and pilots to land and take off in the safest way.

Jordan showed deference to the airport administration in continuing to address the issues related to noise.

“Our mindset should be that we are eventually going in the same direction that we went with the cruise shops,” Jordan said. “We want to be in a position where we are incentivizing or having a pathway that maintains our airport functions, but attracts and incentivizes the types of visiting aircraft we want.”

He said the airport should be working with airlines that have less noise and more advanced navigation systems.

Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon urged the airport staff to measure noise not just through an overall average, but also look at some of the high-points neighbors discuss.

Sneddon noted that she can’t hear conversations either when she is in Goleta and planes fly overhead.

“It is true, you cannot hear each other speak,” Sneddon said.

As for the master plan, the city is planning to build new hangars at a cost of about $100 million, improve taxiways about $12 million and increase fuel storage for a cost of about $9 million, among other changes.

The city next year will submit the plan to the FAA and then begin environmental review. Funding for the hangar improvements is being raised privately, while the airport is obtaining grant money for the runway improvements.

Since 2011, the airport experienced approximately 40% growth in commercial passenger boardings.