While you make some good points, especially regarding balancing rights of
individuals, this the part that doesn't make sense:

"Marc J. Zeitlin" wrote in message
...
[...]
it's really nice to have peace and quiet sometimes, especially in a
"natural" setting. And that's only from a "people-centric" position.

[...
First of all, you're just plain wrong. There were more people hiking down
into the canyon on the trail two Sundays ago than could ever have fit on
all the tour flights, and that doesn't count all the folks on all the
other trails, not to mention the 100 times as many people that WEREN'T
hiking down into the canyon, but were up on the rim, doing a rim walk or
rim tour. So if anything, the majority of folks at the canyon are NOT in
aircraft.

We are agreed that the Grand Canyon is innundated with ground-based
visitors. For some reason, we are not in agreement that those ground-based
visitors prevent one from actually experiencing "peace and quiet...in a
'natural' setting".

To me (as I mentioned in a different post), the Grand Canyon is simply not
where you go for "peace and quiet". There are certainly other attributes
that make it a worthwhile attraction, but finding natural peace and quiet
isn't one of them. Want that? Go somewhere else, somewhere that other
people are not naturally inclined to flock to (whether on foot, motor
vehicle, or aircraft).

I do believe that there are reasonable compromises that can (and do, to some
extent) balance the various interests. But to think that an entire group
should be entirely excluded, just because of the *unreasonable* expectations
of another group, is NOT reasonable.

(And, by the way, while it's clear that more people visit by land than by
air, it's not at all clear that more people care about the aircraft noise
than who want to visit by air. That vocal group is likely a small minority
of the total number of visitors).

Pete