Yes, if the room is treated for low frequency and the schedule respects the traffic pattern. Van Nuys sits in the San Fernando Valley, a neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles like North Hollywood or Studio City, about ten miles west of my room in Burbank on the 101. Its airport is one of the busiest general aviation fields in the world, and a home studio a few blocks from the runway hears every kind of aircraft the field handles: trainers doing touch and goes, business jets, and a steady rotation of news and medical helicopters. None of that has to end a session, but it changes what the room gets built for and when the day gets booked.
How busy is Van Nuys Airport, really?
Busy enough that the noise is not occasional. Van Nuys Airport logged about 232,000 takeoffs and landings in 2020 across its two runways, one of the highest counts of any general aviation airport anywhere (Van Nuys Airport, Wikipedia). The field also hosts the Los Angeles Fire Department's air operations and LAPD and LADWP helicopter units alongside a busy charter and flight-training population, so the traffic mix includes small trainers running repeated patterns as well as jets and rotorcraft, each with its own noise signature.
What does that noise actually sound like on a microphone?
Three different problems, not one. A single-engine trainer produces a droning tone that rises and falls with propeller RPM and sits mostly in the low end with harmonics stacked on top. A business jet on departure is broadband, closer to a rising whoosh that peaks and fades over ten or fifteen seconds. A helicopter is the hardest of the three, because the main rotor's blade-passage rate prints a rhythmic low-frequency thump that a noise gate cannot key around, since it repeats at a pace close to a kick drum. All three arrive through the structure and the glass as much as through the air, which is why a fix built only for airborne sound leaves the low end untouched.
What actually blocks that low end?
Mass, not foam. Acoustic foam absorbs high-frequency reflection inside a room; it does nothing for a wall's ability to keep outside noise from getting in, which is a mass and airtightness problem (sound transmission class, Wikipedia). A wall's transmission loss rises with its mass and with how well it is sealed, so the working fixes are a second layer of drywall on resilient channel, laminated or secondary glazing on any window facing the flight path, and gaskets on the door instead of a gap under it. None of that is cheap, and none of it is optional if the room sits directly under a departure or approach path, the same low-frequency problem I treat differently in a Toluca Lake home studio fighting hum through its wiring.
Does Van Nuys Airport run a nighttime curfew like Burbank?
No, not the way Hollywood Burbank Airport does. Van Nuys runs voluntary noise abatement programs instead of a mandatory curfew, including a Friendly Flyer Award that recognizes operators who fly quieter departure and arrival procedures (Van Nuys Airport, Wikipedia; Aviation International News, 2022). Traffic can stay active later into the evening than it would near Burbank's airport curfew, so a residential unit near Van Nuys needs the room treatment above rather than counting on the schedule to hand it the quiet hours I get most nights in Burbank.
How do you plan a session around the flight pattern?
Track the runway in use, not the clock. Van Nuys operates two parallel runways and switches which one is active with the wind, which changes where the noisiest departures pass overhead. A live flight tracker for KVNY shows the pattern in use before the day gets booked. Weekday mornings and early evenings carry the heaviest flight-training traffic, since that is when instructors fly, so a session set for midday or a low-wind afternoon usually gets longer gaps between events. None of this replaces the room treatment above; it only widens the windows there are to work in.
What do you do when a plane ruins a take anyway?
Stop and take it again, rather than try to fix it later. A prop drone or a helicopter thump sits in the same low-frequency range as the vocal or the kick being recorded, so spectral repair tools pull out intelligibility along with the noise instead of leaving a clean take behind. I treat any audible aircraft event as a reason to stop the moment I hear it start, not after it peaks, since the tail of a departure often outlasts the phrase being recorded. A few extra takes cost less time than trying to rescue one with noise printed through the middle of it.
Frequently asked
Is Van Nuys a separate city from Los Angeles? No. Van Nuys is a neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, the same status as North Hollywood or Studio City. Burbank, where my room is, is a separate incorporated city.
Can you record vocals in a home studio near Van Nuys Airport? Yes, with mass-based soundproofing on any wall or window facing the flight path and a schedule built around the runway in use, not the clock alone.
Does foam stop airplane noise from getting into a room? No. Foam absorbs reflections inside a room. Keeping outside noise out is a mass and sealing problem, solved with added drywall mass, better glazing, and sealed doors, not foam panels.
If you are booking a session anywhere in the Valley
Tell me the address and I will check what sits under the flight path before we set a date. Records made this way are at /credits, background at /about.