Trains are also noisy, at least as much as planes. As for pollution, consider how much land is taken from nature for tracks...there is almost none for airplanes, in comparison.
When you stand next to a train track yes à train is noisy. But a plane will cover literally a whole town with its noise. Very different.
I was just in Frankfurt yesterday and the noise is substantial, in the residential neighbourhood I visited it was the main source of noise during the day.
My point was that train lines are millions of miles/km and run through the center of settlements, by design. Almost everywhere in the world, unless you live in a suburb or village, you have a high chance that you will hear trains multiple times a day.
I think there are less people under flight plaths than near trains.
I guess it depends on luck how noisy they can be. I used to get woken every night at 2am by one fucker.
From what I can tell it is take offs - aircraft coming in to land, even though they are much closer, tend to be inaudible.
It might be because we are relatively high up (about 100m) and most of the distance between us and the airport is over the sea.
Edit: Just checked on a map and when most aircraft take off from Edinburgh's runway into the prevailing wind they are pointing pretty much directly away from us which might make it more noticeable.
As far as I know, airports try to setup the operations to have planes descend over cities, and climb away from them, to minimize noise. Sometimes this is not possible because of winds, so there will be a reversal.
Sometimes it's not possible to avoid climbing over cities because the city ended up engulfing the airport (e.g. Heathrow) - so they will alternate directions to give various towns a break.
