Have you ever seen that handsome young pilot who is the face of Flight Centre? I hate him. No, really, I do. For a start, he’s not even a pilot, he’s an actor from Noosa Heads called Richard Klinge. And the closest he’s come to flying a plane is messing around in one of those expensive flight simulators in a factory unit in Noosaville.

However, I don’t hate Mr Klinge for being a fake. I hate him, because he perfectly personifies what real pilots do: they fly directly over my house while looking clean-cut, smug and self-important.

Yeah, I live under a flight path in Sydney’s inner west. It’s an area so hip, the local supermarket has kombucha on tap.

But the hipster adornments don’t make up for the damn noise.

The planes start coming over at 6am – the “737-alarm-clock” as we call it. The first are usually the Jetstar ones, bringing the Bintang-brigade back from Bali on some horrible raucous red-eye flight. I hate those ones the most, firstly because they’ve woken me up from a perfectly good sleep, and secondly, because there’s never ever a good reason to go to Bali.

In fact, when I think about all those planes that fly over my house during a typical day, it really annoys me, because most of them don’t need to be up there wasting fuel and making a racket.

Business nowadays can be done from a laptop and your kitchen table, without the need to jet off to New York. And travel for fun is a contradiction in terms. Travel is tiring, expensive, and – thanks to Google Earth and Amazon – completely pointless.

Stay home, look at the Great Wall of China from your bed, and shop online for God’s sake.

There goes the 737-alarm-clock again! Photo: iStock

Airline pilots (fake or otherwise) have cost me some of the greatest moments in my life. Because of their noisy contraptions, I missed my daughter’s first words … was it Mumma or Dadda? (I like to think the latter.) Or the time when my wife got drunk on the sofa and whispered something in my ear … was it “loved” or “loathed”? And what did Manu say to Hadil and Sonya on My Kitchen Rules? All I heard was ROOOAARRRR.

The thing I don’t understand is why these planes must always fly over MY apartment block, when there’s millions of kilometres of sky to choose from. I imagine those smug bastards up there sniggering to each other about it. “Let’s buzz the bloke in unit four again. The one with the plastic pink flamingo in the flower pot on the balcony.”

Yep, these planes are close enough to see, not only the washing on our line, but what size knickers my wife wears: “I do believe she’s now donning a 10, Richard, that diet must be working wonders.”

One of the planes – an Airbus A320 – came in so low the landing gear knocked our flamingo over.

Low-flying aircrafts have become so commonplace in the inner west that agents are using it as their sales pitch, telling prospective buyers that the planes provide much needed shade during the summer. One agent tried to convince my friend that the noise generated by four General Electric CF6 turbofans would drone out the noise from the future WestConnex.

To accommodate the aural assault, folks in the inner west have even developed a unique speech pattern, known locally as the Stanmore Pause.

“So, Elise, how are Hugo and Finn … ROAAAARRR … doing at their new school?”

Here’s an idea Mr Pilot. Why don’t you fly over your OWN bloody house?! Seeing as a Qantas A330 captain will take home more than $250,000 per annum, we can assume you reside in some of the more salubrious suburbs. So, how about buzzing Bellevue Hill and Point Piper and see how your family like it?

And Richard. You can go and get … ROOOARRR …