How can it be that one person is extremely annoyed by the sounds of aircrafts, while his neighbour claims not to be bothered at all? The present thesis attempts to explain this observation by applying a range of quantitative methods to field data gathered among residents living near large airports. Whereas previous explanatory models of aircraft noise annoyance generally lacked theoretical foundations, the developed models are explicitly informed by theories of noise annoyance and, in effect, shed new light on the human experience of aircraft noise.