Airport official: Local residents have been complaining that night fig

Question

Airport official: Local residents have been complaining that night fights into Plainsville airport disturb their sleep and should be sharply reduced in number. This complaint is completely unreasonable—there have been night flights coming into the airport from the very begining, twenty years ago, and these residents should have taken that fact into account when buying their homes.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the airport argument depends?

(A) There are fewer night flights now than there were originally
(B) The residents who are complaining have been in their current homes fewer than twenty years
(C) The residents who are complaining are ignoring the benefits they gain from he presence of the airport
(D) The economic success of the airport depends entirely on the existence of the night flights
(E) People buying houses in Plainville all avoid buying houses near the airport if they can

KarishmaB · Accepted Answer

So the officials are saying that night flights have been coming since the beginning i.e. 20 yrs ago. So people should not have bought houses here if night flights were disruptive to their sleep. But they are assuming that people bought houses in the last 20 years when they knew about the night flights. What if people had actually bought the houses more than 20 yrs ago? Airport officials have no answer for them. They are assuming that everyone who is complaining had bought his/her house less than 20 yrs ago. Hence (B) is an assumption.

Option (E) only says that people who buy houses near the airport have no choice - they just can't avoid buying near the airport - could be for whatever reasons - lower prices, higher availability etc. The point is that they knew before buying that they are compromising by taking next to the airport. They pay for what they get. After getting the house, they cannot complain of the night flights (perhaps because of which the price they paid was lower). No matter what their reason was for buying the house close to the airport, if they did, they knew that sleep will get disturbed. So now they cannot cry about the disturbance. Hence officials are not answerable to people who had no choice but had to buy near the airport. So (E) is not an assumption.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

The argument provides a reason for residents not to complain: these night flights have been going on for 20 years, so residents had ample warning. However, this falls apart if residents actually moved in more than 20 years ago. This makes B a necessary assumption.

E is not needed. We don't need to know what  all  residents do. Maybe some people like living under the flight path. That's not a problem. We just need to know that those who are complaining had a chance to avoid the situation. If anything, E would weaken the argument. By saying that people avoid buying near the airport if they can, it implies that the people complaining could not help buying their houses where they did, so knowing about the problem would have made no difference.

manyatpr · Answer

A good test to check if the option we have picked is correct is the Negation test. Accordingly we would just have to negate the option and check if the negated version destroys the conclusion. If it does, then the reversed form is the best answer.
So let us try the negation with the options B and E.
In B we could read it as The residents who are complaining have  not  been in their current homes fewer than twenty years. If that is true then the conclusion would be destroyed because it ocnveys the meaning that they were probably longer than twenty years in their homes in which case they could not have taken into account the sound when buying the homes. The whole argument gets destroyed with the introduction of the not. .Hence this option is correct. 
In Option E if we introduce the not it reads People buying houses in Planville will  not  avoid buying houses near the airport if they can. After negating the option the version does nothing to the conclusion. It says that people cant help themselves from buying houses near the airport. So is that the assumption? the assumption has to deal with the time period houses bought before 20 years andduring 20 years. The negation test when applied to E does nothing to the conclusion. Hence E is incorrect.

intheend14 · Answer

Initially got this wrong, but I see the correct answer now.

The premise is that residents in Plainville complain that the night flights are loud and disturb their sleep. The airport responds by saying home-buyers should have picked location more carefully and that the complaints are unreasonable. 
What is the assumption?

A There are fewer night flights now than there were originally--irrelevant (maybe strengthens the argument)
B The residents who are complaining have been in their current homes fewer than twenty years--correct (the airport officials are assuming that people bought homes locally after the airport was built, but if we negate this we see that perhaps the airport was built after the homes were bought and thus, locals did not have have much choice in location of their homes)
C The residents who are complaining are ignoring the benefits they gain from he presence of the airport--irrelevant and out of scope (has nothing to do with the argument)
D The economic success of the airport depends entirely on the existence of the night flights--again irrelevant and out of scope (again has nothing to do with the argument)
E People buying houses in Plainville all avoid buying houses near the airport if they can--initially picked this, but it doesn't seem so relevant after understanding B (this would be more of a weakener, if anything) again irrelevant

gmathopeful90 · Answer

Karishma, can u check if my approach is right. Chose B correctly and applied negation test.

(B) Residents have been living less than 20 years.

If residents lived more than 20 years, then their complaints were justifiable. Destroyed the official's argument (which stated that complaints are unreasonable as the people living in their homes should have thought about the problem at the time of buying the house).

(E) People avoid buying houses near the airport if they can.

If people willingly buy near airport, then it is their fault and they can't complain. This did not destroy the argument of the official.
It, I guess, strengthened it. So, (E) is wrong.

{I have a notion I am not applying this test correctly to (E). I got the question right and I am sure about it. But this worries me}

Thanks.

KarishmaB · Answer

Actually, your analysis is absolutely correct. Check out my explanation for (E) given above. Essentially, the two are the same.

sairam595 · Answer

Dear Experts,

Please throw some light on why option B is better than Option E.

akshaykotha · Answer

Why can't A be an assumption and what is the conclusion here?

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

akshaykotha  The conclusion is "This complaint   is unreasonable." The only premise is that the flights have been going on for twenty years. The argument  assumes  that if the flights have been going on for 20 years, this provided ample time for people to choose another location. It also assumes that as long as people had this time, it's fine for the airport to run flights at night, and it's therefor unfair to complain. (This second assumption is not addressed in the answers.)

A isn't needed for the argument to succeed. The official is arguing that things have been the same for twenty years, not that things have gotten better. Even if the number of flights has not been reduced, the reasoning is the same.

Kavicogsci · Answer

Can someone explain again why E cant be correct (FYI i chose correctly but just want to reason correctly)

E) People buying houses in Plainville all avoid buying houses near the airport if they can

What if i negate E - it comes to people buying houses in Plainville none avoid buying houses near the airport if they can-

This means that even though people can avoid buying house, they are not. So now they are residing by choice. Which supports the argument than demolishing it.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

You have the right general idea, that the author is certainly NOT assuming people are in the houses simply because they have no choice. However, be careful when negating degree words. The negation of ALL isn't NONE--that's the opposite, not the negation. The negation is NOT ALL. So if we negate E, it says that not everyone avoids being near the airport if they can--so some people live in that area by choice. That still doesn't hurt the argument. If anything, it supports the idea that they should have made an informed decision. (As to negations, in general, ABSOLUTE words have mild negations and MILD words have absolute negations. All <--> Not all, Some <--> None, Never <--> Sometimes, Always <--> Not always)

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Airport official: Local residents have been complaining that night fig

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