Jetliner roar over Florida cities poised for change and potentially rude awakenings
Jetliners landing and taking off at Florida’s Central and South Florida airports will begin to follow new patterns next month that could bring frequent and louder aircraft noise to some neighborhoods.
The Federal Aviation Administration is rolling out its controversial Next Generation Air Transportation System, phasing out air-traffic control based on radar and voice commands in favor of GPS and automated instructions. The new system is designed to bolster safety and save aircraft time and fuel. But doing so typically will concentrate aircraft in narrower pathways over cities near airports.
The transition has gone relatively smoothly for Las Vegas and Dallas, among others, while it has triggered protests in cities including Los Angeles, Phoenix and the Washington, D.C., area over disruptive roars from airliners passing overhead. But decades-old federal law hamstrings residents who may want to fight an FAA decision to proceed with a Next Generation upgrade.
“The law gives people only 60 days after the FAA decision to file a suit and that time period has expired,” said Peter J. Kirsch, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who has specialized in airports and air transportation for 30 years. The 60-day period for Florida lapsed in October.
“The reason these sorts of issues become controversial isthat people don’t know if they are happy or sad, they don’t know if they are satisfied with the new flight tracks until they actually happen, which can often be many months or up to a good part of a year after the FAA makes a decision. By the time they discover there’s a problem, they discover it’s too late.”
Beginning more than a decade ago, the aviation agency began to overhaul the nation’s air-traffic control methods, focusing on 21 metropolitan areas, including in Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Washington, D.C.
Airports affected in Florida include those serving Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa and more than a dozen other cities in Central and South Florida.
FAA officials held public workshops in 2019 and 2020 that provided analysis of predicted changes in aircraft noise in Florida. One such online meeting last year for Orlando’s international and executive airports and the Sanford airport drew 8,000 participants.
“We did not see the drastic changes that maybe some other areas were seeing in their airspace,” said Tom Draper, chief of operations for the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which operates Orlando International Airport.
Draper said the authority met proactively with the FAA to solve airport and community concerns. “We felt like we saturated the community,” he said of meetings with local elected officials, legislators and homeowner groups.
One authority concern was the FAA’s early proposal to partly disrupt the airport’s longstanding procedures for minimizing aircraft noise from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. After meeting with the authority, the FAA left those nighttime procedures in place.
“That’s a big win because that time period a lot of people are sensitive to noise,” said Kevin Thompson, the aviation authority’s noise-abatement coordinator.
Many residents of the Conway and Belle Isle communities northwest of Orlando International Airport told the FAA of their worries.
Scott Buono, a longtime resident of Belle Isle, urged the FAA to “reconsider and revise these recommendations.”
Allan Clayman warned the proposed changes would worsen noise “significantly” over heavily populated residential areas.
“I have lived in Conway for 45 years and know the problems with noise,” Clayman told the FAA in written comments. “The airport authority already is lax in enforcing their rules on flight patterns with planes veering to the west early and at lower altitudes. Complaints to the noise phone line, I am sure, result in no penalties to offenders.”
Even residents not near Orlando’s airport said they worried about worsening aircraft noise.
“We cannot enjoy our outdoor area without being interrupted and overwhelmed by jet noise every 5 to 8 minutes. The noise is noticeable even inside the house,” said Joan and Thomas Robinson in written comments to the FAA. They live 30 miles from the airport in Winter Springs. “We pray the flight patterns will be elevated and moved further to the east where there is much less population.”
The FAA in October announced its decision that “no significant impact” from noise would result from altering flight paths at 21 airports of the southern half of Florida, including Orlando’s. The changes are to be implemented starting April 22 and finishing in August.
“The complexities of airspace changes are such that looking at maps or reading text, it’s really hard for a non-expert resident to get a good sense of whether or not it’s a big deal,” said Kirsch.
“What we are seeing across the country is that communities are getting very upset at changes that in a technical sense the FAA has disclosed in their environmental documents. But in a technical sense only,” Kirsch said.
Fort Lauderdale persuaded the FAA to relocate flight paths from over homes to over interstates. And some South Florida communities and the Friends of Biscayne Bay sued the FAA within the 60-day window to adjust flight paths away from coastal locations. Those suits are ongoing.
Kirsch said there is little legal remedy now for Central or South Florida residents.
“But there is plenty of political recourse,” Kirsch said, who suggests that complaints be directed to the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, or managers of other airports and to Florida’s U.S. senators and representatives.
The noise hotline for Orlando International Airport is 407-825-2003. Complaints can also emailed to a noise-abatement officer, whose address can be found at “NOISE” at the bottom of the website: orlandoairports.net
The Greater Orlando Aviation Authority also hosts an interactive map of current and historical flights that displays tracks and details of individual aircraft over Central Florida. That map is at: flighttracker.casper.aero/mco/
Kirsch said it’s an uphill battle in trying to sway the FAA because the agency does not want to tinker with complex, interrelated rules for air-traffic control. But it’s worth trying, he said.
“The FAA is constantly under the gun from communities,” Kirsch said.
