Tue, Oct 04, 2011
Airports Working To Be Good Neighbors In Busy Flight Training
Area
As the home to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and
several GA airport, flight training in Volusia County, FL, is a
$1.2 billion business. But to some people living near the airports,
students practicing touch-and-goes and engaging in other flight
training is a reason to complain about the noise generated by the
airplanes.
It's a fairly common problem almost anywhere there is an airport
near a residential neighborhood. The
Daytona Beach (FL) News
Journal quotes one resident who lives
near New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport just south of Daytona
as describing the noise as "horrendous. You can't eat, you can't
sleep, you can't have a conversation," said Regina Leibowitz.
The region is attractive to flight schools because of the
proximity of ERAU and year-round good flying weather. Tracking the
patterns of complaints at nearby airports, most come from those
living directly beneath departure or approach corridors and traffic
patterns. The paper reports that sometimes a flurry of complaints
will come in when flight patterns change due special circumstances
like runway construction and disappear when traffic returns to
normal, as happened in Daytona Beach. Ormond Beach Municipal
Airport manager Steve Lichliter said the implementation of
voluntary noise abatement procedures resulted in a marked decrease
in the number of complaints. But some local residents say they have
simply given up complaining because the FAA would only allow for
voluntary programs, and there was "nothing the city can do."
The largest volume of complaints comes from residents around New
Smyrna beach airport, which city officials say has "gone to a lot
of trouble" to mitigate noise in the area. The city completed a
noise study in 2009, and immediately implemented many of its
recommendations while waiting for the FAA's official approval.
Still, some residents say that it's not any individual airplane
which causes a problem, but that the number of flights makes the
noise "constant." New Smyrna Beach airport board chairman Alan
Norris said that the airport should ask students to limit their
touch-and-goes to no more than four per session, rather than the
eight that is currently requested. Other voluntary noise abatement
guidelines at New Smyrna Beach include no touch and go operations
between 5:00 pm and 8:00 am, no repetitive flight training
operations at the airport between 10:00 pm and 7:00 am, no
repetitive flight training operations on Sundays and national
holidays, and no engine maintenance run-ups between 10:00 pm and
8:00 am.
ERAU, which has a $500 million economic impact in the region,
has reduced its fleet of aircraft from 90 to 70 and increased
simulator use. But instructors say while sims are a good tool, they
are not a complete substitute for actually flying
an airplane. The school is also conducting studies with an
experimental aircraft on a variety of noise-reduction technologies,
but those would require FAA approval before being installed on any
of its aircraft.
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