Town, FAA meet to address flight pattern noise issues
Fort Myers Beach Town Council and Federal Aviation Administration officials met Monday to again discuss flight patterns that have Beach residents upset about noise generated by planes headed to the Southwest Florida International Airport
The session with the FAA got its start last May when Council brought the concerns to the table and wanted to work out ways of approaching and possibly fixing or mitigating the problem, especially during season when both the number of aircraft and residents increase. This led to Monday’s joint session with a specialized FAA group, Lee County Commissioner Raymond Sandelli, Fort Myers Beach Mayor Anita Cereceda and Fort Myers Beach council members Joanne Shamp and Bruce Butcher
“Our last meeting turned out an immense amount of respect for the exchange we had; there was a lot of data provided that committed us to looking into the Beach’s concerns,” said Michael O’Hara, regional administrator for the FAA’s Southern Region.
The issues presented by the Town are considered a “Negative Seasonal Effect” on the quality of life. There can be more than 100 aircraft flying over the island daily, which jumps to around 200 flights per day during season. On average, 37 of these flights are lower than 3,000 feet while, on average, eight of these flights are under 2,000 feet. This has led to a lot of noise and disturbance spread throughout an entire day on the island, Beach residents contend.
The requests made by the town are straight forward: Reduce the overall number of flights over the Beach by using “Runway 24” from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., which is the same runway currently used for incoming air traffic labeled as “Runway 6.” Runway 24 just lands in the opposite direction, and would alleviate a lot of the general disturbance, officials said.
They were also looking to require aircraft fly over 3,000 feet if crossing the island, which would tune down the overall noise levels on the Beach during heavy air traffic days.
There have been concessions.
The Instrument Landing System (IAF) Initial Approach Fix (IFS), the system that dictates the safe altitude for incoming flights was raised to 3,000 feet since May. This means flights inbound have to maintain a height of 3,000 feet until a certain distance from the runway.
Runway 24 was, in procedure, made the preferred runway during night flights, and has been changing the general flight path for incoming aircraft to maneuver less air traffic over the island.
“After the initial meeting, we wanted to figure out if we could adjust procedures to handle it as a long-term and a short-term mitigation,” Chubby Motin, Eastern Service Airspace and Procedures Head for the FAA, said.
There were several findings of fact between meetings.
“We found out that 74% of incoming flights were routed to Runway 6 when our Miami Air traffic controllers took over when the Fort Myers crew averaged about 61%. So this was an ongoing development and has actually influenced a lot of training. We’ll monitor it to make sure there are improvements,” Michael O’Hara, Regional Administrator for the FAA Southern Region said.
This breaks down to the Miami controllers, the group that takes over once the Fort Myers Air Traffic crew closes for the night, had different specifications for procedure since they aren’t local.
“We’re also working to adjust how incoming flights are positioned in regards to direction, aiming to get straighter descents, although we are setting the minimums for height higher than they are currently to make sense for the people living on the coastal areas, like Fort Myers Beach,” O’Hara said.
Overall, many of the issues concerning the council were met and some exceeded, however a total “fix” could prove expensive. Changes also could just move the noise issue to another community beneath an adjusted flight path.
“Handling these requests, especially adjusting training and equipment, can be costly. And any decisions we make in this council can result in changes to other areas. Other town councils can be affected by what might seem to be minor changes to quality of life to other towns and cities, so there are a lot of variables that have to be taken into account, and not all of them end best for everyone,” Moten said.
These procedures and their utilization do take time and money to get in place, and it isn’t an immediate fix, though the FAA is dedicated to trying to make some serious concessions, officials said.
“We’d love to have some magical answer here, but we realize efforts have been made and that good news sometimes is all we get. We’re aware there might not be some instant fix for this, but we want to thank the FAA for being thoughtful and concerned with our issues,” Shamp said.
There has been a third meeting suggested for February, but no dates have been set as of yet.