Amid continuing reports of problematic noise by San Diegans surrounding San Diego International Airport downtown, and in surrounding areas, including La Jolla, the San Diego Airport Noise Advisory Committee, with broad public representation, continues to study the issues involved.
The ANAC board is comprised of more than 20 board members representing a broad cross-section of the community, everyone from retired airline pilots to city and county legislative aides, community advisory board members and citizens at-large.
Residents can track airplanes coming and going from San Diego via Flight Tracker monitoring the movement of flights and air traffic patterns within the greater San Diego area. Flight Tracker includes specific information about flights from San Diego International (SAN), Montgomery Field (MYF), Brown Field (SDM), NAS North Island (NZY), and MCAS Miramar (NKX) airports, as well as information on air traffic transiting through the San Diego area.
Flight tracker information includes the aircraft’s type, altitude, origin/destination airports, and flight identification. This system allows residents to review specific aircraft that created a noise concern and lodge a complaint to the Airport Noise Mitigation Office directly from Flight Tracker. All Flight Tracker data is post-processed by the vendor within 24-hours ensuring the track is accurately displayed and complete.
Casey Schnoor, a representative from the Peninsula on the ANAC board, had several questions about ongoing noise problems allegedly associated with flight path changes in and out of San Diego International Airport.
The La Jolla Village News had a Q and A with Federal Aviation Administration public affairs manager Ian Gregor, who responded to Schnoor’s queries: LJVN: With the exception of left turns over the Peninsula, all departure issues (early turns, missed approaches, curfew violations, etc.) tracked by the Airport Authority are continuing at, or greatly in excess of, the growth rate in SAN operations (less than 2 percent annually), indicating day-to-day management is not controlling, nor improving upon, the problems. FAA: Missed approaches/go-arounds are important safety tools that air traffic controllers and pilots use. They occur for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, controllers send arrivals around if a preceding arrival exits the runway more slowly than expected. Sometimes pilots choose to go around if they are coming in too high or fast on their approach. What’s referred to as “early turns” is in fact controllers directing aircraft off published departure routes to keep aircraft properly separated from one another, or to keep them efficiently sequenced. LJVN: Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) are FAA facilities housing air-traffic controllers using radar displays and radios to guide approaching and departing aircraft. TRACON appears to now be redirecting some westerly departures with flight plans filed for left turns (ZZOOO) instead to the right along the coast at Bird Rock and turning over La Jolla for no discernible reason, negating the efficiency benefits of the ZZOOO departure around Point Loma. Is this true? FAA: For more than two decades, we have issued a 290-degree heading to all Lindbergh departures after 10 p.m. Controllers usually clear the aircraft to a point where they can resume the ZZOO departure, which entails turning left. However, controllers will occasionally instruct a pilot to turn right. They generally do this to avoid conflicts with military traffic that is inbound to North Island. LJVN: ANAC did little to help meet the ANAC Subcommittee’s request to have the FAA fulfill its promise to have an appropriate FAA representative attend the subcommittee meetings and ANAC to facilitate a dialog for solutions and in fact, tabled a motion to forward a letter drafted by the subcommittee to the FAA asking them to please follow through on their promise. Can you tell me more about this allegation? FAA: The FAA sends air traffic representatives to the ANAC and sub-committee meetings. These representatives are based locally and have detailed knowledge of how the local air traffic system works, so they are able to directly answer any questions that arise. LJVN: In the first three months of this year more than 8,000 noise complaints have been filed, putting them on track to exceed the approximately 30,000 submitted in 2016. Any response to this? FAA: Please contact the airport noise office. LJVN: The Airport Authority has changed their procedures for accepting citizen noise complaints to disallow complaints submitted by email, forcing community residents to resort to phone calls or a lengthy online procedure, which will likely result in a reduction in complaints due to these complexities. What is the reasoning behind this change? FAA: Contact the airport. This is not a FAA issue.
LJVN: The Airport Authority has instituted a new “flight tracker” system that has been roundly criticized by citizens as being harder to use, both to track flights and to submit noise complaints, with no apparent improvement in track accuracy.
FAA: Contact the airport. This is not a FAA issue.