Members of the Torrance City Council in California voted 5-0 to ban touch-and-go operations at city-owned Zamperini Field Airport (KTOA) at an October 2023 meeting.
Sigh.
According to an article in the local newspaper the Daily Breeze, the ban will take eight to 12 months to become effective.
“Legal analysis and environmental analysis” are required, the article notes.
That’s good news, I suppose.
But what drove this action by the elected officials in Torrance?
Community pushback to an increase in flight operations — noise — at KTOA.
In 2019 the FAA counted 125,174 operations at the airport. In 2020 operations dropped to 111,772 (thanks COVID). In 2021 operations rebounded to 136,652. In 2022 the FAA counted 185,806 operations and through September 2023 another 142,121.
That’s 306 daily operations, on average in 2020. By 2022 that number jumped to 509, and is on pace to increase again to 519 in 2023.
While not all of the increase in traffic can be attributed to flight training, it is a large portion. Local traffic represented about 36,000 of the nearly 50,000 increase in operations in 2022 compared to 2021.
One of the flight schools noted in the Daily Breeze article is Sling Pilot Academy. I assume it is related to the Torrance-based Sling Flying Club that was awarded a $499,865 “Aviation Workforce Development Grant” from the FAA back in March 2023.
The first sentence from the FAA’s March 2, 2023, announcement reads, “Twenty-three schools will receive $10 million in grants from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to help attract and train students for careers as pilots and aviation maintenance technicians.”
We need more professional pilots and we need more maintainers. The “we” isn’t specific to only those of us in the aviation industry — the “we” refers to society at large. Aviation plays a huge part in the overall economy.
But pilots aren’t created in a vacuum.
We do need more pilots, which means we need more flight training. And for those who live near a popular flight training airport, they will pay a higher noise penalty than those of us who do not.
And if I had to guess, I’d say the majority paying the price for increased flight instruction aren’t thinking about the economy as a whole. They are focused on the noise overhead. Full stop.
But it is all connected. If any of us want to board a commercial flight in the future we need to train pilots today. Same goes for ordering something online for next day delivery.
I think Jamie Beckett said it best in his recent “The noise that is music to our ears” column.
“I suspect there will always be noise complaints from neighbors who don’t love airplane noise. Even as aircraft get quieter and noise abatement procedures reduce the number of homes impacted by that aeronautical commotion, there will always be a handful of cranky folks who want to hear nothing but the sounds of nature when they’re at home. So they’ll call. They’ll write. They’ll whine as they place their next-day shipping orders online without a thought in the world about how that package will get from California to Ohio in a matter of hours.”
My family lives a few miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, and rarely does a week go by that JBLM doesn’t announce a training alert. On social media, they use a picture of highway sign edited to read, “Pardon the noise; that’s the sound of freedom.”
We can easily hear the booming — I mean freedom — from our home.
And there are times it gets annoying. Like when I’m trying to sleep.
However, I am also aware of the needs beyond my little circle of life.
This isn’t limited to Torrance. As I was writing this column, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) posted a story to its website titled “Noise concerns divide aviators, residents in Colorado.”
I don’t have the answer. But I am certain that “the airport was here first” isn’t our best response. For anyone who uttered that phrase to members of the Torrance City Council, it didn’t work.
Similarly, I doubt a message that connects the dots between today’s aspiring pilots and tomorrow’s healthy travel and e-commerce industries will calm the ire of those sick of planes in the pattern overhead.
Hopefully someone will remind Torrance city leaders of the 2020 letter the FAA sent to the Torrance Airport Association. It reminds the city that the FAA is tasked with regulating the airspace above the United States, not the individual states, counties, or cities — even if they do own the airport.
While it would’ve been nice for local governments to preserve space around airports decades ago to prevent such issues, they didn’t, so we have to deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it to be.
A touch and go on this topic isn’t going to cut it. We need to perform a full stop, secure the plane, and get involved in our communities — and stay involved.
Some years back, a developer wanted to put in high density houses right under the crosswind to downwind turn / pattern entry area. Great place for a mid-air, never mind the noise. A sizable group from the airport went to the city council meeting to fight it, but it seemed the council have already made up their minds to approve it.
A week later the airport manager informed us that if the city denied their plan, they would just buy the airport and close it.
You are not going to change the minds of those complaining, the developers or those in opposition to the airports. So what can we do? First have the governmental entity have the FAA do a noise study and insist the governmental entity pay for it. Make them prove there is a problem. Hint expensive!
Log all the noise complaints and who is making them and where they live. Use public information, FOI Act, to get the information and present it to the local government. Also don’t forget to use the local media. Someone complaining 5 miles away? They don’t count. Get your local pilot or aviation association to do some rudimentary noise studies from where the complaints are coming from.
Finally get the local government on your side. Quite often this can be as simple as getting local organizations involved with programs like the EAA’s Young Eagles. Fly a bunch of kids for free and see if some councilman doesn’t change their tune.
Educate the public. Airports and training are just as important as the local basketball court or baseball field. All make noise.
Finally as pilots get involved, this is the hardest, Show up for commission meetings, have your ducks in a row. Educate, work with them and make them prove the noise is unwarranted and a problem. This is in many cases the hardest, to get ourselves, the pilots, business owners and aviation public to look out for our own interests. How many have ever gone to a commission meeting? I know in my area almost none. If we don’t stand up for ourselves then no one else will..
It’s just an idea, maybe airport tenants could pool their resources and buy the city council, JUST LIKE THE DEVELOPERS DO!!!
State and local government can be a cancer to airports. Slowly picking away until the airport gives up.
I lived @ 2 miles southeast of KTOA from the early 60’s to early 70’s. As a wee young lad, I loved seeing the planes flying overhead; the noise didn’t bother me…
I don’t remember there being much open ‘rural land’ in that area back then…there sure isn’t any remaining there today. Makes me wonder how much pressure is being put on Torrance to (eventually) shut Zamperini down completely and develop it?
I don’t disagree that “noise” has become the standard “go-to” argument in these increasing “local residents vs. existing airport” confrontations.
In this case, I think the noise argument is a little disingenuous, given how extremely congested, and ‘loud’, that area has become. I bet the “touch and go” ban is intended to just make it more painful to operate there.
There’s a lot of money, power, & influence represented in the nearby Palos Verdes/Rolling Hills-area demographics. Perhaps those are being leveraged to speed up the inevitable?
Flyers will never win out over voting & property tax paying residents in a city or county meeting. Nor will we defeat the pressure to encroach on open airport property by developers & individuals beefing housing. Noise abatement procedures are growing everywhere. My local just banned turbines & jets 21-0700.
From the Deland, Fl., A/FD, “ Touch and go ops prohibited if there are 3 or more acft in the tfc pat” They’ve been doing land & taxi back for years (mostly due to congestion from the big air school, not noise.)
The “sound of freedom” argument only resounds with the public regarding defense facilities, not civilian training.
My solution is to leave the busy, politically contentious, pattern for a quieter, more rural airport 15-20 minutes away. Enroute I practice Dutch Rolls or slow flight. I’d rather burn my time flying instead of waiting in the conga line on taxi back.
I would be willing to bet that a city noise ordinance against loud mufflers, boom box stereos, and high-output car stereos would never be enacted. The real city noise of lawnmowers, leaf blowers, busses and trains, permeates our society in abundance compared to aircraft taking off or landing. When a city addresses this noise pollution first, then aviation should fall in line, not before.
The aviation community continues to use the wrong words. Noise is an opinion of a sound. What some people call music I call noise. The music I play in my house at my volume is good, sometimes the same music played by my neighbor at 10 times the volume is noise.
The sound of most planes landing and taking off is not noise to me, it is the sound of success and freedom. I think we would be better off referring to “airplane sounds” as “airplane sounds” and not “airplane noise”. An example: I would change the sign above to read “Pardon the airplane sounds; that’s the sound of freedom”.
I ran a flight school at the Oswego County Airport, KFZY, Fulton NY for a couple of years. The approach to 15 was directly over an old farmhouse. I would get a phone call daily from an elderly woman whenever we had an airplane pass overhead of her place. I did my best to have the pilots avoid her house as much as possible, Finally got a call from her son asking us to not use the runway. When I tried to explain winds etc. He didn’t want to hear it. I finally said that I was doing all that I could but I had a school to run and hung up. Not the best way to handle it I realized, but I was tired of the complaints. They never called back and I left a few months later.
It’s sad to read that the Torrance City Council voted the way they did. I was a student pilot at KTOA in the early 80s. My 1st career led me to the aerospace industry _because of_ all the planes flying at Torrance Airport. Now my 2nd career has me working at KTUS. But noise ‘abatement’ at KTOA was a thing well before I started flying. Slowly, business jet traffic died down. Warbirds left. Airshows nearly zeroed out. I get that insurance costs may also play into who no longer flies there. But, banning T&Gs?? I wonder if more complaints are coming from business owners along the airport midfield. A short-sighted and uninformed decision by the Council IMO. 🙁
In my mind (and possibly I’m wrong) it’s just more friction between urban vs rural. A good number of these airports at first were located some distance out of town, but now urban sprawl has set in. And added to this is the fact that airplanes don’t have any attraction to the general public anymore. Where I live — 50 miles from anywhere — the airport is just down the road, and I typically log three times more TOLs than flight hours annually. I’d recommend small town airport living to any aircraft owner if you possibly can.
I’m guessing that the noise of their neighbors lawn mowers, weed eaters, edgers and leaf blowers doesn’t draw their ire. All of these make more noise than the average engine of a 172, Cherokee or Diamond at 500-1000
feet overhead.
They will never let you forget that you are in “commiefornia”
Exactly, Mr. Ron J.
Restrictions are everywhere, not just CA. HOWEVER, there are few airports more hemmed in by development than KTOA. Just look at it on Foreflight. After some of the stunts knotheaded pilots pull that endanger the public best airports year in & year out, who can blame them?
This is only one example: https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/bonanza-crash-in-florida-caught-on-ring-camera/
If you buy a home near an airport, not rocket science tha you will hear airplane noise. Just like buying a home near railroad tracks. You’re going to hear trains. You think you can shut down the tracks? Get real. If you don’t like airplane noise don’t buy a house by an airport… or RR tracks, or a race track… or a marina. Duh!
Things can change over time. What starts out as a reasonable noise level during the day may evolve into so much noise at night that it prevents sleep. People have to sleep. That may have been part of what happened at East Hampton, Long Island, NY. Result – airport is now PVT and pilots have to comply with their Prior Permission Required rules.
For recent purchases, maybe. But aviation has changed considerably since KTOA was established. Once the domain of bugsmashers & 65hp Franklin & continentals, it has given way to unmuffled, high horsepower, engines, plus turbines & Jets.
The Navy here at Oceana NAS had the same problem. Established during WWII, the patterns were closer in & the engines quiter. Eventually, as the Navy progressed to F-4, F-14s, Fa-18s (not to mention the amazingly annoying A-6) the patterns expanded with the faster planes & the noise level went up.
Old time residents, once away from the pattern, were most annoyed.
As a flight instructor for almost 50 years I have no issue with touch and goes being banned. I’d rather see three full stop and taxi back for another circuit than six poor executions. The taxi time used to critique the landing and prepare for another take off.
Go arounds are still a valuable lesson and should not be banned.
From the current Chart Supplement for KTOA. All those operations are already limited/restricted there:
“NOISE: Noise sensitive area all quads. For noise abatement procs info ctc arpt Noise Abatement 310–784–7950. Certain tbjt acft permly excldd. Touch and go ldg and stop and go ldg and low apch ops ltd to 1600–0400Z‡ (taxi–back until 0600Z‡) wkdays and 1800–0100Z‡ Sat. No touch and go ldg and stop and go ldg and low apch ops and taxi–back ops on Sun and hol.”
It’s the age old issue, these idiots buy a house near an airport then complain about the noise, duh!
To allow a disgruntled resident to dictate how a pilot operates the plane he is flying is a bad precedence to start.
Anyway, it’s California, so this kind of thing is expected. Next, they’ll be banning airplanes with internal combustion engines, then tell us we can’t charge them because the grid can’t handle it! Another well thought out policy from the brain trusts in California.
Brain? They haven’t such a thing!!
I was stationed at Edwards AFB for many years. Nearby Rosamond Skypark was developed just to the west and then some other houses were built under the final approach path. Noise complaints soon followed. The pilots of the Skypark banded together, got a good lawyer who sued ALL the local homeowners and finally won an “avigation easement.” Basically, the airport was there first, the homeowners did not do their due diligence and therefore had no standing to moan about noise. All new houses must reveal this easement to potential new homeowners. As I understood the story, this was a precedent setting move. Other airports ought to look into this and perhaps do the same thing.