Almost everything you ever wanted to know about flight paths. Can you handle the truth?
Overview
A two hour seminar hosted by the FAA which answers every common question area residents always. have. We’ve participated in several of these in other cities and although each is customized to describe the local airport and flight paths, the questions and answers are always the same. As are the community reactions.
The fifteen minute FAA explainer section is must-see. It provides excellent examples of flight paths, procedures and the FAA’s philosophy and limitations–at least as they see it.
Participants
- Grady Stone, FAA Regional Administrator
- Sean Hopkins FAA TRACON
- Jeremy Beecher FAA
- Sarah Cox, Ryan McMullan, Tom Fagerstrom Port of Seattle
- Lynae Craig Alaska Airlines
- Tony Vassiladis Delta Airlines
Sections
- 0:00 Intro 11:05 Elevated snippet
- 15:25 Explanation of Puget Sound air space, procedures, separation, flow, responsibilities (Airlines, Port of Seattle, FAA)
- 31:30 Q&A (90 minutes covering all common questions, curfews, flight paths, CAWG, SAF)
Our take: Can you handle the truth?
The balance of the video is ninety minutes of common questions from area residents asked in advance. It was not interactive, but there would have been no point other than to allow community members a chance to vent their spleen. In fact, the Q&A was really seven or eight questions, re-asked, in slightly different ways, over and over. The same questions and the same answers year after year.
We have always felt strongly that there are two main challenges for airport communities: Them. Us.
- The fact is, the FAA is mandated by Congress to further commercial aviation. By Congress. Not some administrator. They are simply the cop on the beat, enforcing unfair laws from the absolute top. No flight caps. Or curfews. Or hindrances to the expansion of commercial aviation in any way. They aren’t lying or 1exaggerating.
- The other fact is that there never has been anything like a ‘community interest’, There are only individual neighborhoods, each of which want the planes to go somewhere else. That accounts for the repetitious questions. Everyone wants to know why them. A large part of the problem has always been a NIMBY issue.
We just saved you eight years of research.
About two thirds of operations have always focused on the center and east runways; not the western (Third Runway). But you’d never know it because the vast majority of complaints come from people on the west side. The FAA’s response to people who feel that the Third Runway is over-used? Don’t worry. As operations increase, they will shift more of the load eastward. Feel better?
We can see this bias even in the airport’s late night procedure limit. Note that it focuses on the Third Runway, with no stats on the center and east runways. It was that way going back to the 1970’s, The 400,000 operations running on the two earlier runways never got anywhere near the advocacy, Why not?
The lack of consensus has led to many fine words, but no action. In public everyone agrees that ‘something must be done!’ And in private, they promote their self-interest, or impossible dreams like ‘second airport’. These only dilute any community power we actually could have.
We will always focus on the true shared interest. Public health. Strong local economies. A cleaner environment. Mitigation and compensation for everyone directly under the flight path. All the things money could always provide. These solutions are often deeply unsatisfying for people who only want the airplanes to go somewhere else.
We disagree with many things the Port of Seattle and the FAA say. But one thing we agree with both those agencies on is this: making the planes go somewhere else will take many years.
Does this mean we aren’t working to change flight paths? Absolutely not! No one is working harder. But at the same time, we are focusing hard on what can be done to help the greatest number of people now.
