Flyover fallout

Officials say flights over South Portland could end by 2012, but residents remain skeptical

SOUTH PORTLAND — Every South Portlander knows the feeling – the low rumble in the gut, the reverberation in the chest, the echo in the ears – that says a commercial plane has just taken off from Portland International Airport.

But that signal may soon be coming to an end.

On Aug. 18, an Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official told the Jetport’s Noise Advisory Committee that direct flyovers of South Portland could end as soon as July 27, 2012.

“We have an 18-step process that takes about three months to complete and we will start that on the 31^st of this month,” said Jon Harris, a lead air traffic specialist with the FAA’s Boston Center station in Nashua, N.H. “As far as procedures go, what we are going to create is not overly difficulty, conception-wise, design-wise or industry-wise. So, I don’t foresee any major bumps in the road.

“There are a lot of things that have to come together,” said Harris, “but I don’t see any long pole in the tent, so to speak.”

But some residents who have been fighting for years for a change to the flight path say they’ll believe it when they see it. The federal government has little interest in listening to residents, some say, and the noise committee has been ineffectual.

“It just makes a mockery of calling this a noise committee,” said Tom Ainsworth, president of the Stroudwater Village Association, after the meeting.

Jetport Director Paul Bradbury said the procedure on the table would divert more than 90 percent of all air traffic that now passes over the South Portland peninsula. Once approved by the FAA, pilots would be able to fly a RNAV (Radio Navigation) path down the Fore River, following signals to a GPS unit to be built on Hog Island Ledge. That same path, known as the "harbor-view approach" is now used for arrivals at the jetport, but only during the day, under optimal weather conditions.

Bradbury said after the Aug. 18 meeting that the harbor-view approach was used at night until, years ago, a pilot coming up the river toward the jetport reportedly lined up his landing approach to the interstate, rather than the runway.

Harris said he could not write a procedure to once again allow a harbor-view approach in all conditions. Landing approaches, he said, are handled by a different, non-FAA group. He only handles take-offs.

And, while the new procedures can be finalized “by Thanksgiving,” they then have to go to the Aviation Standards National Field Office, in Oklahoma City, Okla.

“We build the procedure,” said Harris, “but, unfortunately, my software and their software, they don’t talk. That’s government at it’s finest. Yes, I know, I’m sorry. But they then have to rebuild what I build for procedures in their language.”

That process, plus industry comment periods, training and testing, map drafting and software updates, takes “about seven months,” said Harris. Still, he said, a “final publication date” of new takeoff procedures for Portland has been reserved “in the pipeline” with the National Air Space Procedures Team for July 26, 2012.

“Everything will be set so they can then take effect the following day,” he said.

At a noise advisory committee meeting in South Portland on May 30, Bradbury seemed to raise the hackles of audience members when he said the jetport first applied to for the new RNAV procedure “almost two years ago.”

Harris said the delay in getting to this point was due to hang-ups with people and product. A new radar-controlling computer system known as ERAM (En Route Automated Modernization) came online, delaying the design of implementation of new flight procedures.

“That was a player in the equation,” said Harris. “The conversion of the Boston center’s radar system has been done on an incremental time-period basis, and there was a formal moratorium issued by FAA in Washington that we would not be inserting new requirements and procedures that would cause changes while they brought the system online. They did not want to add complexity by simultaneously adding new procedures into something that simply needed to get up and get running.”

Also, ongoing contract negotiations between the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association hung on a provision that “the workforce would have a more active voice in changes,” said Harris. 

By the time contract and computer issues were resolved, Portland was simply shunted to the back of the line, being a smaller market.

“The FAA will listen and be very polite, but, really, they tend to go away from here thinking that Portland really doesn’t have a noise problem, at least compared to other, larger cities,” said Michael Wood, a Scarborough town councilor who holds a supervisory position in the jetport tower.

Despite the apparent good news that takeoffs, at least, could soon be diverted away from the city, there were some angry mutterings from noise committee members and spectators alike.

After Harris left, Ainsworth, of the Stroudwater Village Association, said he had little faith in the noise committee’s ability to affect any real change that bureaucracies from Washington, D.C., to the Portland City Council are not interested in attacking.

“It just makes a mockery of calling this a noise committee,” Ainsworth said. “You don’t even have a noise officer at the airport. This is a mockery. So, I am here to participate in this month’s mockery.”

“Quarterly,” corrected Ed Suslovic, who chairs the committee by virtue of his seat on the Portland City Council.

Later in the meeting, Ainsworth moved to ask the Portland City Council to hire a noise officer, but only South Portland representative Maggie Shaw took his side.

Meanwhile, Paul Ouellette of Portland complained of the health issues, a topic Suslovic refused to broach, even when he agreed that “noise causes health issues.”

Ouellette also faulted the noise committee on its apparent lack of progress.

“Something isn’t working right,” he said. “We’re talking a lot and not a lot is getting done.”

Liz Beausan of South Portland said she doubted that the new RNAV take-off route would have any impact on jet noise in South Portland. Bradbury pointed out that the jetport can “only suggest” an approach path. The pilot has the final say. And although Bradbury said 96 percent of all pilots take the harbor-view approach away from the city when it is offered, Beausang refused to believe that was true, based on her own observation.

“What good is it if it can’t be enforced?” she asked. “It saves them a buck to fly over our houses. We’re home, we see it, and we want you to understand that.”