Jetport takeoffs to avoid South Portland

SOUTH PORTLAND — As recently as this spring, Liz Beausang was on the phone to officials at the Portland International Jetport up to eight times a week, complaining about engine noise from departing jets waking her 3-year-old at all hours, as they took off over her Gould Road home.

Beausang runs a business from her home, Get Up and Go Travel, and often has to ask customers to hold the phone while a plane screams overhead.

“People are like, ‘Wow, are you actually at the airport?’ and I have to tell them, ‘No, that’s just life in South Portland,” said Beausang. “I’ve thought of moving due to the noise. It’s a real problem. It’s so loud. But, you know, other than that, I really love my neighborhood.”

Starting July 27, Beausang and other residents of the downtown area, from Redbank to Knightville to Ferry Village and Meeting House Hill, may begin to love their neighborhoods just a little but more.

On that date, flights departing from Runway 11 will avoid flying directly over the city and instead follow what’s known as a radio navigation corridor down the Fore River, following signals to a GPS unit built on Hog Island Ledge, where they will bank out over Casco Bay.

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.

According to Jenn Dunfee, airport communications and security manager, use of the radio navigation route is similarly dependent on weather conditions, as well as pilot training and compatible cockpit equipment.

“It’s important to understand this will not be a complete changeover on Day 1,” she said last week. “It’s something that will be rolled out over time.”

Jetport Director Paul Bradbury also points out that the path is not a federal requirement. Pilots will be given clearance to use the path and told it is the recommended course, said Bradbury, but they will have final say, and may still choose a direct flyover of the city.

“They are the captains of their ship,” he said on Monday. “There’s no question about that. So, if there’s ever any question in their minds, they can make that call of what route to take.”

Still, at meetings of the Jetport Noise Advisory Committee, a citizen group created to offer feedback on noise issues, Bradbury has noted that pilots take the harbor-view approach when offered 96 percent of the time.

“They prefer it because, quite frankly, it’s more fun for them,” he said. “They get more of a sensation of actually flying the plane.”

The Jetport’s existing noise abatement program, as well as the dictates of wind direction, sends 69 percent of all departures off Runway 29, over Westbrook and Gorham. However, of the 16,630 commercial departures in 2011, 28 percent left on Runway 11 over South Portland. Bradbury says he expects that number will drop by 90 percent as pilots take advantage of the option to snake down the river.

“This has been a long time coming,” said South Portland City Councilor Alan Livingston, who sits as liaison to the committee.

“It took so long because it’s the federal government involved, but it really seemed to come together quickly in the end,” said Livingston. “I don’t know it for certain, but I’d like to think the Noise Advisory Committee had something to do with that, just by keeping at it.”

“I don’t know who pulled this off, but I’d like to put a crown on their head,” said Councilor Maxine Beecher.

According the Bradbury, the radio navigation path was first OK’d by the Federal Aviation Administration following a 2005 noise abatement study. At meeting of the Noise Advisory Committee last fall, Bradbury said the Jetport has actively pursued the option for more than two years.

But as Livingston noted, the bureaucratic cogs sometimes move slow.

Jon Harris, a lead air traffic specialist with the FAA’s Boston Center station in Nashua, N.H., blamed the delay on the roll-out of a new radar-controlling computer system known as ERAM (En Route Automated Modernization), which temporarily gummed up design and implementation of new flight procedures.

“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,” Harris said. “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.

It wasn’t until last August that Harris was able to launch a laborious, 18-step FAA process to get the new procedure approved for use. Those new rules eventually had to go to the Aviation Standards National Field Office, in Oklahoma City, Okla., which created additional delays.

“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 took nearly a year.

Although most new flight paths should reduce noise pollution, not everyone is fully satisfied.

Beausang said she hopes the Noise Advisory Committee will hold the FAA to the fire until the radio navigation path is no longer merely an option.

“I would like to push to make it a requirement,” she said. “As a taxpayer of South Portland, I want them out over the water away from my house, to stop the absolute destruction of my life.”

Beausang added that she fears pilots, though they might prefer to fly the waterway path, will be forced to acquiesce to airlines, which may prefer to save fuel with a direct flight path over the city.

Others have questioned the long-term health affects of city flyovers, an issue Beecher said remains a concern.

“Obviously, we need the airport. It has obvious economic benefits to the region,” she said on Tuesday. “I’m not against any of that, but I am so grateful that at least at this point most of the carcinogenic pollution will now land in the water versus on the people. And I think the jetport and the city of Portland have made some real positive improvements on that front as well, so I’m really grateful to everyone involved.

“The good news is that this change of route is not putting any passengers at risk,” said Beecher. “So, three cheers for them for picking up the ball and listening the people.”