In a blow to residents near Long Beach Airport, a judge ruled this week that the city does not have the authority to restrict a specific type of training flight that a lawsuit claims creates a constant late-night nuisance.
The group that filed the lawsuit, Long Beach Small Aircraft Noise Reduction Group, sought a ruling that would require Long Beach to limit a fifth type of training flight in addition to the four spelled out in an ordinance aimed at limiting plane noise.
Lisa Dunn, founder of the group that filed the lawsuit, said she and her neighbors have been besieged by noise from small airplanes since about three years ago.
That’s when, she said, a type of small-plane training flight, called a “taxi back” maneuver, dramatically increased in frequency. The annoyance caused longtime residents to sell their homes out of frustration with the incessant airplanes and sent prospective buyers elsewhere.
Dunn believes taxi back flights should be restricted to certain times and days under Long Beach’s noise ordinance, but on Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael P. Vicencia disagreed with the lawsuit’s interpretation of four key words in the law.
The noise ordinance prohibits various types of training flights: touch and go, stop and go, practice low approach and practice missed approach, “or any of them,” between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays and between 3 p.m. and 8 a.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
Lawyers hired by SANER argued that the phrase “or any of them” encompasses any type of training flight flown during restricted hours. Vicencia, however, ruled that the city could only enforce against the operations specifically spelled out in the ordinance.
Vicencia did give SANER some reprieve, allowing the group 30 days to amend its lawsuit to attempt to prove that the city is not enforcing its ordinance against the four named operations.
The lawsuit claimed that more than 5,600 flights took place during prohibited hours from Jan. 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024.
Dunn said the group’s members have “screenshots and videos” of noisy training flights that have not shown up on the airport’s monthly noise violation reports.
“It’s not the big planes at all. … We know we live by an airport, we expect noise, we’re ok with noise,” Dunn said. “But the general aviation communities have just taken over the skies over our neighborhood.”
“General aviation” refers to small-plane or noncommercial flights.
Long Beach, for its part, claims it is powerless to change its noise ordinance to encompass more types of training flights unless it gets approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
After the federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act went into effect in 1990, the FAA must approve any changes to noise ordinances.
Since ANCA was adopted, the FAA has not approved any changes to noise ordinances, said Long Beach City Attorney Dawn McIntosh.
To even submit a proposed change is a “long and expensive process,” McIntosh said.
“Burbank did it, it cost them millions of dollars, and at the end, the FAA said no,” McIntosh said.
The two sides are due back in court on Nov. 10 for a case management conference.
Dunn, meanwhile, will continue to sift through the six cardboard boxes she has at home containing court documents from when Long Beach officials first crafted the airport ordinance in 1981, including everything they “thought or said or did.”
Based on what she has found in those documents, Dunn said the intent of the ordinance is clear: “to protect the peace [and] quality of life for the residents at nighttime.”