A group of residents near Long Beach Airport has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging it is allowing flight schools to exploit a loophole in its airport noise ordinance to fly small aircraft late at night.
The lawsuit, filed by the Long Beach Small Aircraft Noise Reduction Group on May 30 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims that flight schools get away with running around-the-clock flights by classifying them as “taxi back” operations instead of “touch-and-go” maneuvers, which are explicitly banned outside certain hours.
Lisa Dunn, founder of the group that filed the lawsuit, said taxi-back training flights involve an aircraft taking off, then turning around and landing before taxiing back to the beginning of the runway to take off again. Touch-and-go maneuvers, by contrast, do not involve the aircraft stopping or remaining on the ground before taking off again, Dunn said.
Long Beach’s airport noise ordinance prohibits training operations between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays and between 3 p.m. and 8 a.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. According to the ordinance, prohibited operations include “touch and go, stop and go, practice low approach and practice missed approach, or any of them.”
The lawsuit alleges the city claims it cannot enforce the ordinance against the taxi-back flights because they are not “specifically labeled” as one of the prohibited training operations spelled out in the ordinance.
Dunn says the flight schools are taking advantage of this loophole to get around the rules.
“They do touch-and-gos all day until 7 p.m., and then after 7 p.m. they do taxi backs,” she said. “We never get a break.”
From Jan. 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024, more than 5,600 flights took place during prohibited hours, the lawsuit claims.
The trainings consist of “anywhere from five to 10” small planes landing and taking off while traveling in a circle, each “within a minute” of each other, according to Dunn.
“It’s like a really loud lawnmower going over your house,” she said.
The City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit while it is still pending.
Long Beach could try to amend its ordinance to close the loophole, but city officials have said previously that this comes with the risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding because the current ordinance is grandfathered in under FAA rules.
In the absence of changes, the city says it has sought voluntary agreements with flight schools to reduce noise.
The lawsuit seeks a court order telling the city to enforce its noise ordinance — including against taxi-back operations — against the “at least six flight schools” that train private pilots at Long Beach Airport.
Increased regulation, a shortage of commercial pilots and higher operating costs at other airports in the region have led to an influx of flight school training at LGB, according to the lawsuit.
Torrance Airport, for example, restricts all touch-and-go operations and restricts taxi-back and low approaches to between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The lawsuit represents the latest attempt to reduce the sound of small planes flying over homes in the neighborhood.
In May 2024, the Small Aircraft Noise Reduction Group rallied against noise and lead pollution produced by small planes, which typically still use leaded gasoline.
“Our community has had enough,” Dunn said. “The city is turning a blind eye to blatant violations of an ordinance that was specifically designed to protect residents from exactly this kind of disruption.”