“I’m just starting to talk to lawyers,” said Montara resident George Skegas, who with his wife, Carole, is proposing the lawsuit. “We’re definitely going to do something. I’m prepared to fund it myself, on behalf of the community and other participants.”
Skegas said he has seen planes flying “just above the treetops we have out here in Montara.”
 At least one Midcoast resident says noise from takeoffs and landings at the Half Moon Bay Airport has gotten worse and he'€™s threatening to sue. |
Larson said that airport staff regularly visits the airport’s adjacent neighborhoods to make sure that planes are following established “noise abatement procedures.”
“There are routes that the aircraft are asked to fly, so that they minimize the noise that they make in the community,” Larson said. Planes are required to stay at 1,000 feet above the ground while waiting to land, and cannot make turns until reaching 500 feet in altitude.
Airport officials, Larson added, have not noticed any recent increase or decrease in the number of complaints they receive about noisy planes.
“We encourage any of the neighbors that have a concern or an observation to give us a call,” Larson said. “Everyone who leaves us a phone number, we call them back.”
Skegas said that such policies have not been in practice, at least in his family’s experience.
“(My wife’s) called multiple times. I think ... that if you don’t say this is an official complaint, they don’t log it,” Skegas said. “I know my wife’s called on certain days five or six times.”
Skegas said the noise has gotten worse over the past year.
Before filing his lawsuit, Skegas wants to investigate a few other aspects of the situation. For one, he suspects that the airport’s general plan has not been updated for decades, and that a new plan could offer more restrictions on flight patterns and noise abatement. He also suspects that most of the low-flying planes are due to new pilots who live over the hill and are just taking flight lessons on the Coastside.
“I want to stress that we’re not against the pilots,” Skegas said. “We’re not trying to close the airport.”
Interested residents can find the airport’s complete list of noise abatement procedures on the airport’s Web site. And anyone who wants to notify officials of noisy planes can call the airport’s “noise hotline” at (650) 728-1203.
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