The worldwide aviation industry is a tip of the spear for air pollution, noise pollution, destruction of wildlife and ecosystems, industrial tourism, and is a massive contributor to anthropogenic mass extinction.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is tasked with regulating the airline industry to ensure public safety and efficient operations. Unfortunately, as seen with FAA’s failure to properly regulate Boeing’s dangerous 737 Max airliner and its general reluctance to side with airline passengers (instead colluding with corporate aviation moguls), American airspace is nowhere near as safe as it should be.
Worse yet, this isn’t just a problem for 737 Max passengers or others who voluntarily participate in air travel—it’s a problem for all who breathe, have ears, don’t want planes crashing above or into us.
Where I live in Florida and as I sit outdoors writing this article, there’s a constant stream of private and commercial aircraft operating illegally and unsafely above my densely-populated region. Many planes and helicopters, including large commercial jets, fly lower than laws allow. They do stunts. They criss-cross dangerously close to each other. You can hear their engines miles away.
I smell their jet fuel, see faces of people on planes, aircraft noise and turbulence shake the walls of my house, aircraft fly in circles above our neighborhood spying on teen girls poolside in their back yards.
And…planes crash here with increasing frequency. They crash into neighborhoods and freeways killing plane occupants, and innocent civilians on the ground. And nobody is doing anything about it.
I did not move into the flight path of an airport and then start complaining about aircraft. The airports were built or expanded after I began living here; with Florida’s ruinous population growth, air traffic has increased to plague levels.
I was on the verge of having a podcast contract, for example, but even though I have a “soundproof” home studio, the deleterious noise from aircraft sabotage my ability to make pristine live microphone recordings.
Years ago, I began contacting local media, politicians, and FAA, providing documentary proof that aircraft here constantly violate this regulation and others:
91.119 Minimum safe altitudes; general Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: (a) Anywhere – An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface. (b) Over congested areas – Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open-air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft. (c) Over other than congested areas – An altitude of 500 feet above the surface except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In that case, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.
I hoped the Pinellas County Commission would care about the safety risks and quality of life problems caused by aviation here. They did not. After sending repeated dossiers, documentation, and queries to the PCC over a period of years, I finally got reply on a Saturday, from an administrative assistant:
“We did facilitate forwarding your research to our county’s Airport Operations and Facilities Director who is the expert on the subject matter. A sincere appreciation for your efforts in collecting the data and sharing with the Commissioners should be expressed. Thank you for reaching out and following up with me. Have a great day!”
The reply didn’t specify what if anything would be done to address the issues, so I wrote back asking for contact information for the “director” mentioned, and what was going to be done.
I sent more queries, and then got this from an administrative assistant (Bobbie Shay Lee) to one of the commissioners:
I see that your concerns have been addressed and you have received a follow up from the staff at PIE. This is an issue specifically to FAA and not an issue the commission has any oversight or influence over. Additionally, per Florida State Statute 162.21, citizen complaints must include name and address, anonymous complaints are not accepted. Neither of these identifiers are included in any correspondence. Best of luck resolving your issue.
My first reaction to Lee’s email was that she describes this as “your issue,” as if planes crashing into the ground here is just my concern, nobody else’s.
Further, the “PIE” Lee refers to is only one of several local airports from which aircraft are being unsafely operated, but not the only one. I replied to Lee, saying my concerns have NOT been addressed. She wrote back:
Please see correspondence below. PIE emailed you on February 5th with a response.
Unfortunately, the February 5th “response” was just more pushback, telling me the Commission had nothing to do with making sure aviation was safe in our county, and advising me to do what I had already done, had told them I had already done—contact the FAA.
Ironically, Bobbie Shay Lee claims her job is to “contribute to the development and implementation of policies and programs that enhance the quality of life for the residents of our district.”
One wonders how much of a contribution Ms. Lee is making to “quality of life,” given that she claims her employer, the Pinellas County Commission, has nothing to do with aviation safety.
Of course, this failure from Pinellas County Commission is no surprise. For all the decades I’ve lived here, the Commission and most local Florida government has been little more than a rubber-stamp, paid-off enabler of ruinous, unplanned, reckless, feckless population growth that paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.
The county commissioner Lee works for, for example, is in the transportation industry that benefits from the aviation industry’s facilitation of tourism, itself a generator of pollution and other problems.
Historically, the Pinellas County Commission is stocked by people from the real estate, tourism, development, construction, and related industries that all benefit from relentless population growth, tourism, air traffic, etc.
Under their leadership, this county went from being a quiet, safe, beautiful tropical paradise from 1950-1980 to what it is today—one of the most densely populated, dangerous, traffic jammed, crime-ridden, polluted, ecologically-ruined counties in America.
While I was attempting to get local officials to care, I was also trying to get FAA to care. It was incredibly difficult to get FAA to tell me who to talk to. Their website, phone support, and contact infrastructure appear to be set up to PREVENT citizens from reaching the right person. A typical call to FAA headquarters would result in this kind of statement from their representative:
“I really don’t know who to tell you to get in touch with. Our staffing was cut by Trump, and COVID didn’t help, we are too understaffed to do anything anyway.”
Finally, I was told to contact the regional FAA Flight Safety District Office (FSDO), located in Tampa. I did so, via email and phone. I never reached a live person: there was either no way to leave a message, or they never called back. I didn’t get any email response until late 2023. Sadly, the email response indicated that Tampa FSDO doesn’t really want to do their job.
Of note is that my dossier (which includes photos of aircraft operating illegally) pointed out the many harms caused by aircraft, which include:
*Leaded fuel emissions expose a global population of children to lead and its pro-found health consequences. Recognition of its harms precipitated a global phase out and replacement with unleaded substitutes for road vehicles. Despite this widespread recognition and action, aviation fuel for piston engine aircraft still contains lead. Leaded aviation fuel (AVGAS100LL) contains 0.56 g of tetraethyl lead (TEL) per litre and this lead must be jettisoned from the engine during operation to prevent fouling. This action distributes lead and lead compounds into the air and soil around general aviation airports. This has been shown to increase the blood lead levels(BLLs) of children living nearby to clinically significant levels.
A study commissioned by the County of Santa Clara on lead exposure risks for children living in the area around Reid-Hillview Airport in East San José found that the continued use of leaded aviation fuel has contributed to increased blood lead levels, particularly for those within a half-mile of the facility.
The peer-reviewed study found that children living downwind from the airport had higher blood lead levels, with increases of .40 micrograms per deciliter, over children living upwind from the airport. For context, lead levels detected during the peak of the Flint Water Crisis were between .35 and .45 micrograms per deciliter over baseline.
The study also examined levels during times of maximum exposure to air traffic for children within a half-mile of the airport and estimated an increase of .83 micrograms per deciliter at peak times – significantly higher than the levels seen in Flint.
Children who live within a half-mile of the airport had blood lead levels 20% higher than children living between half-mile to 1.5 miles from the airport. The study also correlated blood lead levels with the proximity of a child’s home and school to Reid-Hillview Airport. Children who commute toward Reid-Hillview to attend school present substantially higher blood lead levels than children who commute away from the airport.
Health organizations agree that there is no known safe level of lead in a child’s blood, and exposure to even a small amount of lead has a negative effect on cognitive ability, particularly in developing children who absorb lead more efficiently than older children and adults.
The study was conducted by Dr. Sammy Zahran and the Mountain Data Group. It incorporated three main tests of exposure risk and was controlled for other sources of lead exposure.
Since the elimination of lead in automotive fuel in 1996, aviation fuel (referred to as “avgas”) used by 170,000 piston-engine aircraft nationwide has become the largest source of lead emissions. Avgas accounts for half to two-thirds of current lead emissions in the nation.
My dossier also pointed out that aircraft noise pollution has negative health effects, causing severe stress on the body, with an association between high levels of aircraft noise and an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Other health impacts include:
- Sleep disorders
- Impaired sleep recuperation
- Hypertension in adults
- Lower birth weight
- Memory and learning problems in children
- Mental health issues, such as increased stress and anxiety
I mentioned in my dossier that I’m a veteran with service-related disability, and that along with generating noise and air pollution, aircraft are reactivating PTSD in veterans for whom combat service trauma is triggered by excessive aircraft noise.
When I finally got a response from Tampa FSDO, it was mostly inaccurate statements and pushback:
You have not provided any details with which we can pursue an investigation. If you have photos with visible tail numbers, I would recommend sending them one or two at a time instead of all in one message. If the photos have tail numbers visible and you include the exact address where and when they were taken, an initial assessment will be started, and you will be contacted by the inspector for further information. If tail numbers are available in any of the videos, please provide the specific numbers so we can start an initial assessment and the inspector can reach out to you. If the aircraft are flying below 500’, a tail number would be clearly visible.
Our inspectors also do not have the time or capacity to drive around searching for low-flying aircraft, as they are out investigating actual incidents and accidents, much like local law enforcement cannot write a citation to every driver that disregards a stop sign or exceeds the speed limit, because they are dealing with other duties and assignments.
The FAA also does not have the personnel needed to provide the type of enforcement coverage you would like, and as we are a compliance agency, we are not expected to provide policing of the air traffic. We ensure that all aircraft personnel are properly trained and all aircraft within our jurisdiction are inspected and safe to fly. This office does NOT have oversight of ”large commercial jets”, but a Hotline complaint would be forwarded to the correct division.
I wrote back to this FSDO person, pointing out I already provided photographs and details asked for to numerous FAA offices and officials, yet nothing has been done by FAA, and it seems FAA expects me to be an unpaid FAA investigator.
I again sent a trove of photographs clearly identifying aircraft operating illegally, and was met by total silence from Tampa FSDO. They never did anything to help—they ghosted me.
I also contacted my federal senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. Given that these guys are totally MAGA, corporate shills, corrupted (Rick Scott’s former corporation defrauded Medicare nearly $2 billion), I didn’t expect any assistance, and I got none.
That’s when I started contacting FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. as well as satellite FAA agencies such as its associate general counsel for governmental affairs, Inspector General, Noise Ombudsman, and “citizen hotline.”
I never heard back from any of these people or sub-agencies. I have an associate who works in a high position for FAA’s parent agency, the Department of Transportation. When I asked him to help me get in touch with someone who has authority over FAA who could remedy their failures, he got back to me saying, “The lack of transparency and professionalism at FAA is off the charts.”
He suggested I contact FAA’s so-called Office of Safety Standards (OSS). By phone and email I contacted Mark Steinbicker, the OSS director, along with several of his subordinates including Neil Spanier, sending them my voluminous dossier, and photos of planes operating illegally.
Despite repeated follow-ups, I never heard back from those OSS employees, so aircraft are still flying at treetop level over our home, above crowded highways, doing stunts, generating noise and air pollution, violating FAA regs.
When I figured out that local tourism charter flight companies were among the culprits, I called them. One aviation company owner said if I pursued my complaint, he would find out who I am, and “buzz my house” over and over to destroy my quality of life. “And unless you have a sniper rifle, there’s nothing you can do about it,” he warned.
Another part of this story is the failure of legacy media. The local legacy newspaper, Tampa Bay Times (TBT), is notorious for not being serious about investigative journalism that would negatively portray industries that advertise in the newspaper, especially the tourism industry.
When a small, private plane crashed near my home, I sent my dossier and photos to the “journalist” assigned to cover the crash, pointing out this was more than just a spot news event, it was an ongoing public health and safety crisis.
The “journalist” never responded to my email, but did write several articles about the plane crash of the type that would be written by someone on a middle school newspaper, mostly sensationalist coverage about people killed by the crash, then an article mistakenly trying to blame the crash on a missing signal beacon, then nothing.
As with its pathetically weak coverage of Governor DeSantis and MAGA, and even though TBT has won Pulitzers, their writers mostly refuse to do deep dive public interest investigative journalism. One of their management people told me, “If we told the truth about industries dominant in Florida, or about conservative politicians, we’d lose all our advertisers and go out of business.”
My latest actions have been to make another inspector general complaint and contact Pete Buttigieg, but I have little hope that anyone in government will do anything to protect us from the aviation industry.
I’m pretty sure many Daily Kos readers have their own problems with the aviation industry, and/or FAA, and it would be great to see you tell your stories in the comments section or as a DK article.
The bottom line is government and media sometimes fail us, and we all suffer or even die because of it. Clearly, the FAA is complicit in suffering and death, and apparently there’s nothing anyone can do about it. This is democracy???