Several months ago I was appointed by the City Council to be one of its representatives on an Ad Hoc Council Committee to study and work to alleviate aircraft noise that mainly results from the advent of Surf Air flying into San Carlos Airport, beginning in June 2013. This committee was originally composed of myself and prior Councilmember Dobbie and now consists of myself and Councilmember Lewis. We have had many meetings with officials at San Carlos Airport, representatives of Surf Air and representatives of the Atherton, Menlo Park and North Fair Oaks communities. This group became an official Working Group with a common focus of reducing noise along the GPS flight path into San Carlos. Among other things, we organized the well attended (110+) community meeting last December at the Pavilon in Holbrook-Palmer Park where Surf Air made a public commitment to vary its flight path by making visual approaches into San Carlos, so that those who live along the GPS flight path would be less subject to the aircraft noise caused by their planes. Planes are required to use the GPS approach with the weather is such that a pilot cannot see the airport and are able to request a visual, alternate approach whenever the weather is good and they can see the airport.
Attached to this message is a diagram of the current GPS flight path, with a red highlighted area where the airport believes aircraft noise is the biggest problem.
As you may know, at the its last meeting the Working Group decided to support the San Carlos Airport's effort to seek approval from the FAA for a new GPS approach into the San Carlos Airport. This new approach would be along the same glide path that is in the attached diagram, but it would be elevated by 500 feet, resulting in a glide path with a 3.77 degree slope, rather than the current 3 degree slope. All of the Working Group participants believed this new approach is worth examining because it might result in reduced noise over the Menlo Park, Atherton and North Fair Oaks neighborhoods. We have been asked to reach out to any and all affected residents to seek supportive letters to the FAA for this elevated GPS approach. Accordingly, attached to this email is a proposed form of letter for you to consider signing to indicate support of this request. Of course, you are welcome to alter this letter in any way that you may prefer.
Please note that the contemplated new approach is one of several efforts to achieve a material reduction in the aircraft noise that you are experiencing. The other potential solutions include the visual approach solution whenever the weather allows and modifications to the Surf Air standard operating procedures by not putting down landing gear until much closer to the airport (and therefore using less power, thereby reducing aircraft noise).
We would appreciate it if you could prepare this letter and send it to the FAA sometime over the next week. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you for your help, Rick DeGolia
Rick DeGolia
Vice Mayor
Town of Atherton
84 Clay DriveAtherton, CA 94027
650.793.2800
www.rickdegolia.com
Rick,
ReplyDeleteI thought the proposal was to fly over 101 instead of over Middlefield?
What happened?
Dimitrios:
ReplyDeleteThe question that you have raised re: moving the San Carlos Airport GPS Approach to the 101 corridor is totally appropriate. When the Atherton and North Fair Oaks residents first met in September, we determined that our ultimate goal should be to move the GPS approach to the East, preferably over 101 (or anywhere else) in an effort to reduce the number of residents under the GPS approach. I attach three maps that I will use to explain why this is challenging. There are two problems: First, most of the planes are coming from the west and turning to a northerly approach at AMEBY (see GPS Approach Map attached). We came up with the potential approach that is outlined to the east of the current approach on the Final Possible FAA Flight Path (attached). This looked very attractive; however, to get to 101 you have to go over residential communities that the current flight path doesn't go over. We learned this when significant residential groups opposed to the change were created (independently of each other) in the Willows and in Palo Alto. This is the first problem and it essentially killed the effort to move the entire Approach because we got the data that the FAA wouldn't take it forward. The second problem is that any GPS path must be linear, ie in a straight line. 101 isn't linear. Accordingly, in Atherton the new flight path would shift from the current flight path above residences along Middlefield to above those in Eastern Lindenwood (See the Blowup of Lindenwood). This was surprising and created an uproar for me in Atherton, resulting in a political recognition that the current flight path was unlikely to change.
Okay, so that is a non-intuitive history. Following that effort, we realized that there are three components to a "solution": (1) encourage Surf Air to alter their operating procedures to request a visual approach whenever the weather would allow. They are doing this and going up 101 as much as they can. This obviously doesn't seriously reduce the problem, but it does help. (2) seek an elevation increase in the current GPS flight path and (3) convince Surf Air that they need to alter other operational procedures. Frankly, the Surf Air operational practices are not designed to reduce noise. There are other pilots flying into San Carlos (and using the same type of airplanes) that don't generate the same noise because they don't drop their gear until 3 miles out, whereas Surf Air pilots are dropping their gear at six miles out. Lowering landing gear requires much more power, which consumes much more gas (and therefore creates much more noise. One solution would be to pressure Surf Air via investors, but that requires someone with additional time, so maybe a reader would like to help!! We have put Surf Air together with other pilots who have a far better operational practices and Surf Air has promised to implement changes. In my opinion, this item (3) component is likely to have the most significant impact. This remains a work in progress.
Best regards, Rick DeGolia
Rick DeGolia
Vice Mayor
Town of Atherton
84 Clay Drive
Atherton, CA 94027
650.793.2800 (m)
www.rickdegolia.com