More Traffic into Palm Beach Disburses Flight Patterns

The sound was so loud on a recent Sunday morning that it rattled the windows at Lenny Nero's home on Flamingo Drive. That had never happened before.

"I actually walked outside to see what could do it," he said.

It was a commercial airliner taking off from Palm Beach International Airport.

Over the past several months, Nero and his neighbors have complained about seeing, and more importantly hearing, an increasing number of planes overhead, even though they live north of the airport's designated flight path.

That's because air traffic controllers, swamped with weekend air traffic, are using alternate northern headings for departures to cut down on delays. The standard for departures is a "straight out" eastern or western route.

"We can get a lot more departures out a lot quicker if we do alternate headings," said Joseph Robert, the air traffic manager at PBIA. "It's all based on demand. As traffic increases, demand increases and alternate headings are used more."

Such "fanning" of aircraft to the north would significantly decrease with a new runway proposed for the airport, air traffic controllers told a crowd of about 50 residents at a meeting Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration is conducting an environmental study looking at extending the airport's general-aviation runway from 3,200 to 8,000 feet.

That would make it long enough to accommodate commercial jets. And it would allow more traffic by creating parallel runways -- one each for takeoffs and landings.

"If we had more runway available, it could increase our efficiency," said Tom Hultgren, operations manager at the airport's air traffic control tower.

From December 1996 to December 2006, the number of passengers at Palm Beach International increased 20 percent.

With that growth comes delay, mostly on Sunday afternoons during the season when weekend visitors are heading home.

On those busy days, it's not unusual to have delays 30 minutes or longer, Robert said.

But fanning is a contentious issue between the airport and West Palm Beach neighborhoods affected by it. In the 1980s, the airport established its straight-out departure to the east as part of its noise abatement program.

In 1997, the FAA eliminated fanning altogether.

But something happened. "Then the people came," said Lisa De La Rionda, airport spokeswoman. "When the volume has reached what it is now, the noise program is not at their [air traffic controllers'] forefront."

In 2005, 11 percent of aircraft were fanned and, in 2007, 18 percent were fanned.

Residents have noticed. Complaints to the airport's noise hot line about planes off the flight path increased from 6 percent of all calls in 2003 to 40 percent in 2005.

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