Santa Monica Airport Enforces Noise Rule Against Operators as City Pursues Restrictions; FAA Says Grant Assurances Run Through Aug. 27, 2023

Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) is located in and operated by the City of Santa Monica, California. It has no commercial service and only one jet center FBO. The city is promulgating policies hostile to aviation, particularly to turbine aircraft.

SMO aggressively enforces a single-event landing-and-takeoff noise rule that predates the 1990 Airport Noise and Capacity Act. The airport now applies noise violations to operators rather than to particular aircraft, and enforces the rule strictly. Companies operating multiple aircraft increasingly must reduce fuel loads to keep their access, which inhibits access and reduces the utilization and value of business aviation.

The city increased the fine and expulsion regime tied to the noise rule and previously attempted to interpret original FAA design criteria as a further means of limiting business aviation aircraft. More recently, it has suggested it would seek to restrict the sale of leaded fuel and impose other operational restrictions. The city is also challenging the applicability of the Surplus Property Act, which would require the airport to remain open in perpetuity.

On Dec. 4, 2015, the FAA ruled that the 20-year grant assurances apply through Aug. 27, 2023. In principle, this means the city cannot impose new restrictions on users and tenants through that date.

Shifting violations from the individual aircraft to the operator changes the arithmetic of access at a city-controlled field. A single noisier airframe in a multi-aircraft fleet can now put the whole operation's standing at risk, so fleet managers have to plan for the weakest aircraft they send in. Cutting fuel loads to stay under the limit is a direct cost to range, payload and trip economics, and it lowers what an operator can get out of each aircraft based or flown at the field.

The broader pattern is a local owner using fines, expulsion and interpretation of design criteria to narrow who can use an airport, with the stated aim of eventual closure. Federal grant assurances are the main counterweight in this kind of dispute, which is why the FAA's finding that they run through Aug. 27, 2023 matters: it sets the window in which new restrictions on users and tenants should not be possible.

The next test is the city's response to that ruling. It is likely to appeal the FAA's decision and to look for loopholes, and any new measure on leaded fuel sales or other operational limits would show whether the city tries to work around the assurances rather than within them.