Napa County Holds First Town Hall on Alternative Flight Paths to Reduce Airport Noise

Napa residents got their first look at possible alternative flight path concepts during a roughly hour-long virtual meeting held Wednesday, September 23, led by Napa County staff and a consultant from Coffman Associates Inc. The meeting was frequently disrupted by technical issues, including attendees being unable to see slides or video.

Three flight path concepts, derived from community-suggested routes, were presented, each designed to send pilots over less populated areas of the city than the current path. Two of the three concepts would route pilots further east than the current flight path, flying largely over agricultural and industrial land, freeways, and rural residential areas on Napa's outskirts. The third concept would send pilots east from the area southwest of Napa, with the path routed over Kennedy Park and toward the airport to the south in a visually-guided segment.

Kory Lewis, Coffman's associate vice president, said the plan is to refine the concepts through community feedback, technical review, and input from Napa County supervisors when the item comes to the board in December, at which point the board could decide to request the FAA consider an alternative path. "The county cannot guarantee that the FAA will review or approve any of the approaches if they're submitted to FAA," Lewis said, adding the county can continue to develop the strongest technically supportable concepts, ensure community concerns are adopted, and advocate for adoption as the process moves forward.

Napa County public works director Steve Lederer said the best way to pressure the FAA mirrors the approach taken with any federal agency: "You provide good technical information, you advocate, you, if you will, stay on them and ultimately hope you get the answer you're looking for." An in-person meeting covering the same information as the virtual meeting is also scheduled.

Community frustration over airplane noise, particularly prominent in East Napa but spread throughout the city, emerged in 2025 after a new flight path was created for the airport's runway 19R. That approach, which went into effect in late 2024, was the airport's first fully guided landing procedure designed to direct pilots to the runway even in low-visibility conditions. However, the new flight path routed aircraft over the Soscol Avenue area instead of circling the runway, sending noise down to residents below.

In response to persistent complaints, Napa County in November 2025 sought to create an alternative flight path, and the Board of Supervisors approved adding $185,000 to an existing contract with Coffman Associates for that purpose. The Federal Aviation Administration would ultimately need to approve any new path.

This case sits within a familiar cycle in general and commercial aviation: a low-visibility landing procedure is added for safety and reliability, its actual flight track concentrates noise over a neighborhood that previously heard little of it, and residents push local government to seek a redesign. Because the FAA controls final approval of any instrument procedure, local consultants and county boards can only shape and advocate for concepts, not guarantee outcomes.

The path forward runs through Napa County's Board of Supervisors in December, where the refined concepts, informed by community feedback and technical review, will determine whether a formal request goes to the FAA at all. Whatever the board sends will need to hold up as, in Lewis's words, one of the "strongest technically supportable concepts," since the FAA is under no obligation to review or approve it.

The next milestone to watch is that December board session, plus the scheduled in-person meeting where the same three concepts will be presented to a wider slice of Napa residents. Whether community input converges on one of the eastern-routed options or the southwest visually-guided segment will shape what, if anything, the county ultimately asks the FAA to consider.