Jane MusgraveEven when President Trump is out of town, planes must fly northeast over once-quiet residences.
Like many who bought homes in historic neighborhoods east of Palm Beach International Airport, Raphael Clemente checked to make sure he wasn’t planting his family’s roots in the roaring shadow of the flight path.
Then, last month, a change that Clemente called “dramatic and extreme” shattered the peaceful life he had built in Flamingo Park, a West Palm Beach neighborhood of 1920s-era homes.
“We can’t be outside anymore during flyovers,” he said of the impact of new rules that require each of the 200-plus jets that take off daily to bank northeast, sending them over his home and thousands of others. “We can’t hear the TV. We can’t hear conversations in my house.”
The former director of the West Palm Beach Downtown Development Authority was among more than 100 residents of West Palm Beach and Palm Beach who on Thursday packed a meeting of the county’s Citizens’ Committee on Airport Noise.
Residents wanted the advisory committee to explore what can be done to reinstate flight rules that existed until Oct. 20. That’s when the Federal Aviation Administration, at the request of the Secret Service, decreed that no jets could fly over Mar-a-Lago even if Trump is not at the private club where he spends part of the year.
Before the new rules went into effect, jets fanned northeast and southeast when Trump was at his Palm Beach club. When Trump wasn’t at Mar-a-Lago, dubbed the “Winter White House,” flights were allowed to head due east over it.
Speaker after speaker told the advisory committee that the rules don’t make sense.
“The question is why,” said Palm Beach Town Manager Kirk Blouin. “Why, when he’s not in residence, should all of the residents of Palm Beach and the residents of West Palm Beach be affected?”
Getting answers to those questions has been impossible. Requests to the Secret Service and FAA from Blouin; County Commissioner Gregg Weiss, who lives in Flamingo Park; and U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, have received the same response: We can’t talk to you while the government is shut down.
Weiss, who sent his request Oct. 31, called the explanation absurd. “They’re working,” he said.
No one from the city of West Palm Beach addressed the committee. A city spokesperson said officials watched the meeting online.
No-fly zone at Bush’s Texas ranch
While the new rules are described as “temporary” and could be lifted in a year, residents fear they will become permanent, perhaps even extended when Trump leaves office in 2029.
Their fears aren’t unfounded. A no-fly zone was established over President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, and home in Kennebunkport, Maine, when he was in office. The one over his ranch in Texas remained in place for more than a year after he left office in 2009 and then was partially scaled back.
But those areas are far less populated than the area around PBIA. None is near a major airport.
Similar rules haven’t been imposed on airports near Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where the president spends the summer months.
Thwarting terrorism?
To further confound and anger Palm Beach County residents, even when Trump is in New Jersey in the summer, the flight restrictions will remain in place here.
Some at the meeting suggested the Secret Service may have enacted the sweeping rule change to thwart an act of terrorism.
D.J. Belock, who lives in the historic El Cid neighborhood between the Intracoastal Waterway and Olive Avenue, said perhaps agents worried that nefarious actors could take photos of Trump’s sprawling private club from the air.
But, he said, when he recently flew out of PBIA, the newly mandated left turn gave him a spectacular view of Mar-a-Lago. “If you’re flying directly over it, you can’t see a thing,” Belock said.
Others pointed out that satellite images of Mar-a-Lago are readily available. “You don’t have to rent a plane,” a Palm Beach man said.
Also, many pointed out, pilots, crew and those aboard commercial flights have been screened by federal security agencies, making the restrictions on commercial flights unnecessary.
Some suggested Trump could be behind the new flight rules.
Long before he sprouted presidential ambitions, he sued the county repeatedly to keep flights from going over Mar-a-Lago. He claimed they damaged the palatial home built in the 1920s for businesswoman and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post. The last suit ended when he was elected president in 2016.
But, the flights didn’t permanently stop going over the club until Oct. 20.
In many ways, the residents were preaching to the proverbial choir. Some members of the committee, including Chair Nancy Pullum, have also had their quiet lives disrupted by the new rules.
Committee members vowed to look at the suggestions residents made and come up with a plan at their December meeting to send to county commissioners.
Pullum said she wants to find ways to mitigate some of the impacts that will get only worse in the tourism-heavy winter months when as many as 400 flights leave PBIA daily.
For instance, she said there may be a way to require that jets accelerate faster on takeoff so they ascend more quickly. The higher they are, the less noise people would hear on the ground. Similar rules are in place at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., she said.
More effort should be made to monitor when winds are calm or coming from the west. When that happens, planes can take off to the west, alleviating some of the air traffic over coastal neighborhoods, she said.
Eventually, some suggested that the crosswinds runway could be extended to accommodate big commercial jets. That, too, would reduce the number of jets flying over coastal neighborhoods. But it isn’t a quick fix.
But plans underway to expand a parallel east-west runway to accommodate the larger jets call for shortening the crosswind runway, as Stet reported in 2024.
Noise monitoring as a defense tactic
Another long-term solution would be to do an environmental impact study to assess the new flight rules. Clemente said sound levels in his backyard are averaging 89 decibels, roughly the equivalent of the sound of a conversation-stopping blender or hair dryer.
According to the FAA, jet noise above an average of 65 decibels is considered excessive for residential neighborhoods.
“We need to bring consultants back in here and look at the flight path and make sure it’s not exceeding those decibels,” said committee member Lew Crampton, a Palm Beach Town Council member.
Many of the aging noise monitors scattered in neighborhoods around the airport no longer work, as The Palm Beach Post reported Oct. 30.
Crampton and others acknowledged such studies take time; as do lawsuits.
Former West Palm Beach Mayor Rick Reikenis said people just want their lives to return to the normal it became after Trump assumed the Oval Office.
“When Donald Trump was reelected we said, ‘OK, we’re psyched up. We know that every other weekend during the season we’re going to have planes coming over our neighborhood,’” said Reikenis, who lives in Flamingo Park. “We weren’t psyched up for this. It’s a serious impact. It’s a problem.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify the reason steeper ascents on takeoff would help reduce noise.
