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Data shows 15,000 touch-and-go maneuvers a year at Fernandina Beach Airport
Editor's Note: The Observer used three AI programs to analyze 12 months of data from VirTower which tracks aircraft operations at the Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport. This is what the data showed.
Regional flight schools emphasize that, given the current national shortage of pilots, these maneuvers highlight the airport's crucial role in training future aviators. Industry projections indicate a potential shortfall of up to 24,000 pilots in the U.S. by the end of 2026.
Touch-and-go operations occur when a pilot lands briefly on a runway and immediately takes off again without stopping. The maneuver is commonly used by student pilots and flight instructors to practice takeoffs and landings.
Overall airport activity during the same period totaled 52,537 operations, including 25,247 landings and 27,290 takeoffs, meaning touch-and-go training flights accounted for roughly 28% of all runway activity.
The tracking report indicates that most activity comes from small training aircraft. Among aircraft types recorded at the airport during the reporting period, Cessna 172s accounted for more than 29,000 operations, followed by Piper PA-28 trainers and other small single-engine planes typically used by flight schools.
The majority of those flight schools are based at Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport, including ATP Flight Academy and Aerosim Flight Academy.
A Cessna 172 and Piper PA-28 engine generate about 80-to-90 decibels at 1,000 feet after takeoff, equivalent to the noise from a gas-powered lawnmower from three feet away.
Touch-and-go maneuvers were spread across the airport’s runways but concentrated on the Runway 13/31 alignment, which accounted for the largest share of training activity.
While training operations are routine at general aviation airports, the increase in flight-school activity has prompted complaints from residents living near the airport.
A city-commissioned/FAA airport survey earlier this year highlighted concerns about aircraft noise and increased flight activity, particularly from training flights repeatedly circling the airport to perform touch-and-go maneuvers.
“Without a doubt, it’s noise and it’s limiting flight schools and touch-and-go activity,” said Ryan Allen, FAA program manager and community planner at a meeting of local pilots and aviation- related businesses last month in regard to revising the airport's master plan. "Touch and go activities from the piston aircraft creating the noise impact were the two biggest areas of feedback that we received from the public survey."
Residents have told city officials that aircraft sometimes circle continuously for extended periods, producing repeated bursts of engine noise as planes take off and climb. During an Airport Advisory Commission meeting last year, one resident said the noise from training flights had become “unbearable” at times and described multiple aircraft conducting repeated practice landings.
"If the flight schools are using the facilities without a fee for service this is also a problem. The City Manager should explore the legal options to force the flight schools to pay a fee for each landing and if they won’t pay, ban them from the airport. They have other options in NE Florida if they don’t want to support the airport they are abusing for no expense," said Charles Brown, in a post to The Observer.
Complaints about flight-school activity have also led to policy discussions at City Hall.
In April 2024, city officials explored whether automated landing fees could discourage excessive touch-and-go operations, particularly by flight schools based outside Nassau County that use the airport for training.
The now disbanded city Airport Advisory Board heard a proposal from Vector Airport Systems on PlanePass, a company offering an automated system that would charge pilots a landing fee for operations at Fernandina Airport. The program would have generated $200,000 yearly in revenue, company officials said.
That proposal was met with opposition by the airport's primary fixed based operator Bent Wing Flight Services, which detailed the negative impact of implementing PlanePass including:
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The airport would lose transient air traffic which in turn would have a negative impact on such revenue as aircraft fuel sales.
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Bent Wing would be forced to raise their fee structure because of the loss of customers.
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Landing fees are a financial solution, but the airport has not identified a financial need.
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The airport has not reviewed potential revenue options other than landing fees.
At that same meeting, Parkway North resident Vicki Somora told the board that she had measured the flight school activity.
Like many public airports that receive federal aviation funding, Fernandina Beach has limited authority to restrict aircraft operations. Federal rules generally require airports to remain open to all aviation users.
The city has adopted voluntary noise-abatement guidelines, asking pilots to use flight paths and runway configurations that minimize impacts on residential neighborhoods when possible. There are "touch and go" guidelines on the city's airport noise abatement website that state no more than "five touch and go's" without departing the pattern.
However, the guidelines cannot be enforced with penalties.
"We ask pilots to voluntarily comply with those guidelines, but we have no enforcement powers," said Airport Manager Nathan Coyle. "We keep an eye on it when possible."
"All one has to do is logon to flightaware.com on any day of the week (yes Sundays included) to see the blatant disregard for the touch and go guidelines and the constant abuse of noise-sensitive areas around the airport," August said in an email to The Observer. "They should also know that the flight schools provide little to no positive economic benefit to the Fernandina Beach Airport. They fly in, they make their 10 or 15 loops and they fly back to Craig. I suspect they don't even purchase fuel, which is a primary revenue generator for an airport."
"The Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport is one of more than 125 public-use airports in the state of Florida, which, as a whole, according to an economic impact study in 2021, contribute an estimated $336 billion dollars to the state's economy. The airport in Fernandina Beach provides an annual economic impact of $219 million dollars while enabling convenient access for private and business aviation directly supporting tourism, local businesses, and emergency services," Airport Manager Coyle said.
The airport’s fixed-base operator - Bent Wing Flight Services - provides fuel, maintenance and passenger services for visiting aircraft, while flight schools help address what aviation officials said is a national pilot shortage.
"For 40 years I made my living flying in and out of small airport all over the country and Fernandina Beach has one of the best. The 84 airplanes that are based at our airport are not the problem, the airplanes that fly into Fernandina to vacation, invest in real estate, or have a shareholders/board meeting at one of the resorts or attend the Concours Car Show are not the problem," said Larry Westbrook in another post to The Observer. "The problem is the Flight Training airplanes from Jacksonville that use the infrastructure of the airport to conduct their commercial "for profit" business teaching their students how fly an airplane, using our asset. They don't buy gas, pay a fee, rent a car, eat at a restaurant, stay at a hotel, invest in real estate, contribute to charity or pay taxes in Nassau County."
Local aviation advocates have warned that policies aimed at limiting training flights could increase the cost of pilot education or drive activity to other regional airports.
For residents living beneath the airport’s traffic patterns, the numbers reinforce what they say they hear daily.
The online portal — known as the FAA Noise Portal — collects reports from residents about aircraft noise events and routes them to the appropriate FAA office for review. The system is intended to help the agency track noise trends and identify potential operational issues at airports.
Complaints submitted through the portal typically include details such as the date and time of the aircraft noise, location of the person filing the complaint, and a description of the event. The FAA may use the information to compare with radar or ADS-B flight data to determine which aircraft were operating in the area at the time.
However, the FAA notes that filing a complaint does not necessarily result in enforcement action, particularly at airports such as Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport that do not have air traffic control towers and operate under standard federal aviation regulations.
In many cases, the information is used primarily to monitor patterns of noise concerns and provide feedback to airports and aviation operators.
City officials and aviation authorities often encourage residents to submit complaints through the FAA system because it creates a formal record of community noise concerns tied to specific aircraft activity.
Residents can file a report through the FAA’s online portal at: noise.faa.gov
Airport officials said they routinely receive "one or two" noise complaints per week.
City officials have said community feedback is an important part of the master plan update, which will guide airport development and priorities over the next 20 years.
Aircraft noise is expected to draw significant public input, particularly from training flights conducting repeated touch-and-go maneuvers at the airport. Previous coverage in the Fernandina Observer has documented complaints from residents living near the airport who say repeated training circuits creates extended periods of engine noise as aircraft land and immediately take off again during pilot training.
According to Allen from the FAA, the agency intends to hold two public sessions during the airport master plan revision process: the first around the midpoint of the schedule and the second as it approaches completion.
As city officials and the FAA continue reviewing airport policies, the question remains how Fernandina Beach will manage the competing priorities of economic activity, aviation access and quality of life for nearby neighborhoods.
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Comments
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kt22mike
So charging the flight schools for takeoff/landing would generated $200,000 or 10% as much as the new parking fees downtown are estimated to generate?/ Come on Commissioners - do your thing!
Monday, March 9 Report this
Editor
Editor's Note: By FAA regulations, revenue generated by landing fees would be limited to airport use only and not available to other city departments for improvements.
Monday, March 9 Report this
Mark Tomes
Besides the noise problem, there is a bald eagle nest very close to the airport, and federal regulations limit aerial activity within 1000 vertical feet of the nest tree. The airport manager has been very good about educating pilots on the nests and these regulations, but some pilots ignore them, prioritizing their training exercises over the health of the bald eagles.
Monday, March 9 Report this
RobertR
I've listened to the increase frequency of, "around and around they go." One does not need a Masters degree to see that if for profit flight instructors are using a facility for free, nothing is going to change. You cannot beat free. Two particular aircraft are most annoying as they need new exhaust manifolds, mufflers or whatever or perhaps a new air plane. There are low wing aircraft and not the much quieter 172's. The noise level is WAY above a lawnmower 3 feet from me. Next time perhaps we'll ask all residents on Robert Oliver Avenue, etc. to get a tail number. Immediate solutions? #1 limit or eliminate unpaid practice landings.#2 ban any aircraft as non compliant with faulty equiptment.#3 apply $200,000.00 of landing fees to the airport budget and remove $200,000.00 from the airport budget to another budget. i.e. Property Owners below these flight paths need to start calling, emailing, sending letters to the City Manager and the Airport Manager. Squeaky wheels usually get get action. Enough already. City Manager manage the budget.
Monday, March 9 Report this
DouglasM
You can't discriminate. You can't just hit the Flight School at Craig with fees. They would have to be applied equally to our local aviators who use the airport. Our local pilots would not care for that and, I believe, this is where the talk of landing fees died a year or so ago.....
Mike L should remember the noise fight in Orange County CA (John Wayne airport). They had the scariest noise abatement procedure in the country from a safety perspective. It was challenged in court and eventually the FAA said the procedure had to align with a national standard and not a local one.
The FAA has a dual mandate....Safety and Promote aviation. It's the "promote" part that is at issue here. You won't win this battle. The City Commission can't do anything about it......except one thing.....close the airport. And that won't happen.
All my complaining about train whistles at 5am; trucks on 8th street 24/7; and the hole on 8th that creates a very loud double bang when an empty truck heads to the port; won't achieve any relief for the citizens nearby (maybe the hole has a chance....fingers crossed).
Monday, March 9 Report this
FunnyGirl4615
Thank you, Mike for this data!!! The data supports the bevy of complaints of the citizens about noise and frequency. What is particularly interesting is that those most affected are the county residents in neighborhoods surrounding this issue. Perhaps the city commissioners and the county commission representatives could get together and hatch a go-forward plan. If we can have a joint effort for "beach harmonization between city and county, I bet with very little effort, we could get a solution that works for all.
Monday, March 9 Report this
Prof____H
NOISE!!!! That is the issue. It is a problem when planes fly over your house every thirty seconds for hours on end. The noise is so loud that, if you are outside, you can't hear each other talk. I am "lucky" that the planes seem to pick out my house to fly over, over and over again. The noise is much more than a lawnmower. It is more like a car without a functioning muffler, which would not be tolerated. We don't limit how many cars are on the road, but we DO limit how much NOISE they make! There MUST be a solution that addresses the noise issue. The map above shows three take-off routes that do not go over noise-sensitive areas. Why doesn't all flight-school activity be limited to these take-off routes?
Monday, March 9 Report this
RobertR
Let's see how the multi-million dollar homes owned by the 1% on Crane Island take to the comment "you can't do anything about it". Me thinks some naysayers are going to get a real eye/ear full. Some of these flight instructors do a hell of a lot more than 5 landing per student per day. Who these days gets "free" use of such a facility? No one. You own a plane(an expensive toy for many) a occasional takeoff/landing fee is peanuts. Maybe for profit flight instructors they will need to build this into their fee structure. Enough already!
Monday, March 9 Report this
FBMacattack
I think the city/county needs to look into enforcing the bad pilots/flight schools from CRG making loops beyond the five-pass limit. Interestingly the training flights rarely do multi passes at CRG? At some point residents may be forced to do a class action lawsuit to protect their property values. There is also a safety issue with these pilots doing so many laps that they forget to look at incoming traffic. Example on Feb 25th 1401 there it appears that three training flights off an incoming jet N709CB flying in from PWA. The training flight needed to gun its engine to get out of the way. The jet appeared to do a fly around. That training flight may have been N20676, which Flight Aware shows them making 8 passes before returning to Craig.
More questions:
What liability insurance do these flight schools carry to fly over our homes and families?
If the airport expands, will the FAA cover sound proofing?
What is the percentage of flight students training to be recreational hobby pilots versus commercial pilots?
Monday, March 9 Report this
dpwagner
Oh my gosh. If you live next to an airport there is going to be noise. I think there are too many airplanes at every single airport in the world. It’s a direct result of the society we live in. If anyone has the perfect solution a Nobel Prize is waiting.
Monday, March 9 Report this
DaveLott
RobertR,
FYI, as part of the development agreement with Crane Island, all homeowners have been required to sign an "avigation easement" which prevents them from taking any legal action regarding noise and other factors related to the operation of an airport.
Key Aspects of an Avigation Easement:
Rights Conveyed: It allows the "free and unobstructed passage of aircraft" at any altitude above a specified surface.
Operational Impacts: The landowner grants the right to noise, vibration, fumes, dust, and fuel particle emissions from airport activity.
Land Use Restrictions: It often prohibits the erection of structures, trees, or objects that penetrate the designated airspace.
Safety & Access: It typically grants the airport operator the right to remove, mark, or light obstacles that violate height restrictions.
Future Impact: These easements "run with the land," meaning they apply to all current and future owners, often as a condition for building permits near airfields.
The homes at Crane Island were supposedly built with noise insulation features.
Monday, March 9 Report this
DaveLott
FBMacAttack, the airport has no ability to expand runways given the ground surface barriers (roadways, marshland, residential/commercial buildings. The only potential expansion capability is for additional hangar space.
Monday, March 9 Report this
margery1
I made a noise complaint and received a reply from the FAA and one thing that stood out to me was the statement "FHB is a hub for flight training activity hosting several flight schools that offer a range of pilot training programs." Now it is a HUB! How does the FAA justify a flight school hub on an environmentally sensitive barrier island, billed as the number 3 tourist sland destination in the US and where people retire to get away from the noise? Another example where the quality of life for the people that live here and visit suffer for economic justifications.
So, if the city did not receive funding from the FAA, would the city have more control over the airport and the noise?
Monday, March 9 Report this
Conrad2k
Why not use Vector Airport Systems' automated PlanePass to charge the fee to all planes except those that actually land to take on fuel or use other airport revenue generating services, along the lines of stores that validate parking for customers.
Monday, March 9 Report this
JofusD
Mike,
Once again thank you for a great informative article.
Below is a link to the airport survey where you can voice your opinion. There are 7 questions and you can get it done in less than a minute.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SN6DGPP
Monday, March 9 Report this
Prof____H
dpwagner: I live on First Avenue. We have owned our land for more than 10 years. I did not expect that we lived "next to an airport." Yet, the noise issue has a major impact on us. I do not have an issue with an occasional flyover to take off or land. I do have a problem with the nuisance noise from flight schools. Figure out the flight school issue and NOISE, and I am good.
Tuesday, March 10 Report this
AJSouthend
Difficult to see any benefits whatsoever to the Island since significant flight school activity began. All negatives, including noise, potential diminishing tourism $ and threat to property values. Anyone know what the event was that triggered the jump in flight school activity at FHB to begin with? Did something happen at Craig? e.g. ordinance change or new regs?
Tuesday, March 10 Report this
FBMacattack
Inconciderate Pilots - March 11th [within 20min] N383BH [3:56pm], LFA321 [4:12pm], and LFA316 [4:15pm]. All C172 aircraft out of CRG. Each making 8+ loops over noise sensitive areas. And the next class is just arriving... The FAA should not designate Fernandina Beach as their training airport.
Wednesday, March 11 Report this
Nannyridge1
It's good to see the people of Fernandina and Amelia speaking up about the Flight Training traffic from Jacksonville problem. I'll try to answer some of your questions and respond to a couple of comments.
1. Editor:Yes, landing fee revenue would be limited to airport use, however, the city brags that the airport is self-sustaining and needs no support from the General Fund, yet in FY 2025-2026 Budget it shows on page 242 "Other Revenues" FROM GENERAL FUND in 2023-$297,420, in 2024-$296,779 was actual, in 2025-$296,475 was budgeted and $296,438 is budgeted for 2026. Maybe landing fees could offset that.
2. DouglasM:Yes, the city can do something about it. Kissimmee did, Tallahassee did.
3. AJSouthend:Yes, the airspace is saturated in Jax and Craig has a control tower, without a control tower they come to FHB and do as they please.
4.Conrad2k:Florida House and Senate pass SB422 yesterday making it illegal to use Vector ADSB technology to send invoices for fees effective July 1.But, Vector as non-ADSB system that can still do it.
5.FBMacat:Worse today 3/11because words out and schools are punishing us. …
Wednesday, March 11 Report this
DillyDillyGM
Nice research/commentary Nannyridge1. The city has authority to require pilots to perform full throttle stops, this action doesn’t prevent or discriminate between training planes or other aircraft, but it will limit the number of take offs and landings. Flight training schools hate this airfield mandate, since it increases their fuel consumption and flight time. Also, the city can stop accepting FAA grants. It’s not free, all grants have term & conditions that limit city control. It’s a Win-Win for aircraft owners and pilots, not so much for city residents. Let hope the commissioners value safety of the residents and tourists over profit.
Saturday, June 27 Report this