Town plans to hold public meetings to address flight path impacts over Longboat

The town of Longboat Key is hoping to host a meeting with Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport leaders to discuss potential flight path impacts to the barrier island.

Longboat Key is across from Sarasota Bay from the airport, and a recently altered flight path has led to concerns from those under the new path about air quality and particulates. In response, the town has contracted with a company called Vertex to perform sampling in the area. The air quality results are back.

“They ran their screens for a full day and there was zero from the clean jet engines that fly over us in this pattern,” Public Works Director Charlie Mopps said. “But to back that up, we’re doing a particulate sampling over at the Vice Mayor (Debra Williams’) condo complex and then another resident just about a couple thousand feet in another complex that were talking about the same thing.”

The company will also be performing air quality sampling at another location in the next month, with results to be shared by the town when available.

At an informal meeting between town staff and residents Tuesday, the group raised the topic of noise from passing aircraft. Assistant Town Manager Isaac Brownman said the town can’t enforce its noise ordinance for passing planes because the Federal Aviation Authority governs noise levels for approved airports and their flight paths. But the town intends to have a follow-up conversation with SRQ Airport leadership about whether there are ways to reduce the noise of aircraft passing over the Longboat community.

“We talked to (SRQ Senior VP of Operations) Lionel Gilbert, who thought that everything that could be done is being done right now. We’re going to press it a little bit more because there’s a balance. If we say lower the thrust so it’s not as loud, it takes them longer to climb. That means it’ll be closer to the condos. If they increase the thrust to get higher faster, how much higher can they get without violating whatever is going on at the air traffic control level?” Brownman said. “What we found is a lot of this is being governed by what’s going on at Tampa. 

“You have Tampa growing, and you have SRQ that says air passenger traffic has doubled since the pandemic. That amount of traffic, that’s what caused the shift in the path to begin with. So the next step is are there management mitigation methods that can be taken by the pilots.”

That will be discussed by town leaders and the new SRQ Airport CEO Paul Hoback Jr. at an upcoming closed-door meeting. The hope is to have another meeting in front of commissioners and the public at a future date.

“Eventually, (Town Manager Howard Tipton) would like to have Mr. Hoback come speak to the commissioners at public meetings. Everybody can either come or tune in or ask questions or whatnot, but that would be a follow-up. I don’t know if that’s in March or April or what,” Brownman said.