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Dear Friends,
We are taking a new approach for elections. In prior years, we have not officially made endorsements, which will remain the same, but we have given candidates questionnaires, attended and promoted election events; and a few times Sky Posse members have hosted candidate forums in their homes. The previous questionnaires were to assess candidates’ understanding of our issue, with the hope that they would take proactive and supportive actions if elected. Going forward, instead of candidate questionnaires we will do a retrospective of City Communications looking at three roles/offices that are critical to address our concerns: City Council; City Manager, and City Attorney which also require proactive coordination between them on the following:
- Adherence to the City’s Aircraft Noise Fast Track Policy (to not miss a potential legal challenge)
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Public engagement with residents about steps the City is taking to address SFO/SJC/OAK impacts
- Adequate notice and outreach to residents on FAA actions affecting Palo Alto
This election we highlight candidate Ed Lauing who demonstrated leadership in these areas.
Ed Lauing, as Mayor (January 2025- January 2026), held press conferences throughout the year, with the City Manager, during which residents could ask questions. The meetings were adequately noticed and promoted providing clear opportunities to directly engage City leadership. This was welcome after years of no public outreach from the City on our issues. Open and public exchange opportunities with City leadership are key, and better than expecting a response during Council meetings on “items not on the agenda” where nobody is required to respond. As Mayor, Ed Lauing also granted us a meeting at City Hall to discuss aircraft noise where he listened and offered potential ideas regarding our quest for better governance of the Fast Track policy. Finally, Mayor Lauing was responsive to getting us confirmation that the necessary vote about challenging the SFO FEIR with the SF Board of Supervisors would not be missed.
How press conferences helped: When the SFO Expansion came up, we requested the status for challenging the SFO FEIR during a Mayor’s press conference; the City Manager outlined steps planned by the City to follow the Fast Track policy, and Gennady Sheyner from the Palo Alto Weekly covered our question. The City Manager also offered to be available for a call which took place and this was followed up with an update to the community.
Sky Posse Goals
For our City Council, City Manager and City Attorney to be effective, specific tasks are necessary and which we asked Council for - had the City advanced to a settlement with SFO about their expansion. These continue to be a priority: City IFP Gateway Tracking (tracks all airspace changes affecting Palo Alto); pursuing a dedicated Program to eliminate Night Time Noise over MidPen, and Permanent Noise Monitoring & Reporting for Palo Alto. We also have not received a response from our current Mayor and Vice Mayor about why, after challenging the SFO FEIR at the SF Board of Supervisors, in February, the City declined to challenge SFO in Superior court. In addition, we would like to know if and when the full Council voted on this. Understanding why Council dropped the seriously flawed SFO FEIR is necessary to inform advocacy, and also important for transparency reasons. We will continue to follow up.
Review of Performance-Based Navigation at SFO
Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) is pre-programmed navigation—and aircraft approaches are considered “instrument” based versus “visual.” This is somewhat like using a car’s guided parallel-parking system (instrument) versus eyeballing a maneuver (visual), and in principle PBN does not demand lower altitudes. If used from the start of a flight plan all the way to the runway, pre-programmed navigation can reduce aircraft fuel burn, noise, and emissions; But that is not how it works at SFO where, due to “congested airspace,” Air Traffic Control vectors planes i.e. PBN or pre-programming is turned off. What follows is that in order to increase landings per hour, planes at SFO have been landing side-by-side on runways that are 750 feet apart, using visual (eyeball) approaches. This year, side-by-side landings have been banned, and arrivals are now staggered for greater separation. In this recent article FAA spokesman Ian Gregor declares that “SFO's longstanding practice of landing two planes at the same time on closely spaced parallel runways that are just 750 feet apart - along with congested airspace - was too dangerous.”
In light of the Safety Ruling for SFO that occurred in March, it’s worth considering what parts of PBN have been useful at SFO relative to the amount of noise and complaints that erupted with its implementation. It has not been demonstrated that it delivered on Congress’ original goals for PBN to reduce fuel burn, emissions and noise. Delays continued post-implementation hitting a peak in 2018, and this year’s peak delays are due to restricted capacity. Capacity at SFO is now capped or limited practically on an emergency basis. Big picture, combined total operations for SFO, SJC and OAK today are mostly flat from pre-PBN levels; Air Traffic Control continues heavy manual sequencing, and the most “gains” appear to have been unprecedented noise increases.
How PBN was rolled out at SFO also begs the question why lowering altitudes over Palo Alto from “at or above” 5000 ft to 4000 feet would make things safer when as it turns out, SFO's minimal safety separation was a bigger issue. From the response to our questions about altitudes in 2016, “during the design phase of the SERFR arrival, the major airline carriers were present in order to ensure that the SERFR would be safe for their aircraft.” It’s not clear how much of the altitude decision was driven by a flawed assumption about what SFO could accept with 750 ft separation, but SFO was never a candidate for the side-by-side approaches. The safety standard for side-by-side landings is a distance of 2500 - 4300 feet. Since the safety ruling, landings per hour dropped from 54 to 36; and per the above article the staggered approaches have been worked on to support 42, still well below the landing rate with the side-by-sides.
Pre-programmed navigation, as well as low tech measures can help to address both noise and jet air pollution. The FAA and airlines need to continue to be challenged to raise altitudes, especially when there should be no relative cost to do so during lower volume traffic, i.e. at night. In 2016 the FAA’s Western Regional Administrator was responsive and offered to build new infrastructure (new airspace procedures) to specifically address night time noise over Palo Alto and MidPen, which was unanimously supported by the Select Committee. The current Western Regional Administrator should have similar authority to advance this; in 2021 during a virtual presentation the Administrator stated that they would consider actions to reduce noise which have unanimous support. We believe the City should secure from the FAA a dedicated night time program for Palo Alto and neighbors. The City must also independently institute permanent noise monitoring and analysis of SFO/SJC/OAK traffic over Palo Alto, which supports the above mentioned goals in advocating with the City - IFP gateway tracking; a dedicated night time program for MidPen, and permanent noise monitoring.
Palo Alto Residents
If you are not on the City’s email list to receive communications on aircraft noise, please subscribe at the bottom of the City’s webpage - Regional SFO Airport Coordination/Airplane Noise, “Subscribe to Receive Airplane Noise Updates.”
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