Regardless of fines, JetBlue noise violations continue

2016 LB Airport late flights fines up 51.6%

The fines for breaking the LB Noise Ordinance late flights restrictions at the  Long Beach Airport are up 51.6% over last year through September of 2016 according to the September Monthly Noise Report released with this month's agenda of the LB Airport Advisory Commission (AAC). 
For more information on this month's AAC meeting click on AAC November

Year-to-date totals for the fines for 2016 through September are $458,000 compared to $236,500 for the same period last year.  

The monthly Noise Ordinance fines in September 2016 amounted to $7,200. This year the September 2016 monthly fines totaled $31,600, a 22.8% jump over the monthly figure from last year. 

According to the September Monthly Noise Report, non-commercial aircraft (General Aviation and Charter flights) noise violations are down 4.4% over last year's year-to-date totals.

Despite flying less flights from Long Beach this year, JetBlue's September 2016 year-to-date Noise Violations amounted to 95 compared to 51 last year, an 86.3%  increase.  This number is more alarming due to the fact that for most of 2016, JetBlue did not fly all of its daily slots. The airline declared it was "rotating" its allotted flight slots causing a considerable negative economic impact to the LB Airport, and thus preventing other airlines taking its non-used spots. 

According to airline industry data complier OAG in its 2016 Monthly On Time Performance (OTP) report, JetBlue ranks 32nd  of  the 53 North American airlines.  According to OAG, JetBlue's on-time arrival rate is 77.2% (with-in 15 minutes is considered on-time by OAG). JetBlue also had the second highest flight cancellation percentage of any major American airline with 2.5%. Of the United States major airlines, only Spirit had a higher flight cancellation rate of 2.8%, but ranked 17th in on time performance in North America.  

Click on OAG REPORT  (see last page for North America)

All six of the Long Beach Airport September commercial aircraft Noise Ordinance violation fines were to JetBlue. The report indicates that the six JetBlue violations were out of 2,377 total monthly commercial flights or .3% of the total.  

The Monthly Report totals do not include those late night flights not fined under the noise ordinance. The report totals are for the late flights that are fined flights deemed violating the Noise Ordinance, not the total number of late flights. The Noise Ordinance does have fine exemptions ( not included in the fined report) for certain reasons that may cause a late flight. The late night flights, fined and not fined, are the most disruptive to neighborhoods living under the flight path.

Requests from neighborhood leaders at the  Community Input Meetings for the International Terminal Feasibility Study to include data on the percentage of international flights that are currently late to the surrounding Southern California airports, that data was not part of the study.

While the LB Airport's own reports show clear evidence of the continued and growing problem of late commercial flights especially by JetBlue at LB Airport, data on the occurrence of international flight delays to Southern California airports has never been brought forward into the proposed International Flights debate at Long Beach Airport.

Only Fourth District Councilman Daryl Supernaw has regularly brought up the continued late night flight problem facing the neighborhoods in City Council meetings and as a regular feature of his weekly newsletters to residents. 

Click on NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 11