19 Replies to "Worried about aircraft flying low over West Seattle? New petition"

• Steph October 31, 2010 (4:13 pm)

  Personally, I like looking at the planes as they buzz my house.

• rob October 31, 2010 (5:44 pm)

  This petition was badly written by someone who is misinformed.

  “For safety reasons, the law states that all aircraft must stay at least 1000 ft. above residential neighborhoods except when necessary for takeoff and landing.”

  Or to satisfy airspace requirements. Seatac’s airspace is above us, and without clearance you can’t enter it. To get from the Vashon area into BFI you need to fly under Seatac’s airspace, and you need to fly that low to stay under it.

  When you approach an airport to land, you need to descend to the pattern altitude, which is 800 feet above sea level at BFI, because Seatac’s airspace sits on top of it.

  “When crossing West Seattle, these pilots are not generally using any radar or technologies based tracking devices, and are too low to be tracked by air traffic controllers.”

  This poorly written and again misinformed. This part is nonsense:”technologies based tracking devices”. This part is simply not true: “are too low to be tracked by air traffic controllers”.

  You need to contact Boeing tower before entering their airspace and identify yourself with your tailnumber, position, and intention. They will often respond by telling you where they see you and how fast you are going to validate they have the right contact. This is because they are tracking you with radar. You also need to have your transponder on and set to squawk a code appropriate for the type of flight you’re operating, which again they will see on their radar.

  They will also make you aware of traffic that you need to be concerned with.

  “It”s up to the pilots to avoid collisions, primarily by watching out the window.”

  And following established procedures for making your way to and from the airport, which generally have some component that helps to ensure planes don’t conflict with one another, like having inbound traffic cross south of the reservoir and outbound traffic stay to the north of it.

• robb October 31, 2010 (5:45 pm)

  This petition was badly written by someone who is misinformed.

  “For safety reasons, the law states that all aircraft must stay at least 1000 ft. above residential neighborhoods except when necessary for takeoff and landing.”

  Or to satisfy airspace requirements. Seatac’s airspace is above us, and without clearance you can’t enter it. To get from the Vashon area into BFI you need to fly under Seatac’s airspace, and you need to fly that low to stay under it.

  When you approach an airport to land, you need to descend to the pattern altitude, which is 800 feet above sea level at BFI, because Seatac’s airspace sits on top of it.

  “When crossing West Seattle, these pilots are not generally using any radar or technologies based tracking devices, and are too low to be tracked by air traffic controllers.”

  This poorly written and again misinformed. This part is nonsense:”technologies based tracking devices”. This part is simply not true: “are too low to be tracked by air traffic controllers”.

  You need to contact Boeing tower before entering their airspace and identify yourself with your tailnumber, position, and intention. They will often respond by telling you where they see you and how fast you are going to validate they have the right contact. This is because they are tracking you with radar. You also need to have your transponder on and set to squawk a code appropriate for the type of flight you’re operating, which again they will see on their radar.

  They will also make you aware of traffic that you need to be concerned with.

  “It”s up to the pilots to avoid collisions, primarily by watching out the window.”

  And following established procedures for making your way to and from the airport, which generally have some component that helps to ensure planes don’t conflict with one another, like having inbound traffic cross south of the reservoir and outbound traffic stay to the north of it.

• D. Richard October 31, 2010 (5:46 pm)

  I think you’ll find that all aircraft entering Beoing Field airspace is under positive radar contact with air traffic control which includes vertical position control in 98% of aircraft. If anyone was breaking FAA minimums they would certainly bring action against the pilot. The FAA is funny like that…..
  Aircraft fly lower than usual in your area because there is actually a low ceiling to the vertical area they can use, made up by the start of SeaTac airspace above, hence the deviation from what would seem a normal traffic pattern at 800′ or so. But the FAA regulations allow this.

• mykscott October 31, 2010 (6:13 pm)

  The planes overflying West Seattle to and from Boeing Field are already under the guidance of air traffic control. The tower at Boeing Field has a radar to ensure proper separation between aircraft. It’s true that aircraft are allowed to fly lower altitudes during takeoff and landing.

  The controllers do see the altitudes on their radar for the aircraft that are under control while they are flying these defined routes and the pilots know that the FAA is monitoring altitude as Sea-Tac’s airspace is directly overhead. It’s difficult for a pilot to fly 200-300 feet over rooftops (as described in the provided link) without being monitored by the FAA. It’s unfortunate that some who live under these defined routes are bothered by the noise.

  The FAA and airport authority tries to work with the neighbors to mitigate noise and us pilots who go in and out of Boeing regularly are aware of noise issues to the neighbors. Some pilots who are taking off and landing and may not be as familiar with the area may be realizing they are lower than necessary–the controller then reminds them and they add power to correct their altitude and that control adjustment may be what some folks are hearing and perceiving a change. Education and information to everyone involved (pilots, controllers, citizens) by the FAA and airport can work toward improvement to the problem.

• David Brown October 31, 2010 (6:26 pm)

  Wow, of the 59 “signers,” only 5 actually reside in Washington.

  We live next to an active commercial airport. It has been here likely longer than and of the complainers, which means that the airport was a known factor when they moved here. I believe that the safety record of BFI speaks for itself — when was the last time that a plane crashed in West Seattle?

  You are taking more of a risk walking across the street than you do when a small plane flies overhead, even if it is lower than you think it should be.

  This petition is a waste of time. You would be more effective in making things safer if you urged your friends to ignore their mobile phones while driving.

• Dawson October 31, 2010 (8:16 pm)

  Wow. All I can say is HPAC your level of misinformation is astounding. I suggest getting out a Seattle sectional map used by pilots as well as researching the restrictions of the local airspace. All readily available information.

• JimmyG October 31, 2010 (9:26 pm)

  Seriously?
  Did no one living in the area covered by HPAC realize Boeing Field was there?

  I suspect someone is hoping to have a quieter neighborhood by pushing this issue. Good luck with that as my guess is 99.9% of the planes flying in and out of Boeing ARE following FAA safety regulations with their approaches and takeoffs.

  The petition is a joke being pushed by people obviously uninformed about aviation.

• JimmyG October 31, 2010 (9:29 pm)

  And I have to add, if you want to know what it’s like to live in an area where the aircraft are REALLY low flying, try living in the flight path of SeaTac as I did years ago.
  I didn’t complain about it though because it was pretty obvious to me before I rented the apartment that SeaTac was right there.

• Greg October 31, 2010 (9:54 pm)

  I moved to gatewood a few months back and also happen to be a non-commercial pilot. I too enjoy seeing the planes buzz overhead, especialy the p-51’s I saw in formation for a lot of the summer. Everyone might already know this, but the west Seattle reservoir is the visual reference point when approaching Boeing from the west. And as already pointed out sea-tacs airspace sits on top of the whole area including the class d airspace that belongs to kbfi. So there are not really a lot of options for pilots than to keep low. But hey, they are usually really small planes, fly this pattern only in good weather and usually are not flying at odd hours… so if you don’t like it, it could be a lot worse. Beacon Hill I’m sure has a lot more to complain about too since they are right along the path people use to do touch and goes…all day long.

• Tracy White October 31, 2010 (10:33 pm)

  I used to live in West Beach condos and LOVED seeing the aircraft overhead; my wife’s a pilot and we’ve flown that corridor more than a couple of times. So while we’re biased towards aircraft, it also means we know enough to recognize this for what it is… someone who just doesn’t like airplane noise trying to use scare tactics to chase a “NOMBY” (not over my back yard) agenda.

  The airport was there before you. Deal with it.

• Pibal November 1, 2010 (12:57 am)

  Regrettably, as others have already stated, this petition totally lacks credibility and reflects how little homework the petitioner did. I live near Lincoln Park, directly under the VFR (Visual Flight Rules) ground track that must be flown when approaching/departing Boeing Field from/to the west. Also, as a 17,000 hour Airline Transport Pilot, I personally fly these groundtracks on a regular basis in general aviation aircraft. There is absolutely no basis for the comments that aircraft are routinely flying at 200-300 feet above ground level. All pilots operating at BFI subscribe to the “Fly Quiet” program found here: http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Airport/ForPilots/FlyQuiet.aspx. Also, all pilots flying to an from BFI use the procedures found here: http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Airport/~/media/transportation/kcdot/Airport/ForPilots/KBFIpilotbrochure_feb09.ashx.

  Rather than respond to each individual error in the petition, I’ll simply offer to answer any questions that our fellow WSBers may have on the topic. Hope this helps…

• Greg November 1, 2010 (9:26 am)

  I too must lend my voice to those saying that the petition writer does not know what they are talking about. There isn’t much more to add to the above well informed posts stating the many ways in which the petitioned is flawed.

• KBear November 1, 2010 (11:36 am)

  It’s nice to know that people in Brazil, Sweden, Poland, and Croatia are concerned about our safety in West Seattle and went out of their way to add credibility to this petition. Loved the comment from Emma Stoopid, too. Looks like they’ve got more false signatures than a Tim Eyman initiative.

• PlanesGood November 1, 2010 (11:52 am)

  Moved to the area two years ago. In doing my research I knew damn well how close the airport is and that we were in the flight path. That’s just doing due diligence.

  That being said I like seeing the planes overhead. How many places get the chance to see the diverse aircraft that fly overhead.

  Plus, how many people on the ground in the US are actually killed by small aircraft a year. It can’t be that much.

• Dawson November 1, 2010 (12:34 pm)

  Reminds me of this movie line front ‘The world according to Garp’
  “We’ll take the house. Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. It’s been pre-disastered. We’re going to be safe here.”

• WS Steve November 1, 2010 (3:26 pm)

  About five years ago I attended a meeting between community liaisons from surrounding neighborhoods and people from the County that run Boeing Field. I asked about the low-flying aircraft over West Seattle and they sounded somewhat receptive to the notion of having pilots fly north around WS and approach the airport over Elliot Bay. I haven’t been back to see if this was ever discussed further.

  Other than that I can’t disagree with the feedback other posters have left regarding the reasons why planes fly low here. We’re talking about Sea Tac’s airspace and that aint going to change any time soon, not with a thousand petitions with a million Croatians’ signatures.

• T-Rex November 3, 2010 (10:07 am)

  My guess it is more about the noise than safety, with all the aircraft flying in and around WS, there is ALWAYS the possibilty of a crash. Not much you can do about it. I rather enjoy getting a good “buzz” by, especially by the bi-planes in the summer!

• Kdub November 5, 2010 (9:05 pm)

  Another commercially-rated pilot here, chiming in with the plea for the petition-writers to Do Your Homework.

  Also, as a pilot, trust me – we don’t want to end up in your backyard, either! We’ll fly as high as we can, as close to the limits of the Seattle Class B airspace above.

Sorry, comment time is over.