A Coalition to Protect Small Towns from the Helicopter
Thrill-Ride Industry, Restore Private Property Rights, & Educate the Public
about the Threat of Helicopter Tourism
The commercial helicopter thrill ride industry is
community abuse.
Not yet illegal, already wrong.
1. The Helicopter tourism
industry has become a national nuisance protested by people around the
country. (For starters, see http://www.hcn.org/issues/204/10561
www.helifreenyc.org http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/03_05/03_30_05/fr_chopper_campaign.html http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/04_05/04_13_05/out_protection_gateway.html http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/199412/ftr-copter.asp) 2. Property values decline. (http://www.stormingmedia.us/59/5900/A590003.html
summarized here http://stophelipad.org/property_values1.shtml) 3. Helicopter tourism
businesses are dangerous. (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/17078.html also http://www.survivingparadisehawaii.com/story.php?55) 4. They routinely violate
Federal Aviation Administration advice. (http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/MainFrame?OpenFrameSet search for AC No: 91-36D Subject: VISUAL FLIGHT RULES (VFR) FLIGHT
NEAR NOISE-SENSITIVE AREAS) 5. They operate through a
shaky legal loophole that is propped open by a special interest lobby. (http://www3.verticalgateway.com/Default.aspx?tabid=510&newsid905=49489& and http://www.usata-dc.com/ ) 6. But they CAN be, and
have been, successfully combated by citizens’ coalitions!
What is this webpage for?
Mission Statement:
This web page has been created on
behalf of people in Helen, Georgia, Robertstown, Georgia and elsewhere who have
been the hapless victims of the onslaught of noise pollution and the intrusion
and invasion of privacy that are the standard byproducts of helicopter tour
businesses like the one recently established in Helen. The goal is to voice grievances and to
educate the public about the dark side of the helicopter thrill-ride industry. People who live in the Helen, GA flight
path, and other flight paths in other communities similarly afflicted, endure
constant low over-flights, which continue not only during the day but late into
the evening while people are trying to enjoy dinner and rest in their
homes. To fly a helicopter right
over people’s houses over and over again is an invasion of privacy, and it is
rude, un-neighborly, and a nuisance.
To do it every day for profit is wrong. It could happen to you! If your community is threatened by this kind of abusive
nuisance, please read on to learn what you are up against and what you can do
to protect yourself and your community.
Why is it not illegal for a
helicopter tour business to make a profit by flying 200 feet over my house all
day long?
Because legislators and the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) have not yet made it illegal. Citizens all around the country are
fighting this problem, and when enough people learn about this threat to
everyone’s quality of life, legislators and the FAA will do something about the
problem. As it stands, the few
helicopter tour operators have organized themselves—as the Helicopter Tour
Operators Committee, under the Helicopter Association International, as well as
the USATA (United States Air Tour Association)—to lobby and pressure the FAA
not to act, while the many people who suffer the consequences of the FAA’s
inaction remain unorganized and thus disenfranchised. People are beginning to speak out to right what is wrong,
and we need your help. If your
home is not yet buzzed by a low flying helicopter 50 times a day, please
realize that it can be at any time if laws or ordinances are not put in place
to stop it.
Only recently have helicopters
become cheap enough so that helicopter tour operators can offer very short
rides for cheap prices, thus making it more and more profitable to offer noisy
helicopter thrill-rides to tourists even in small, out-of-the-way tourist
destinations like Helen, Georgia or Robertstown, Georgia. Most flights offered by such businesses
now only last five or ten minutes.
This means the helicopter is constantly taking off and landing creating
a noisy nuisance for everyone around where these short, repeated flights take
place. These helicopter tour over-flights essentially make money by taking from
everyday citizens the ability to use and enjoy their own property, which
naturally is part of American citizens’ private property rights. This industry is running on borrowed
time. Many helicopter tour
businesses have been closed down already by coalitions of aggrieved
citizens. As it grows and takes on
more of the character of a thrill-ride industry, and spreads its noise
pollution over more communities, a critical mass of fed-up citizens will form
and legislators will correct the problem.
Have others had this
problem? What have they done?
Helicopter tour businesses have a
history of creating public outcry.
The Helen, Georgia area is only the latest community to fall victim to
the helicopter tour industry.
1. They’ve been curtailed in national parks by an act of
congress. We should wonder why
they should be allowed free reign in our state parks, such as Unicoi State Park
or Tallulah Gorge, and over game reserves and wilderness areas.
2. They’ve been banned, effective by
2010, in Manhattan.
3. In Tennessee helicopter tour
businesses were zoned out of a nine-mile radius from the Smoky Mountain
National Park. A helicopter tour
business owner challenged the law all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court
and lost, subsequently having his appeal to the Federal Supreme Court turned
down.
4. In Virgina City, Utah the city
council denied a business license to a helicopter tour entrepreneur, under
pressure of overwhelming opposition from the residents, even though the denial
of a license was said to be a move of questionable legal defensibility. The would-be helicopter tour operator
decided not to try taking the town to court.
5. Citizens of Cherokee, NC (through
the S.O.S.—Save Our Skies—Coalition) have organized to defend themselves
against a helicopter tour business operating there.
6. Haywood County, NC, in a
preemptive maneuver, has reportedly passed a law or ordinance saying that no
helicopter tour business can operate in or from that county. Some apparently have said this law
illegally targets a specific business.
If so, it shows the lengths to which people have been forced to go to
protect themselves and close the loophole being exploited by helicopter tour
operators. In the words of a
member of the Cherokee Nation, “just because it’s legal doesn’t make it
right.” Or should we say, “just
because it is not YET illegal, doesn’t mean it’s not already wrong.”
7. In Las Vegas, influential casino
owners were able to strike a deal to alter the flight paths of helicopter tours
so they did not pass over their casinos.
8. At the Grand Canyon, helicopter
tours, long decried by Native Americans and other nearby residents, were
finally curtailed.
9. The National Resource Defense
Council has published a study titled “Needless Noise” about the negative
effects for health and wellbeing of helicopter noise specifically, including a
connection with learning disabilities in children.
10. Even the FAA recognizes, officially, that “excessive
aircraft noise can result in annoyance, inconvenience, or interference with the
uses and enjoyment of property, and can adversely affect wildlife.” http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/MainFrame?OpenFrameSet
11. Citizens in Jackson Hole, Wyoming have seen the threat of
helicopter tourism and are speaking out.
12. This list could go on.
Therefore, the people of Helen are
reacting the way anyone would react, and the way many others have reacted, to
the insult, injury, and risk that is a standard by-product of this
industry. Sources for the info in
this section are on the “Links” page on this website.
“Come on folks, just
face it we helo pilots are much smarter and of superior intellec then you
commonors - we can do whatever we please in the air just like diplomats from
the mid east can park any where they like and NYC can't do a thing - we are
protected the same way by our own goverment. […] even though I make a mint
flying rich knuckleheads - I'll just keep comparing myself to medical pilots
and emergency flights - you see the similarity right - honk your horn - I
complain its a public disturbance and you get a ticket - I buzz your pool party
and rattle your dishes - you complain - I just pout at the FAA baby - too bad
for you - too funny.” –a comment posted by “skyking” on Aug 2, 08 12:58 PM concerning this
article http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=158116
Is it Dangerous?
Helicopter tours are
dangerous. Many people have died
in commercial helicopter tour crashes.
Fatal accident rate of helicopter
tours, as you can see from the information below, is about forty three times
higher than that of commercial airlines meant for transportation. The high incidence of accidents is part
of what prompted the FAA to propose regulations that were eventually tabled
under pressure from the commercial helicopter lobby (see below). It is well documented that most
accidents happen during takeoff and landing, so air tour operators that run
short flights are naturally at an increased risk of helicopter crashes. Therefore, the following statistics
very likely significantly understate the risks that short-flight thrill-ride
type businesses pose to their customers and those that live below the
helicopter flight path.
"Steve Bassett, USATA president,
said that in 10 years, association
members have flown 600,000 tours and
carried 4.5 million passengers to
the Grand Canyon. Bassett said there
were seven fatal air tour
accidents involving tourists in that
time, all outside Grand Canyon
air space.
He calculated that air tour companies
during that 10-year period have
a safety record of 0.98 fatal
accidents per 100,000 hours flown.
Among commercial airlines, the average
number of fatal accidents per
year from 1990 to 1999 was .025 per
100,000 hours flown, according to
the NTSB." San Diego Union
Tribune, August 21, 2001, Ken Ritter,
Associated Press. http://www.uniontrib.com/news/state/20010821-1343-wst-helicopt.html”
(this
according to a Googleanswers responder.
See http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/17078.html)
What are the chances my community
may become a commercial helicopter thrill-ride destination?
It appears helicopter tour
businesses operate on a similar model everywhere, and it is a suspect
pattern. With the exception of places
like Las Vegas and Manhattan, they are usually in sparsely populated areas like
national parks, wilderness areas, and other places of scenic beauty. All too frequently the affected
resident populations appear to be groups that have historically been discounted
and disenfranchised, such as Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, or rural
working class populations with limited access to the legal system.
Additionally, helicopter tour
operators naturally pick a flight path and tend to stick to it. In this way complaints are confined to
a few people who are severely affected by a nuisance to which they are told
they have no legal right to object.
Not only is this an infuriating and unjust insult to those people, it
also makes it easy for the helicopter tour operators, and their legal and
political backers, to explain the naturally shrill complaints as coming from a
few “oversensitive” people. Only
few people are targeted, so little political opposition is generated. But this country is founded on the principle
that majority rule is checked by the sanctity of individual rights.
In some cases proprietors are able
to strike a deal to alter the flight path of helicopter tours, therefore
usually foisting the burden of this nuisance onto others. In the case of the helicopter tour
business in Cherokee, the owner/operator has said he would sell the business to
the tribe, but has placed an inflated price on the property. No doubt similar deals have been struck
openly or behind closed doors in other communities. If a business knowingly creates hardship for a community,
then essentially offers to sell the affected people their privacy, peace, and
quiet back to them at any price, much less an exorbitant one, then we are
dealing with some kind of blackmail.
The FAA is part of our
government, of the people, by the people, and for the people. Why doesn’t the FAA do something to
protect the public it is supposed to serve?
The FAA came very close to properly
addressing this problem, but the helicopter tour operators’ special interest
lobby narrowly prevailed. In 2003
the FAA almost acted on behalf of the American people it is supposed to serve
by providing a reasonable regulatory policy to protect people from the nation-wide
scourge of unregulated helicopter thrill-ride operators. Proposed rules would have established
minimum altitudes and other safeguards for the people. These rules were implemented in Hawaii,
but due to the lobbying pressure of the industry moguls, they were not adopted
not in the rest of the country where people still deal with the
consequences. According to the
HAI, the proposed rules would have done the following things:
“* Establish a minimum altitude
restriction of 1,500 feet Above Ground Level (AGL) above any person, structure,
vehicle, or vessel
and 1,000 feet
AGL over raw terrain;
* Establish standoff distance requirements of
1,500 feet to any person, structure, vehicle, or vessel or 1,000 feet to raw
terrain;
Prohibit commercial air tours in Class
G airspace when visibility is less than two statute miles during the day or
three statute miles at night;
* Prohibit operations in Class G airspace 500
feet below, 1,000 feet above, and 2,000 feet horizontally from any cloud; and
* Require life preservers for all occupants,
fixed or inflatable floats for single-engine helicopters and certain
multi-engine
helicopters,
passenger briefing, and a helicopter performance plan before each departure.”
(from the
website of the HAI http://www3.verticalgateway.com/Default.aspx?tabid=510&newsid905=49489&)
What the FAA has done is make the following
recommendations to pilots—recommendations that tour operators routinely do not
follow.
U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Aviation Administration
Date:
September 17, 2004 AC No: 91-36D Subject: VISUAL FLIGHT RULES (VFR) FLIGHT NEAR NOISE-SENSITIVE AREAS
Initiated by: ATO-R
ADVISORY CIRCULAR
1.
PURPOSE. This Advisory Circular
(AC) encourages pilots making VFR flights near noise-sensitive areas to fly at
altitudes higher than the minimum permitted by regulation and on flight paths
that will reduce aircraft noise in such areas.
2. EFFECTIVE DATE. This advisory circular is effective on September 17, 2004.
3. CANCELLATION. Advisory
Circular 91-36C, Visual Flight Rules (VFR) Flight Near Noise Sensitive Areas,
dated October 19, 1984, is cancelled.
4. AUTHORITY. The
FAA has authority to formulate policy regarding use of the navigable airspace
(Title 49 United States Code, Section 40103).
5. EXPLANATION OF CHANGES. This AC has been updated to include a definition of “noise-
sensitive” area and add references to Public Law 100-91; the FAA Noise Policy
for Management of Airspace Over Federally Managed Lands, dated November 1996;
and the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000, with other minor
wording changes.
6. BACKGROUND.
a. Excessive aircraft
noise can result in annoyance, inconvenience, or interference with the uses and
enjoyment of property, and can adversely affect wildlife. It is particularly undesirable in areas
where it interferes with normal activities associated with the area’s use,
including residential, educational, health, and religious structures and sites,
and parks, recreational areas (including areas with wilderness
characteristics), wildlife refuges, and cultural and historical sites where a
quiet setting is a generally recognized feature or attribute. Moreover, the FAA recognizes that there
are locations in National Parks and other federally managed areas that have
unique noise-sensitive values. The
Noise Policy for Management of Airspace Over Federally Managed Areas, issued
November 8, 1996, states that it is the policy of the FAA in its management of
the navigable airspace over these locations to exercise leadership in achieving
an appropriate balance between efficiency, technological practicability, and
environmental concerns, while maintaining the highest level of safety.
b. The Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) receives complaints concerning low flying
aircraft over noise sensitive areas such as National Parks, National Wildlife
Refuges, Waterfowl Production Areas and Wilderness Areas. Congress addressed aircraft flights
over Grand Canyon National Park in Public Law 100-91 and commercial air tour
operations over other units of the National Park System (and tribal lands
within or abutting such units) in the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of
2000.
c. Increased emphasis
on improving the quality of the environment requires a continuing effort to
provide relief and protection from low flying aircraft noise.
d. Potential noise
impacts to noise-sensitive areas from low altitude aircraft flights can also be
addressed through application of the voluntary practices set forth in this
AC. Adherence to these practices
is a practical indication of pilot concern for the environment, which will
build support for aviation and alleviate the need for any additional statutory
or regulatory actions.
7. DEFINITION. For
the purposes of this AC, an area is “noise-sensitive” if noise interferes with
normal activities associated with the area’s use. Examples of noise-sensitive areas include residential,
educational, health, and religious structures and sites, and parks,
recreational areas (including areas with wilderness characteristics), wildlife
refuges, and cultural and historical sites where a quiet setting is a generally
recognized feature or attribute.
8. VOLUNTARY PRACTICES.
a. Avoidance of
noise-sensitive areas, if practical, is preferable to overflight at relatively
low altitudes.
b. Pilots operating
noise producing aircraft (fixed-wing, rotary-wing and hot air balloons) over
noise- sensitive areas should make every effort to fly not less than 2,000 feet
above ground level (AGL), weather permitting. For the purpose of this AC, the ground level of
noise-sensitive areas is defined to include the highest terrain within 2,000
feet AGL laterally of the route of flight, or the uppermost rim of a canyon or
valley. The intent of the 2,000
feet AGL recommendation is to reduce potential interference with wildlife and
complaints of noise disturbances caused by low flying aircraft over
noise-sensitive areas.
c. Departure from or arrival to an airport, climb
after take-off, and descent for landing should be made so as to avoid prolonged
flight at low altitudes near noise-sensitive areas.
d. This advisory does
not apply where it would conflict with Federal Aviation Regulations, air
traffic control clearances or instructions, or where an altitude of less than
2,000 feet AGL is considered necessary by a pilot to operate safely.
9. COOPERATIVE ACTIONS. Aircraft operators, aviation associations, airport managers,
and others are asked to assist in voluntary compliance with this AC by
publicizing it and distributing information regarding known noise-sensitive
areas.
Signed
________________________________
Sabra
W. Kaulia
Director of System Operations &
Safety
*****
Citizens
to Restore The Peace supports the following websites and the general cause
toward which they are all working—to save the southern Appalachian mountains
from exploitation and encourage responsible development and forward-looking economic
activities.
http://www.stopmountaintopremoval.org