Town Council Work Session
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What legal authority does the town have over airport noise and operations?
uh... town council work session item for discussion the first item for discussion is the leesburg executive airport and federal aviation administration restrictions mr spera
good evening madam mayor my role here is rather limited i'm going to introduce our outside counsel from kaplan kirsch and rockwell eric pilsk eric has helped us with a number of airport matters over the years he and i did some work together Back in my Alexandria days, and then I was able to bring him in here with some of our airport issues, both with our FBOs and with our issues with the tower. Kaplan, Kirsch, and Rockwell is one of basically two primary transportation firms in the country that do this kind of work. I trust their work product a lot in general for the firm, and I trust Mr. Pilsk's work. a great deal, having worked with him for a number of years. So without further ado, Eric.
Thank you, Chris. Madam Mayor, council members, happy to be here. I'm going to try and go through a lot of relatively dense legal material kind of quickly. Please feel free to interrupt with questions, and I'll try to go slowly and leave time for any discussion afterwards.
How about if we hold our questions until you're finished? It'll get a little chaotic
otherwise. Fair enough, and I'll follow your lead, certainly. Thank you. So there's two basic topics I want to cover with a couple of subpoints. is the town's legal authority to address impacts from operations at the airport, primarily noise and concerns about lead emissions. And then secondly, the basic rules around the town's ability to sell land that's been purchased with FAA grant funds. The approvals require the financial rules and implications that come from that. So with that, I'm going to move into the town authority over impacts. The overlay here is the scope of federal authority versus local authority under fundamentally under the supremacy clause of the constitution and the concept lawyers call preemption where federal law displaces state and local law.
And to simplify things, what this rules boil down to in the airport context is that the FAA has exclusive control over the regulation of aircraft and flight, all flight procedures, flight paths, air traffic control, the regulation of noise at the source, that is the certification and approval of aircraft engines, and all aspects of aviation safety. Airports and airport owners like the town have limited authority to regulate who can come into their airport, under what conditions, time of day, the noisiness of aircraft. But all of those local choices are subject to one degree or another of FAA approval and review. First, there's FAA approval under the Airport Noise and Capacity Act, referred to as ANCA.
and its regulations under Part 161 require FAA approval of any restriction on access for aircraft that are what's called stage rated. They're primarily jet and turboprop aircraft of stage three, stage four, stage five, which relate, roughly speaking, to how relatively quiet they are. The higher the number, the quieter they're supposed to be. But any restriction on those aircraft requires FAA approval. In addition, restrictions on any type of aircraft, including piston-powered aircraft that may not be stage rated, requires FAA review and fundamentally approval under the grant assurances that the town has agreed to as a condition of accepting FAA grants. These grant assurances, there's, I think, 39 at the moment.
They cover a wide range of airport operations and management, including assuring access to the airfield on equal non-discriminatory terms. And the FAA applies that to regulate how airports adopt rules governing who can access the airport and under what circumstances. And then finally, restrictions, if an airport says, for example, I want to restrict a certain kind of operations to address safety concerns or efficiency concerns on the airfield, the FAA reserves the authority to approve those measures as the, quote, final arbiter of safety is the language they use. As you can tell from the summary, there's very little sort of unlimited authority that an airport owner or sponsor has to regulate operations at the airport.
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Agenda
4 items
1
What legal authority does the town have over airport noise and operations?
0:04–21:28
2
How does FAA pre‑emption affect local restrictions on aircraft?
21:28–43:05
3
What are the FAA’s requirements for restricting stage‑rated aircraft?
43:05–1:12:21
4
When will unleaded avgas become widely available and what are the challenges?
1:12:21–2:09:32
Speakers
6 identified
Kelly Burk 8 min
Zach Cummings 5 min
Neil Steinberg 4 min
Patrick Wilt 2 min
Todd Cimino-Johnson
Kari Nacy
Officials recognised by voice; public commenters shown as “Speaker N” unless they state their name.