The spokesman for a local citizens’ group that successfully sued to have the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Park Service brought into compliance with the Air Tour Management Act of 2000 expressed disappointment Monday that the agencies released a document seeking comments on possible air tour management plans for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and Maui’s Haleakala National Park.
According to Bob Ernst, a founding board member of Hawaii Island Coalition Malama Pono, or HICoP, a draft air tour management plan, or ATMP, should instead have been issued.
“After 23 years, we’ve come to this,” said Ernst. “They’ve postponed completing ATMPs for Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala, the most tour-copter-impacted and the fourth-most tour-copter-impacted national parks until 2023 … and it may not even be done by then.
“It’s very discouraging. They continue to go on this way, and to say we can’t do any better than this in 2022 is very disappointing.”
The issue is noise from the tour helicopters flying over the park.
“It’s so quiet here until they come blasting across,” said Ernst, who lives in Mountain View. “If you’re having breakfast, you’re having lunch, you’re having your catnap in the afternoon or you’re on the phone, it kills your quality of life. And why should we have to put up with that?”
A federal appeals judge in 2020 sided with HICoP and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in their lawsuit seeking compliance from the FAA and NPS after the agencies failed to implement the plans as directed by the 2000 federal statute.
The act requires vendors conducting commercial air tours over national parks and certain tribal lands to first obtain a permit from the FAA. It also mandates that the FAA and NPS establish an ATMP that could prohibit or place conditions on air tours.
To date, 12 of 24 U.S. national parks covered by the 2000 law have completed drafts of the management plans and released them for public comment, 22 years the legislation went into effect.
“They didn’t have a lot of air tours,” Danielle Foster, an environmental protection specialist for NPS, said of the 12 that have published their plans. “They only had one company or a handful of companies that only flew a few routes. It wasn’t very complicated. So it was easy for them to come together.
“Some of them kept near the status quo or with just slight changes.”
Unlike the dozen parks with completed ATMP drafts, HVNP is seeking comment on four alternatives — one keeping the status quo on tour aircraft in the park and three that set various restrictions on flights over the parks — prior to a draft ATMP.
“The reason is, we have a lot of air tours, and Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala have always been a little more complicated due to the number of air tours and our sensitive resources,” Foster said. “So we went back to 2011, when we went out to public scoping. We looked at all the public comments we received. We looked at any data from the past 10 years … until now, and tried to craft … a good range of alternatives for the public to comment on.”
Alternative No. 1 leaves the status quo in place, allowing air tours to continue under an interim operating authority without implementation of an ATMP, with the potential of up to 26,664 commercial flights a year. The agencies noted in their summary that Alternative No. 1 doesn’t comply with the law.
Alternative No. 2 prohibits air tours flying lower than 5,000 feet above ground within the ATMP planning area, which contains a buffer zone of a half-mile outside the park’s boundary. Flights higher than 5,000 feet above ground would be allowed.
Alternative No. 3 would provide two main air tour routes, a coastal route and northern route, a fly zone over the Pu‘u O‘o viewing area and an adaptive management route to provide access to historically active volcanic areas of the park for quiet technology flights. This alternative would allow up to 11,376 flights a year within the ATMP planning area, the average number of yearly tour flights between 2016 and 2019. Flights would have to fly a minimum of 1,500 feet above ground in the ATMP planning area — and 2,000 above wilderness areas and sensitive sights. Flights would be allowed between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for aircraft without quiet technology, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for quiet technology flights.
Alternative No. 4 provides air tour access over the park via three routes: the Kahuku route, the coastal route and Pu‘u O‘o route. This alternative would also allow the same number of flights within the ATMP planning area with the same altitude restrictions as Alternative No. 3. Flight hours would be increased to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for aircraft without quiet technology and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for quiet technology flights.
“HICoP will be advocating for option No. 2., which is the no-flyover option — which still allows the tour operators to operate offshore and get a marvelous view of Kilauea and Mauna Loa where they’re not impacting people,” Ernst said. “It’s not only Hawaii parks that’s been impacted by tour copter noise, it’s the people that are overflown on the island, totally unnecessarily. And the FAA has known about this for 60 years, that this is an issue. And our congressional delegation has known about this.”
The Tribune-Herald reached out to Cal Dorn, a helicopter pilot and CEO of Paradise Helicopters, who didn’t reply in time for this story.
The public commentary period runs through 7:59 p.m. Hawaii time April 1. The four alternatives for a draft ATMP and the link to comment on those alternatives are available at https://bit.ly/3tdVqC1.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.