Palm Beach Quiet Skies CoalitionEspañol

Stay involved

Comments closed October 2. Thank you. The FAA received more than 1,300 comments on its proposed rule to make the flight restriction around Mar-a-Lago permanent. It has said it will consider every comment received by the deadline. Here is how to stay involved.

Submissions received in docket FAA-2026-10827, as shown on regulations.gov on October 3, 2026: 1,316. Of those, 1,228 had been posted to the public file; the FAA reviews each comment before posting it, so that number will rise. Anyone may comment, so the count is not a tally of residents or of positions.

Our five requests now: study the restriction and the flight paths together; count the people on the ground; explain why the full restriction must apply every day of the year, with regular review; explain why the restricted zone is 2,000 feet high when the Secret Service originally requested 1,000, and evaluate a 1,000-foot zone; and hold a public meeting in Palm Beach County. Our goal: departures back over the ocean. The details are below.

  1. Sign up for updates

    We will tell you when the FAA acts, and when your voice can make a difference again.

  2. Follow us on social media

  3. Share this page with a neighbor

    Many affected residents still do not know what the FAA has proposed, or that it is deciding now.

  4. Ask your building, HOA or civic association to stay involved with the coalition

    Write to us at info@palmbeachquietskies.org.

You can also read what people told the FAA in its public comment file.

What we are asking for now

These are our positions as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decides whether and how to finalize its rule. Palm Beach County, which runs the airport, made several of the same arguments in its own comment to the FAA, using the FAA’s own documents.1 Each number leads to the evidence behind it.

  1. Study the restriction and the flight paths together, before the restriction becomes permanent. The FAA’s own documents treat the restriction, the redesigned flight paths and this rule as one plan. An environmental assessment should compare a 1,000-foot and a 2,000-foot height against the neighborhoods as they were before October 2025, and the analyses the FAA cites in court should be placed in the public docket.2
  2. Count the people on the ground. Measure the rule against life before October 2025, count residents’ costs, and compare real alternatives, including the permanent 1,000-foot restriction the Secret Service originally requested. (Palm Beach County also asks the FAA to compare a restriction only when the President is in residence.)3
  3. Explain why the full restriction must apply every day of the year, and review it at least every two years and when this presidency ends. The law asks the FAA to allow the maximum use of the airspace consistent with security. The rule should require a documented review, at least every two years and when this presidency ends, of whether the restriction is still needed and whether a narrower one would meet the security purpose. Palm Beach County also asks whether it could be switched off when Mar-a-Lago is closed for the season.4
  4. Explain why the restricted zone is 2,000 feet high when the Secret Service originally requested 1,000 feet, and evaluate a 1,000-foot zone. If a 1,000-foot zone meets the security purpose, the FAA should adopt it. The Secret Service originally requested 1,000 feet in writing at both Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower in New York; the FAA granted 1,000 feet in New York but chose 2,000 here. Our analysis of flight records found that before the restriction, 99.3% of the departures crossing the restricted circle were above 1,000 feet, and the County says a March 2025 FAA traffic study showed nearly all eastbound departures well above 1,000 feet. The County also says those departures are among the loudest flights at the airport.5
  5. Hold a public meeting in Palm Beach County. We joined local officials and the Citizens’ Committee on Airport Noise in asking the FAA for one.6

Our goal: departures back over the ocean. Until October 2025, departures went straight out over the ocean. Since the restriction, they have been routed over neighborhoods that rarely heard them before. We want the ocean route restored for as many flights as security allows. A 1,000-foot zone could make that possible for departures already above 1,000 feet, though the FAA would still have to approve the routes; the County has also asked the FAA to consider letting airliners in TSA security programs use the former routes. Where the ocean route cannot be restored, we join the County in asking the FAA to evaluate other headings, altitudes and time-of-day limits that could give comparable relief.7

During the comment period we urged residents to make five points; each is carried into the requests and the goal above.

Footnotes

  1. Palm Beach County Department of Airports, comment FAA-2026-10827-1196 on the proposed rule, signed October 1, 2026 by Executive Director Laura M. Beebe, with three attachments from the court record. The County operates the airport and is also a petitioner in the court case over the restriction (Palm Beach County v. FAA, D.C. Cir. No. 25-1282). We cite it where it makes an argument; readings of the law on this site are ours or, where stated, the County’s. ↩

  2. The proposal invokes a categorical exclusion for “Regulations, standards, and exemptions (excluding those that if implemented may cause a significant impact on the human environment)” (FAA Order 1050.1G, Appendix B, paragraph B-2.6(f)). Paragraph B-2.6 covers “FAA actions involving compliance with, or exemptions to, regulatory programs or requirements”; paragraph B-2.5 covers “the establishment, modification, or application of airspace and air traffic procedures.” The County reads this rule as an airspace action that no B-2.5 exclusion covers (comment, pp. 7–8). The order’s introduction to Appendix B, however, describes the regulatory category more broadly, as “Actions involving establishment of, compliance with, or exemptions to, regulatory programs or requirements.” B-2.5(b) does list certain security actions under 14 CFR part 99, the authority the temporary restriction used; the permanent rule would be under part 93. The FAA Administrator’s letter of October 10, 2025 (County Attachment 3, AR 00224–228) set out the temporary restriction, redesigned procedures by January 2026, and “a Special Air Traffic Rule (part 93) making the Mar-a-Lago restrictions permanent” as steps of one plan. An FAA Southern Region briefing of November 2025 (Attachment 1, AR 00345–347) said the changes “route and concentrate air traffic over noise sensitive areas that previously experienced this level of noise only occasionally,” and that forgoing environmental review “has the potential to be challenged through litigation.” In court the FAA called the temporary order “a temporary, one-year emergency measure” and said it “will pursue any permanent restriction through APA rulemaking” (brief, printed p. 36); it also said the January 2026 procedures received “a noise screening analysis, a categorical exclusion determination, a Section 106 consultation, and a Section 4(f) evaluation” (pp. 34–35), records that are not in the rulemaking docket. The order’s extraordinary circumstances include effects on noise-sensitive areas, on historic properties, and effects likely to be highly controversial (paragraph B-1(b)); two of the neighborhoods under the paths, Historic El Cid and Prospect Park–Southland Park, are National Register historic districts. More on The Environmental Review. ↩

  3. The regulatory analysis counts costs to aircraft operators only. Its primary baseline is the restriction already in place since October 2025, and it also evaluates an alternative in which that restriction expires without replacement (proposed rule, Sections IV.A.1 and IV.A.6); on either basis it counts only operators’ costs, finding “no incremental cost relative to current operating conditions for operators” against the restriction already in place and “minimal incremental costs to operators” against its expiry. The proposal never mentions noise, or the people who live under the flight paths. Our own measurements: What It Sounds Like. The County calls this baseline “circular” and asks the FAA to compare the rule with the pre-October 2025 operating environment, “a residence-only TFR,” and a modified rule (comment, pp. 6–7). ↩

  4. 49 U.S.C. § 40103(b)(3) directs the FAA to establish security provisions “that will encourage and allow maximum use of the navigable airspace by civil aircraft consistent with national security,” restricting civil aircraft that it “cannot identify, locate, and control.” The County asks the FAA to explain how it balanced these, and why a restriction only when the President is in residence would not suffice (comment, p. 2); it also asks the FAA to consider “deactivation of the Proposed SFRA during the period each year when Mar-a-Lago is closed and the President has no regular presence at the property,” and periodic re-evaluation with “a clear, publicly noticed process” for modification or termination (p. 6). The proposal contains no expiration or review provision. In 2010 the FAA reduced the restriction over President George W. Bush’s ranch at Crawford, Texas (Prohibited Area P-49) from 3 nautical miles and 5,000 feet to 2 nautical miles and 2,000 feet after a Secret Service security review found the larger area no longer necessary (75 Fed. Reg., March 31, 2010, FAA rule 2010-7242); the proposal itself recounts the reduction. That review was a one-time decision issued without public comment. We are asking that such a review be regular, and that its result be published for comment. The proposal’s preamble also recounts that several earlier restrictions over presidential residences were revoked when the conditions that justified them changed. The Secret Service has given reasons in court for a continuous restriction, including that the threat “must be mitigated to the extent possible whether he is in residence or not” (Declaration of Matthew C. Quinn, July 30, 2026, ¶11, filed with the FAA’s brief); we are asking the FAA to set out its own reasoning in the rule. The Coalition’s comment (Request X.1) proposes rule text requiring review “at least every two years and upon a material change in … presidential status.” ↩

  5. One Secret Service letter, dated September 16, 2025 (docket item FAA-2026-10827-0003), requested one nautical mile and a height of 1,000 feet above the ground at both of the President’s residences. New York received that height (NOTAM FDC 5/2811, made permanent as Prohibited Area P-75, 91 Fed. Reg. 48255, effective October 29, 2026); Palm Beach received 2,000 feet (NOTAM FDC 5/2809), issued the same minute. Of the departures that crossed the restricted circle on October 1–19, 2025, 99.3% stayed above 1,000 feet throughout the crossing; restoring the former procedures would be a separate FAA decision, which a 1,000-foot height could make possible. Departures are about four in five of the passes now crossing the circle below 2,000 feet; arrivals cross low and need a different remedy. Counts, method and caveats: The 2,000-Foot Question. The County’s comment (p. 5) says that in developing the temporary restriction, “the FAA’s analysis indicated that nearly all aircraft departing the Airport to the east were well above 1,000 feet when overflying Mar-a-Lago,” citing a March 2025 FAA traffic study from the court record (its Attachment 2), and that these departures “are also among the loudest operations at the Airport because of aircraft engine settings on departure.” The FAA Administrator’s letter to the Secret Service of October 10, 2025 (County Attachment 3, AR 00224) proposed the temporary restriction with “a maximum altitude limit of 2,000 feet AGL”; in court the FAA has said the 2,000-foot height reflected “its own statutory responsibilities and technical judgment” (brief, printed pp. 25–26). ↩

  6. The Coalition’s comment of October 2, 2026 (FAA-2026-10827-1315), Conclusion: “PBQS joins the requests of Representative Lois Frankel, Commissioner Gregg Weiss, Mayor Danielle Moore, and the Citizens’ Committee on Airport Noise for a 60-day extension of the comment period and a public meeting in Palm Beach County.” ↩

  7. The County’s comment, pp. 3–4: before the restriction it received “on average, less than 100 noise-related comments per year,” and since then “more than 12,000 comments and complaints”; its noise program has long included “operational preferences for runway-heading departures over the ocean.” It asks the FAA to analyze whether the rule “or associated flight procedures can be configured to retain runway-heading departures over the ocean to the greatest extent practicable,” and “whether alternative headings, altitudes, time-of-day limitations, or other procedures could provide comparable noise relief.” On airliners (pp. 4–5) it asks the FAA to consider letting carriers under TSA-approved security programs transit the restricted area, and to evaluate restoring the pre-October 2025 procedures for them; the proposal itself says current procedures “place aircraft at about the 0.85 NM mark,” inside the one-nautical-mile area (proposed rule). Of the departures that crossed the restricted circle on October 1–19, 2025, 99.3% stayed above 1,000 feet throughout the crossing (Coalition analysis; method on The 2,000-Foot Question). Restoring former procedures would be a separate FAA decision; the rule does not set the flight paths. ↩