Bothered by increased aircraft noise? You’re not the only one.
The airport is holding an outreach meeting on aircraft noise and flight patterns on Thursday, Nov. 2 at 6 pm at Sebastopol Center for the Arts

Sometime last year, local political watcher and homegrown humorist John Necker noticed that something had changed in his quiet neighborhood.
“I just noticed, ‘What's this commercial airliner doing flying over the top of our Friday-in-the-Driveway group?’ We're all sitting there, having drinks and telling lies, and here comes this airplane over the top of us. Everyone sort of looks up, and then I realized after that, that that wasn't an infrequent thing. It's been happening quite regularly.”
He said he’s not the only one who’s noticed. “Other people have noticed it too,” he said. “They just don't whine as much as I do.”
He did more than whine. He began an email campaign.
“I just decided I was going to start pursuing this,” Necker said. “I went and looked at the airport website and they had a good neighbor policy, so I banged around there for a while and sent off a complaint.” Which he said went nowhere.
When he discovered that a consultant had been hired to examine the problem of aircraft noise and flight patterns, he wrote to the company—twice.
“That was just like trying to get information out of Donald Trump,” he said. “It just went nowhere.”
Then there was a breakthrough.
“I was at a city council meeting, and Kari, the city planner, during public comment spoke as a private citizen and complained about this aircraft noise. Immediately she became my best friend,” Necker said.
Kari Svanstrom wasn’t the first city official to notice something amiss.
“At some point, when Patrick Slater was mayor, he sent a letter to the county supervisors complaining about this very thing—that also went nowhere,” Necker said.
Necker wasn’t giving up. He wrote to the 5th district representative on the Airport Board, Arthur Hayssen. When he didn’t get any definitive answer from him, he wrote to Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, whose staff was already working with Svanstrom to figure out what had changed over the past few years that resulted in so many airplanes flying over Sebastopol.
From what she’s learned thus far, Svanstrom described the problem this way:
“The FAA changed the way they direct traffic in and out of airports a few years ago,” she said. “They moved from a specific route—which went over Two Rock and didn't really bother anybody—to allowing pilots to use GPS, thinking that everyone would kind of just stay on the same route, and of course that did not happen. People started taking different routes, and people are just flying wherever they want to.”
Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to like to fly over Sebastopol—even commercial jets bound for Portland and Seattle, Svanstrom said.
Both Necker and Svanstrom have started using an app called Flightradar to track the problem.
“Using Flightradar24, a free app that shows real-time aircraft flight tracking information on a map, I have saved several screenshots of aircraft avoiding overflights of the city and others that seem bound and/or determined to do the opposite,” Necker said.
Svanstrom has had the same experience.
“I look up and I open the app and I can figure out kind of what it is and what its route is,” she said. “The number of flights is pretty impressive—how many are not only arriving but also departing over Sebastopol even if they're going north, which, to me seems kind of crazy. I mean, why?”
“I've been getting a lot of complaints from citizens,” Svanstrom said.
She also said that since she started attending the airport board meetings about six months ago, she’s learned she’s not the only one getting complaints. “Like 80 or 90% of the complaints the airport receives are from District Five,” which represents west county.
In the meantime, the airport’s consultant has finished its study, and this week, Sebastopudlians will have a chance to hear the results. The airport has scheduled two meetings—one in Windsor and one in Sebastopol—to discuss the noise problem. The Sebastopol meeting will be held on Thursday, Nov. 2, at 6 pm at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol.
“I personally would like to see the community come out and learn about this and provide some feedback because it is an opportunity for change,” Svanstrom said, “and to have a less annoying approach that disturbs fewer people.”
To make a complaint about aircraft noise, go here.
Years ago a neighborhood in the Santa Cruz mountains fought a similar fight. (not me). Flight patterns can be changed so the noise isn't always going over the same area. It took concerted effort to make it so. I think the powers that be will rotate when people complain. It seems like they should rotate regularly.