Citizens for a Friendly Airport this week filed its third lawsuit against the county Board of Supervisors, this time challenging the board’s recent approval of more American Airlines flights at McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad.
Read more Man fatally stabbed downtown identified as San Diego resident
The supervisors unanimously approved a lease in May allowing American to add two more daily round trips from Carlsbad to Phoenix in the 76-seat Embraer 175 jets that have been operating out of Palomar since February 2025.
The airport watchdog group sued the county and American weeks after the supervisors approved an earlier lease last year, arguing, among other things, that the agreement violates the California Environmental Quality Act on issues such as noise and air pollution. A hearing in that case is set for August.
The group filed its second lawsuit after the supervisors approved a lease in December allowing United Airlines to make four daily round-trip flights from Carlsbad to San Francisco and Denver.
“We hope the city will stand up with us and fight as strongly as we will,” said Vickey Syage, a Carlsbad resident and member of the Citizens group, at Tuesday’s Carlsbad City Council meeting.
“This is not about what’s going in and out of the airport … this is about who gets to make those decisions,” she said. “We will be protecting local control of that airport for Carlsbad citizens.”
Syage and others have said the additional flights are an expansion of the county-owned airport, and any expansion requires the approval of Carlsbad voters under a 1980 citizens initiative. However, county officials have said the additional flights are not an expansion, in part because American, United and other airlines have had commercial flights out of Carlsbad for years in the past.
A San Diego Superior Court judge approved the Carlsbad City Council’s request in November to join the group’s original lawsuit against the county and American. So far, city officials have not indicated they will take any additional legal action.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Carlsbad’s two representatives on the county’s nine-member Palomar Airport Advisory Committee reported on their work with a subcommittee that reviewed the county’s voluntary noise abatement program, or VNAP, for pilots using the airport.
“Our goal was to modernize the program, align it with best statewide practices, and to strengthen the trust between the airport and the surrounding community,” said Gary Greening, chair of the subcommittee.
The committee found that pilot education materials in the noise abatement program are outdated, the noise complaint system lacks transparency, there are no incentives for individual pilots to use the program, and a Federal Aviation Administration noise study done for the airport is outdated, Greening said.
The education materials are “inconsistent, incomplete, confusing and not aligned with today’s aircraft mix or community noise impacts,” Greening said.
Read more Ex-SDSU police sergeant sentenced for possessing child sex abuse material
Residents receive no confirmation, no case numbers and no follow-up when they make noise complaints, he said. Also, Palomar has nothing like the Fly Friendly program used at other Southern California airports to track whether specific aircraft follow the voluntary noise abatement program.
The subcommittee made a list of recommendations to improve and update the noise program, which the airport advisory committee approved in March and forwarded to county officials, Greening said.
“The county has accepted them in principle and begun some partial implementation, they advised us,” he said.
“However, no timelines, completion targets or estimated dates have been provided to us,” Greening said. “It seems like these items are all being stalled. The city’s engagement is essential to ensure these improvements are actually delivered.”
Other speakers said the increased flights present safety and air pollution hazards along with noise, sometimes flying low over homes outside the recommended flight path. They wake people up, interrupt online classes and meetings, and degrade the overall quality of life.
“Low aircraft are having a serious and measurable impact on residential neighborhoods,” said Brad Atwater, who lives just south of the airport.
Carlsbad has asked the FAA in the past to make the noise abatement procedures mandatory and has been denied, Mayor Keith Blackburn said. The FAA controls all in-flight operations, and a number of federal regulations prohibit mandatory local controls.
“My goal is just for the airport to be a better neighbor,” Blackburn said. “They are not going to close; we just want a better neighbor.”
Blackburn said he would write a letter to the county in support of the committee’s recommendations.
The airport opened in 1959 at what is now the northwest corner of El Camino Real and Palomar Airport Road. At the time, the surrounding area was mostly undeveloped. The city annexed the airport and the surrounding property in 1979.
Today, it is near the geographic heart of the city, surrounded by increasing industrial and residential development.
Read more Man sentenced to 60 years to life for Barrio Logan shooting death
