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Experts say air traffic control, not airlines, largely determine shoreline departure tracks; procedural changes are a multiyear effort
Summary
Technical experts told the fly‑quiet working group that shoreline ("trucking") departures are assigned by air traffic control and that redesigning RNAV tracks or adding mandatory fly‑over fixes could take three to five years; the group agreed to compile targeted questions for ATC and carriers as short‑term follow‑ups.
At a June 11 technical working group workshop on the "fly quiet" program, airspace experts said air traffic control (ATC) — not individual pilots or airlines — largely determines which shoreline or "trucking" departure an aircraft flies, limiting the subcommittee's ability to change tracks quickly.
"It is air traffic control determined," Dan, an agency airspace expert, told the group, explaining that runway configuration, flight plans, weather, and an automated assignment in ATC systems typically dictate the RNAV departure a plane receives.
Why it matters: many advocates and city representatives favor procedures that keep departing aircraft over water and away from dense neighborhoods. But experts said redesigning RNAV procedures or inserting mandatory fly‑over fixes that force earlier turns could require substantial FAA flight‑procedures work and multi‑year schedules.
Dan and other panelists described practical, near‑term steps the working group can pursue while acknowledging limits. Those include asking the controlling facility for compliance checks, requesting clarification of why some aircraft turn later than others, and targeted outreach to the TCON and airlines about vectoring practices and crossing restrictions (for example, asking whether a crossing restriction could be raised from 2,000 to 3,000 feet). "It’s taken between 3 and 5 years to get procedures changed," Dan said, describing the current FAA cadence for non‑safety updates.
Municipal representatives cautioned that changes intended to reduce noise for one community can shift impacts elsewhere. "This looks like a very attractive procedure," Paul Gold, a town representative, said of the earlier‑turning tracks that keep most flight paths over water, but he and others warned that any redesign could create trade‑offs for East Bay communities.
What the working group will do next: members agreed to compile a list of clarifying questions for ATC and the carriers (the committee called it a "parking lot" of follow‑up items) and to pursue targeted compliance checks and data analysis to identify whether late turns are driven by aircraft performance, ATC vectoring, or pilot choices.
The subcommittee did not adopt any formal changes at the meeting and flagged shoreline departures as a longer‑term workstream for its five‑year planning efforts.
