Extra air site visitors over Boulder County? Data says sure, however not everybody agrees on why.

From Erie to Longmont to Boulder, the sound is acquainted — propeller plane overhead, repeating their patterns time and again.

Residents say the noise is getting more durable to disregard. And in lots of instances, the information suggests they’re proper.

At a crowded city corridor occasion this month, Erie Mayor Andrew Moore requested the room, filled with neighborhood members: “Has anybody heard the airplane noise increase?”

Raised palms and affirmative nods scattered throughout the viewers.

“It’s a problem,” Moore mentioned. “But there is no easy solution, because we do not control any of the skies.”

In Erie, the city’s airport started formally monitoring operations solely in mid-2025, leaving officers and residents and not using a long-term dataset to substantiate what many say they’re already noticing.

But for these on the bottom, the rise doesn’t really feel theoretical.

Jason Hurd, supervisor on the Erie Municipal Airport for greater than a decade, mentioned he has seen exercise decide up lately.

“I’m not out there counting airplanes,” Hurd informed a reporter. “As a pilot, I just notice more times when there’s multiple airplanes in the pattern.”

At different airports, the numbers inform a clearer story.

Vance Brand Airport in Longmont recorded about 126,600 operations in 2024. That quantity rose to roughly 137,450 in 2025, a rise of about 8.6%.

An operation is outlined as a touchdown, takeoff or overflight at an airfield.

At Boulder Municipal Airport, exercise adopted an analogous trajectory. Annual operations had been about 60,100 in 2023 and 60,780 in 2024. That whole climbed to about 69,720 in 2025, a few 14.7% improve.

In the Broomfield space, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport has outpaced its long-term projections. RMMA’s 2011 grasp plan projected that operations might attain about 265,200 yearly by 2030 underneath a high-growth state of affairs. Federal information exhibits the airport had already surpassed 280,000 operations by 2023.

Community complaints

Communities close to the airports say they’re feeling the impact of extra site visitors.

For 2025, RMMA recorded noise reports from almost 1,000 distinctive households, in comparison with 84 “household complaints” recorded for 2015. For 2024, Vance Brand obtained noise complaints from 17 distinctive households, in line with Levi Brown, the airport supervisor in Longmont.

CU Boulder researcher and Louisville resident Michael Burek discovered that RMMA plane flying above town climbed from about 1,100 in May 2018 to almost 4,000 in May 2025. Presenting that data to the Louisville City Council in October, Burek mentioned he had developed software program to overview flight exercise at RMMA utilizing an instructional web site, the place he additionally contributes information.

“The majority of the flights are propeller flights,” Burek told the council, including that “the jet traffic has been increasing but not at the same rate as the propeller traffic.”

Residents have made repeated complaints about close by airports at Erie, Louisville, Lafayette and, significantly, Longmont council conferences.

While some who stay close to Longmont’s airport say the planes don’t trouble them, different residents have taken their complaints to metropolis officers.

Susan Scruggs, a resident within the 300 block of Sherman Street in Longmont, which is about 3½ miles away from the airport, spoke in regards to the noise throughout Tuesday’s City Council assembly. Scruggs has lived in her residence since 1982, she mentioned, “… but the planes are going over our houses here in Old Town like never before in the past 40 years.”

Scruggs informed the council that planes have been flying noisily every day, together with on weekends, beginning earlier than 6 a.m.

“It is continuous and unrelenting,” she mentioned.

Expanding flight faculties

An increase in operations, not less than at RMMA, could possibly be attributed to the continued development of flight faculties on the airport.

A slideshow from RMMA offered to the Jefferson County Commissioners in July 2019 mentioned the 4 flight faculties primarily based on the airport on the time had been “each asking for 4-6 more spots” to park planes, and “each expecting 30% increase in operations,” though the doc doesn’t specify over what timeframe.

The Daily Camera obtained that presentation via a data request.

The Camera requested RMMA whether or not these flight college expansions had been ever realized. Spokesperson Sydny Boyd responded that “after some internal discussion and per guidance from the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office, I’m not able to respond to your questions.”

There are actually six flight faculties working out of RMMA, in line with the airport’s web site, however their fleet sizes are usually not listed. RMMA’s 2021 Strategic Business Plan exhibits flight faculties are liable for extra operations than different flight sorts out of the airport, with the very best noise influence and “regular hourly overflight events; all day.”

Erie’s airport, in contrast, has one flight college — Vector Air, owned and operated by Hurd, which has eight plane. Boulder has two faculties — Journeys Aviation and Specialty Flight Training. Mile High Gliding, a hold gliding firm, additionally operates out of the airport. Longmont has two flight faculties as properly, Aero-Sphere Flight Training and Elite Aviation, although Elite Aviation is a small operation and trains solely a pair college students at a time.

People on the telephone didn’t supply remark when the Camera reached out to Aero-Sphere and Elite Aviation about flight site visitors.

The pilot scarcity

Former RMMA supervisor Paul Anslow, who left the place in 2023, informed an trade publication in 2019 that the airport was working to increase flight college operations to assist tackle what he described as a critical pilot scarcity.

“We want to help fill the severe shortage of pilots, while bringing in a new generation of young pilots to the aviation world. That’s going to be a crisis in the near future and we want to be ahead of that curve,” Anslow mentioned in an interview with Aviation View Magazine.

But the extent of a pilot scarcity, or whether or not one exists in any respect, is debated.

The Air Line Pilots Association says that at one level a pilot scarcity was pushed by the COVID pandemic however that numbers have since stabilized. The affiliation’s web site says airways “have cited a fake ‘pilot shortage’ to argue that current high training standards are slowing the pipeline of pilots.”

“America isn’t facing a pilot shortage,” the website adds. “In fact, not only are there enough pilots to meet current U.S. airline hiring needs, there is a pilot surplus. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Aviation Administration, there are more certificated pilots than available jobs.”

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics exhibits general employment of airline and industrial pilots is projected to grow 4% from 2024 to 2034, which the bureau’s web site says is “about as fast as the average for all occupations.”

Andrew McKenna, president of Journeys Aviation flight college at Boulder Municipal Airport, final yr mentioned he has “never seen” demand so excessive, as a era of pilots with a long time of expertise retires.

McKenna and Robert Rockmaker, president and CEO of the Flight School Association of North America, each mentioned a hiring frenzy through the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic has tapered off. McKenna, nonetheless, insists there’s nonetheless the next demand within the U.S. now than 10 to fifteen years in the past.

The coaching course of

Average annual salaries for first officers, or co-pilots, from 5 regional airways in 2015 was $44,260, in line with data from the Office of the Inspector General. Some co-pilots at these regional airways had been paid as little as $20,026.

Now, these salaries are constantly greater than $100,000.

“For the first time in a generation, maybe two generations, it’s a career that you can make a living wage,” McKenna mentioned.

Hourly necessities to develop into a licensed pilot fluctuate by certificates. The Airline Transport Pilot certificates is the very best FAA certification, required for appearing as an airline captain or first officer, and customarily requires 1,500 flight hours. The FAA requires a minimal of 40 hours flight time to develop into a personal pilot.

However, the FAA says that in the U.S., the common variety of hours for “persons without a hearing impairment completing the private pilot certification requirements is approximately 75 hours.”

At Metropolitan State University of Denver, the Aviation and Aerospace Science Department has greater than 1,000 college students, together with about 575 within the pilot observe, in line with Chad Kendall, an FAA chief teacher and aviation professor on the college.

The program is the fastest-growing on campus, Kendall added, and provides three bachelor’s levels: aerospace methods; aviation and aerospace science; and aviation and aerospace administration. Those pupil pilots are usually not coaching via a university-owned fleet. They are coaching all through the Front Range, partnering with native flight faculties.

Pilot’s choice

Pilot scarcity or no scarcity, the place coaching site visitors lands — and why — is one other query.

Student pilots want endorsement from an teacher to fly to airports aside from their fundamental airport for coaching. And there’s no hierarchy of which airports within the area are finest to coach pilots on; all of it relies on their choice, mentioned McKenna.

Boulder-resident Josh Granof turned a personal pilot about 25 years in the past. Now, as an impartial flight teacher, he works with shoppers out of airports all alongside the Front Range.

Granof mentioned every airport within the area has completely different benefits for trainees. He mentioned Vance Brand, for instance, has a runway that’s higher fitted to training landings resulting from its size.

“If we’re teaching someone to be a pilot, they’re going to have to learn to operate at all various types of airports,” Granof added. “You want your pilots to be able to land at just about any airport they need to. So, regardless of where we go, we’re going to make sure it’s useful.”

Students could not see flying out of RMMA as the perfect use of their cash, in line with Granof, due to the airport’s excessive site visitors quantity that features bigger jets and company flights. Flight coaching periods are paid by the hour, and that cash could possibly be burned ready to fly out of RMMA.

“If we’re flying into Rocky Mountain Metro rather than being No. 1 for landing, we’re sequenced a little more deliberately for No. 3 for landing,” he added.

RMMA redirections

After years of steady growth at RMMA, operations dropped by almost 30% in 2025, with about 210,700 operations in comparison with roughly 294,000 operations in 2024, according to FAA data.

Erick Dahl, the airport director at RMMA, couldn’t level to 1 trigger for the airport’s drop in operations in 2025 however informed the Camera there is perhaps “a couple factors” at play.

Among them, Dahl mentioned: “weather, and airline hiring that’s slowing down.”

Pilots primarily based in Erie and Longmont say these airports are taking not less than some operations off RMMA’s shoulders.

Hurd, amongst them, mentioned he has been directed away from RMMA.

Because RMMA has an air site visitors management tower, FAA workers handle its operations. The airports in Erie, Boulder and Longmont wouldn’t have management towers, permitting pilots to coordinate amongst themselves.

Air site visitors controllers at RMMA, Hurd mentioned, have at instances “turned away touch-and-go operations” resulting from understaffing within the tower, and “a lot of those airplanes end up (in Erie).”

“I’ve heard it. I’ve experienced it. I’ve called them up and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to come in and do some touch-and-gos,’ and they’d come back and say, ‘unable to do touch-and-gos at this time,’” he added.

In the aviation world, a touch-and-go is a coaching maneuver the place a pilot lands on a runway and instantly takes off once more with out stopping. A typical coaching session can contain many touch-and-gos, in line with Hurd, who mentioned he’s seen one plane carry out 18 in a single flight.

RMMA spokesperson Boyd mentioned the airport’s administration doesn’t have authority to direct plane and that these selections fall to the FAA-staffed tower.

“I can’t speak to ATC tower staffing or direction, as we are completely separate from them,” Boyd added.

An FAA spokesperson mentioned air site visitors controllers at RMMA “do not redirect traffic to other airports.”

When the Camera adopted as much as ask about claims that the RMMA tower is “understaffed and turning away operations, even if not explicitly redirecting them to other airports,” the FAA spokesperson mentioned: “You can find staffing numbers in the ATC Workforce Plan 2025-2028 or file a FOIA request for specific staffing data.”

Flight faculties primarily based at RMMA declined to touch upon whether or not they have been directed away from the airport by its tower. But through the Camera’s on-the-ground reporting at RMMA, one one that recognized as an teacher who works there and requested to not be named mentioned he has at instances been informed, with out saying by who, to conduct coaching operations at different airports within the area.

McKenna additionally mentioned he’s been turned away from RMMA, and it’s not unparalleled for small planes to be turned away from the airport if site visitors is heavy or if the tower is understaffed. The tower at RMMA has as much as three air site visitors controllers, McKenna added, and at any given time, two of these is perhaps trainees.

“If they’re too busy, they’ll simply say ‘stay out of my airspace,’” mentioned McKenna.

Local management limits

Efforts throughout communities within the area have underscored the bounds of native management on the subject of airport exercise.

RMMA and the airports in Erie and Longmont all encourage voluntary noise abatement procedures in an effort to curb disturbance for close by households. Boulder’s website additionally hyperlinks to such steps. But the procedures are simply that — voluntary — and a few residents who stay close to airports have mentioned that they do little, if something, to curtail noise.