DANVERS — If there's a way to make small planes stop buzzing over neighbors' houses, Beverly Airport leaders haven't found it, and it doesn't appear they're about to.
Three years of meetings with residents, a noise study and a voluntary noise abatement program haven't helped. Neighbors, including Tony Bettencourt of Thorpe Circle, say touch-and-go landings — a training maneuver — are particularly irksome.
About a dozen neighbors met last month with state Rep. Ted Speliotis, Selectman Keith Lucy and former Selectman Stan Svensson and concluded nothing can be done locally to satisfy residents.
"This issue has to be brought, sadly, above the Airport Commission," Speliotis said. "We've run out of gas at the local level."
The airport says it can't tell pilots where they can or cannot fly at any given time, and that variables such as weather or even deer incursions are factors in where planes may go.
"The Beverly Airport management does not have the authority to restrict the airspace above the airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration," said Airport Commission Chairman Paul Vitale of Beverly.
The 11-member commission — with nine members from Beverly, two from Danvers — oversees operations at the 415-acre airport, which is owned by the city of Beverly for use by small aircraft and corporate jets. The commission acts as a property manager and sets airport policies. Day-to-day operations are run by an airport manager.
"I've spent three years trying to help out the neighbors," Vitale said, "and it is not satisfying to Maria and Tony Bettencourt. Our conclusion is they need to deal with the Federal Aviation Administration."
Appealing to the top
Speliotis said he called the executive director of the Massachusetts Aeronautics Commission, a state agency that receives money for airports from the FAA, who agreed to pass on questions to their legal counsel.
"I expect some communication early in the beginning of the year," Speliotis said, noting that the state commission has some oversight as to what goes on over the airport. It could lead to a meeting with residents, he said.
In the meantime, neighbors are frustrated.
"I think we have been barking up the wrong tree for years and years and years," Lucy said, "and the relationship is dysfunctional."
Danvers residents have a host of concerns about the airport, which was built in 1928.
Ed Pinho, a pilot who lives on Thorpe Circle a quarter-mile away from the airport, worries the airport wants to bring in more corporate jets, which may lead to more noise and fumes, and perhaps bring more jets over homes. About 44 percent of the airport is in Danvers.
Their main focus, however, is on the touch-and-go landings, in which a plane takes off, remains over the airport, lands on the runway and takes off again.
"It's when it's an hour or every two hours, and you have a guy looping around," Lucy said.
But Vitale said pilots need to do these kinds of landings — including at night — to obtain and keep their certification.
The problem is, the neighbors' complaints are anecdotal, and despite Tony Bettencourt's attempt to photograph planes flying over the neighborhood, it is nearly impossible to pinpoint who is flying where.
One idea that has been floated is a high-tech system that allows people to track flight paths online, similar to a system in use at Logan Airport. Vitale said the subscription would cost $24,000 a year, however, not counting the cost to install radar. And it would still not be as detailed as the Logan Airport's "Airport Monitor" because pilots in Beverly are not required to file flight plans.
"If we are going to spend $24,000 a year ... and a plane or a pilot does something inappropriate, no one would be able to track who that airplane is," Vitale said. "We would be spending $24,000 to watch planes flying around."
Airport use down
The Bettencourts have lived at 15 Thorpe Circle for 14 years, a quarter of a mile south of runway 9-27, but only over the past few years have they begun to notice the noise. Residents are convinced something's changed, but Vitale, who knows most of the pilots and operators personally, said nothing has.
"They are all professionals, they are cool-headed. They are not a group of people on a regular basis who go out and do something radical," he said.
In fact, Vitale said the airport is used a lot less now than it was 20 years ago.
It will have about 70,000 operations this year, down from 230,000 in the 1970s and 1980s, and about the same amount as last year. One operation is a takeoff or landing.
Residents point to a newsletter Vitale sent out a couple of years ago encouraging transient pilots to use the airport for touch-and-gos to increase the number of operations. Vitale does not back off that statement.
"The airport is there for pilots from all over the country," he said.
Asking pilots from out of town not to perform touch-and-gos at Beverly Airport would be like Danvers asking those living outside of town not to use its roads to get to the Liberty Tree Mall, Vitale said.
"I continue to be committed to working with the officials and neighbors of Danvers," he said, but added that it may be time to agree to disagree.
"But we have to agree to work together," he said.
