Donald Trump Files $100 Million Lawsuit Over Aircraft Noise

I’ve never been especially sympathetic to noise complaints from homeowners and businesses in areas surrounding airports.

Except in some very unique circumstances (there aren’t a whole lot of new airports these days, especially close-in to residential areas),

  • People objecting to noise knew the airport was there when they bought property
  • The price of the property reflected the location of the airport
  • They also get the convenience of the airport, and indeed proximity to the airport enhances the value of commercial property in many cases.

If you own property near an airport it’s going to be noisy. And planes are much quieter than they used to be.

I’m even less sympathetic when the person who is complaining is Donald Trump. He has his own 757. So he contributes to noise. And he’s a guy that’s attempted to use local government power to take a home away from a senior citizen so he could have a parking lot.

So he reaches the level of absurdity, as Trump does, when he files a lawsuit against Palm Beach County claiming that the director of Palm Beach International Airport,

[H]as successfully pressured the Federal Aviation Administration to have controllers direct almost all flights due east, directly above Mar-a-Lago, the lawsuit claims. It calls the actions “deliberate and malicious.”

He claims that he’s being singled out for noise above the historic club that he owns as retribution for the past lawsuits he’s filed against the County and airport. (He’s also engaged the region in lawsuits over the flagpole on the estate, which was about twice as high as zoning rules permitted.)

Trump seeks $100 million in this lawsuit, although I suspect he’ll wind up dropping the claim as he did with his $25 million request over the flagpole.

Perhaps he’ll give up the question when Palm Beach County’s airport director produces an original birth certificate?


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. Donald Trump is an ASS, albeit a rich one, who has accumulated much of his wealth through shaky, debt ridden business ventures which failed and then reappeared whole, after being cleared of debt through bankruptcy.

  2. And read the departure route description box like climb heading 321 to 520 then direct BAYBE (baby), then via depicted route to TRMMP. When you read all three listed instructions, the intent is very obvious haha

  3. What a jerk. In the 1980’s my mother lived in a condo in West Palm Beach directly west and visible across Lake Worth from the place Trump bought. Planes always flew directly over head of her place before flying over Mar-A-Lago long before Trump bought it. It is the most direct route from PBI to the ocean, so naturally flight controllers do (and always have) directed planes on that route.

  4. One exception to the “you knew there was noise when you bought it” argument is for the recent changes to airport usage being brought about by the FAA’s RNAV implementation. It effectively takes flight patterns that were dispersed over a wide area and concentrates them in a very few areas, including directly over my house. When implemented I’ll go from having a few planes an hour to a plane every 90 seconds all day long. Absolutely not something that could have been foreseen when I bought.

  5. 100% agreed with Corky’s comment, and my first ever agreement with Donald Trump. Like a lot of people lately, he bought property under previously livable conditions. Those conditions were drastically altered.

    Airspace Redesign, precision navigation (NextGen), RECAT and some other airspace initiatives that the FAA is pushing are dramatically changing some communities that previously had little to no noise.

    If a new route has been implemented, where there previously hadn’t been one, he has every right to complain, regardless of his proximity to a runway. I hope he continues.

  6. Just west of the Denver airport there’s a giant superfund site, it is HUGE and goes on for miles. Planes that take off headed west used to fly over the area while climbing and then would turn north once passed the area since it’s all industrial past the area. But, the past year or so they’ve been flying over all the housing developments here. I remember reading about an agreement from the airport when these houses were built, but I guess that expired.

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