Is there an air show in Stuart today?

Why so many planes today in Stuart?

But I thought they changed everything back?

Following a relatively (used loosely) peaceful July — in any event, there was a reduction from prior months — those are the questions we received today, July 29, 2017, when, from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. 42 airplanes (yes, forty-two — that’s not a typo) were heard over western Stuart, including a jet mixed in with the single- and twin-engine flight school planes.

• Calculating 180 minutes and 42 planes, that’s one plane overhead every 4.3 minutes.
• If each plane was heard “only” 60 seconds each, that’s 42 minutes of air pollution over this 3-hour period.

And that’s just one day.

As of this moment, we’ve listened to 13,012 airplanes fly over since February 1, 2017 (our Home page says fewer because it represents the last full day of flight school logging, and that was yesterday). If we call those out at 45 seconds each — because some are as much as two full minutes and others, only 15 seconds — that’s 585,540 seconds of airport noise or 9,759 minutes of noise pollution or 162.65 HOURS of flight training school planes with which we’ve been barraged. That’s just a little more than four 40-hour work weeks of flight training noise in a neighborhood that, for as many as 28 years, has been peaceful and heard only an occasional airplane overhead.

It’s time for the Martin County Commission to take action to reverse the continuous Witham Field Stuart Airport flight school training flight noise assault on our peace and quiet. Take action now, before it gets even worse!