Summertime Brings Out Complaints about Banner Planes

• Legal Issues Involved in Trying to Ban Aerial Advertising Are ‘Still Very Much Up in the Air’

BY BILL KOENEKER

It must be summer when the complaints mount about parking and traffic on Pacific Coast Highway. Much the same can be said when the buzzing starts overhead from the constant drone of banner planes that advertise their wares to the millions of beachgoers.

The low flying planes buzz the crowds, advertising beer, sun lotions and other products whose manufacturers have been convinced that banner advertising produces results.

For many homeowners and residents of the coastal enclave the only result for them is a headache because of the constant back and forth presence of the low flying aircraft.

For others, the concern is one of safety. Just last year in Malibu a 56-year-old airplane towing an aerial banner made an emergency landing in a field near Trancas Canyon Road. No one was hurt in that incident.

However, at the end of last year, two banner pilots were killed in separate incidents near San Diego.

Most local officials lament there can be nothing done because of Federal Aviation Administration rules. The authorities on Oahu in Hawaii were able to prohibit aerial advertising five years ago, but that has been fought in the courts since then.

Malibu City Attorney Christi Hogin said municipal officials continue to monitor the legal situation. After Honolulu appeared to be successful in its legal battle, the city of Huntington Beach adopted a similar ordinance, which was challenged soon afterward. Four years later, in another case, the appeals court again upheld the Honolulu ordinance, but by that time the FAA had changed the rules.

“The modifications to the handbook and form are an obvious response to the court cases. The amendments delete, modify, or explain the provisions that were central to the court’s holdings. With these changes, a preemption challenge to an ordinance like Honolulu’s likely would result in a different outcome. Counsel for Honolulu expects that [the litigant] will continue to pursue its case in the district court and litigate the effect of the amendments,” said Hogin. “In the meantime, although there are now two cases upholding Honolulu’s ban, the issue is still very much up in the air.”

The city attorney said her office will monitor this “as Honolulu continues to pioneer the legal issues.”

Hogin added, given the FAA’s history on the matter, it is not possible to predict whether a court would find that the FAA has preempted the field.

“However, the FAA certainly appears to have tried to do that,” she noted.

For years beach communities have thrown up their hands in efforts to curb the noisy planes because the airspace is controlled by the FAA, which has always taken the side of the banner planes.

The banner planes are allowed to fly over stadiums and other public venues as low as 500 feet. There are a few no-fly zones, such as President Bush’s Texas ranch, nuclear submarine bases and depots where stockpiles of sarin gas and other weapons of mass destruction are kept. The only other exceptions are Disneyland and Disney World, where a controversial decision closed the airspace over the parks. The FAA decision, which was reportedly not sought by Homeland Security but directed by Congress, had the effect of banning Disney’s competitors’ aerial advertising planes and sightseeing helicopters.

In their promotional brochures, air advertisers expound on the virtues of the noise the airplanes make to capture viewers.

Aerial Banners, Inc. boasts that when an individual hears an airplane, they instinctively look up. “That is what makes this form of advertising so effective. Aerial advertising reaches people away from home and work,” the brochure states.

A spokesperson from the operations department of Camarillo Airport said about four or five banner planes fly out of the Ventura County facility each day. He suggested the airports in Santa Monica and Hawthorne also provide a venue for the banner planes.