Fernandina Beach Holds Off on a $12 Airport Landing Fee as Residents Count 85,693 Flights and Blame Flight Schools for 80% of Traffic

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. - Fernandina Beach commissioners have declined, for now, to impose a $12 landing fee on visiting aircraft at the city's municipal airport, choosing instead to tighten voluntary noise measures while an airport master plan works out whether the airfield can pay its own way. The decision came at a Nov. 4 workshop that filled the commission chambers, spilled into the aisles and drew residents to the sidewalk outside City Hall, according to the Fernandina Observer. The fee had been pushed by a neighborhood group that says flight schools now account for about 80% of the traffic over their homes.

No ordinance was adopted and no formal vote was taken, the Observer reported. Commissioners instead reached a general consensus to direct staff to improve voluntary noise-abatement efforts, examine recommendations on Sunday and holiday flight training, and investigate whether required airport noise disclosures to homebuyers are being followed. Staff will return with more information as the master plan progresses, and no dates were set for the next steps.

The $12 proposal

Attorney Sorell E. Negro of Brown Rudnick LLP, representing concerned residents, proposed a flat $12 fee for every landing by a visiting aircraft, including touch-and-go maneuvers, with locally based planes exempt. She cited Federal Aviation Administration Grant Assurance 24 and pointed to Kissimmee Gateway Airport, which began charging transient landing fees in February 2025. Kissimmee aviation director Shaun J. Germolus wrote in an Oct. 12 letter that the program had generated about $750,000 in additional revenue, the Observer reported.

Negro recommended cameras to record aircraft registration numbers so the city could avoid a new Florida law that restricts the use of ADS-B transponder data for certain landing fees. City Manager Sarah Campbell and airport manager Nathan Coyle disputed the financial case for the fee. Coyle said a camera system covering three runways would cost about $110,000 under a five-year contract, with about $20,000 a year in maintenance after the first year and a vendor taking 20% of gross revenue.

Coyle also put Kissimmee's landing-fee revenue at about $400,000 to $500,000 a year, lower than the figure in Germolus' letter, and said Kissimmee's traffic rose after the fees began. Commissioner Genece Minshew, who was elected mayor on Nov. 3, said the city should first get financial information from the airport master plan. Commissioner Tim Poynter asked whether touch-and-go maneuvers count as landings, and Commissioner Joyce Tuten asked whether citizen volunteers could help communicate with flight schools and monitor compliance.

Two sets of numbers

Suzanne Meyer, representing Amelia Island Airport Solutions, told commissioners that her group's analysis of the city's Virtower tracking data found flight schools generate about 80% of traffic, with five schools responsible for 49% of all activity. The group counted 85,693 operations from Jan. 1 to Oct. 18 of this year, compared with a baseline of 59,628 annual operations used in airport planning, and said repetitive operations rose about 400% over the past year. Meyer described the effects on residents recovering from illness, people working from home and outdoor events such as weddings and memorial services.

Coyle disputed the group's figures, saying Virtower categories can double-count operations. He said the airport would likely end the year near 80,000 landings and takeoffs and that earlier estimates of about 60,000 annual operations were probably too low. His own analysis of July 1 to Oct. 20 found about 25,000 takeoffs and landings, including 5,900 touch-and-gos, spread across 1,861 separate aircraft visits.

About 85% of touch-and-go activity happened between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., Coyle said, and less than 1% fell inside the airport's voluntary quiet hours, which run from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. each night. The airport currently asks pilots to observe those quiet hours, to fly no more than five touch-and-gos per visit and to use preferred patterns over residential areas. Meyer's group asked the city to appoint non-aviation residents to the master plan's Technical Advisory Committee and to create a community advisory roundtable.

Why mandatory limits are hard

Mike Arnold of Environmental Science Associates, the consultant on the airport master plan, told commissioners the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 makes mandatory operating limits very difficult to get approved federally. The FAA measures noise with an annual average called DNL, with 65 DNL as the threshold for incompatible residential land use, and that average does not capture the disruption of a single low pass. Arnold said the airport's noise contours lie largely within airport property, which leaves voluntary measures as the most practical option.

Arnold suggested extending quiet hours to start at 8 p.m. and end at 7:30 or 8 a.m., and considering voluntary limits on Sunday and holiday training, while cautioning against piling on too many guidelines. Minshew suggested a separate noise study might follow the master plan. Tuten asked staff to research how many Florida airports discourage Sunday and holiday flight training.

The money dispute

Negro cited audited statements showing about $3.15 million in cumulative operating losses at the airport for fiscal 2022 through 2025 and about $1.17 million in General Fund transfers over those years, along with declining cash balances. Campbell responded that the transfers cover obligations tied to property used for Fire Station 2 and the Humane Society, not operating subsidies, and said the airport had about $9.2 million in combined revenue and cash balances in the current budget. Coyle said an annual transfer of about $295,000 covers principal and interest on the fire station debt plus lease-related payments, and the city's 2025-26 budget report shows a $296,438 General Fund transfer.

The audited losses include depreciation, a noncash expense, the Observer noted, and Campbell said spending reserves on capital improvements is not necessarily a sign of financial trouble. Whether landing fees will be needed to meet the airport's future financial requirements remains unresolved until the master plan produces its noise contours and financial analysis. Coyle also acknowledged that some homeowners said they did not recall receiving the required airport noise disclosures, and he said the city must determine whether those rules are being followed.