The National Park Service has secured approval from the California Coastal Commission for a new plan to restrict commercial air tours that fly over Marin and San Francisco. The state agency found the air tour management plan, which establishes formal altitude limits and caps the number of annual sightseeing flights over the Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area, would adequately protect the habitat of seabirds and marine mammals and limit disturbance to visitors.
“The proposed management plan would provide significantly more protection for coastal resources than the status quo,” Kate Huckelbridge, the commission’s senior deputy director, said at a hearing last week.
The air tour plan, submitted to the coastal commission jointly by N.P.S. and the Federal Aviation Administration, does not apply to general aviation, commercial airlines or drones, and the Mill Valley-based Seaplane Adventures is the only company that operates sightseeing flights over the seashore.
For more than 20 years, Seaplane Adventures has operated on a lenient interim agreement with the F.A.A. that allowed up to 5,090 flights a year over the parks, with no minimum altitudes or route guidelines. But a lawsuit by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility spurred a deadline this year for two dozen national parks to comply with the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000.
The new plan largely puts in writing the circumstances that already exist. It limits flights to 2,548 a year, the current average, but it also establishes new minimum altitudes and identifies sensitive habitat areas to avoid.
One of Seaplane Adventures’ routes, the Norcal Coastal Tour, flies over Mount Tamalpais and the Bolinas Ridge before hugging the coastline of Drakes Bay, looping around the Point Reyes Lighthouse and passing back over the Golden Gate Bridge. The tour costs $329 per ticket. The park’s new rules would require the planes to keep above 2,000 feet while crossing over the Phillip Burton Wilderness, avoid the historic B Ranch’s core area, and never dip below 1,500 feet. The planes currently fly below that altitude at times for better views, but the new rules are intended to minimize propeller noise for seals and birds, dairy cows and park visitors.
When the park first publicized its draft air tour plan a year ago, Seaplane Adventures’ owner Aaron Singer complained to the Light that the new rules would force his pilots to fly above optimal sightseeing altitudes and change altitude rapidly, putting his vintage aircraft in danger of stalling out. F.A.A. safety officials said they found no issues with the plan, and Mr. Singer later said the planes “would climb as quickly as is safe and according to the operating specs of the aircraft.”
But Mr. Singer said he still has issues with the new plan, particularly as it applies to the $229 Golden Gate Tour, which flies over the bridge, Alcatraz and downtown San Francisco. He said flying above 1,500 feet at all times will push his planes into the edge of air traffic control airspace for San Francisco International and Oakland International Airports.
“For decades, we have been flying without safety incident at the same altitudes and routes,” he said. “All of a sudden a year ago, they introduced these new altitudes, and we have not been consulted by the park service since that time. I find out from the media.”
Mr. Singer submitted comments to the park service but did not correspond with the coastal commission. When the plan goes into effect early next year, Seaplane Adventures will have to begin submitting reports to the park service twice a year that include data from onboard flight monitoring equipment.
Mr. Singer’s company has clashed with officials in recent years. After noise complaints from residents around Richardson Bay, where the seaplanes take off and land, the Marin County Planning Commission suggested a cap on daily Seaplane Adventures’ flights in 2017, but later determined that the regulations were an F.A.A. matter.
In 2020, after the pandemic stay-at-home order grounded leisure flights, Mr. Singer continued operating until the sheriff’s office threatened him with fines. He later sued Marin for the stoppage, arguing that it was political and related to the earlier noise complaints.