Air Tours Over Hawaiʻi Volcanoes Often Fly Below the Recommended Altitude

Air tours over national parks are managed through air tour management plans developed jointly by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Park Service. Managing them matters because low-flying aircraft bring noise and visual intrusion. The FAA recommends that pilots fly higher than 2,000 feet above ground level (AGL) over parks, wildlife refuges and areas with wilderness character.

Tracking the flights

Knowing where tours actually fly has been difficult, because objective location data were hard to get. A newer technology, Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS–B), can track aircraft accurately. Earlier ADS–B studies of air tours looked only briefly at altitude, so researchers from Kansas State University and the National Park Service's Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division set out to map how overflights at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park vary with altitude and to identify altitude trends along the main flight corridors.

What they found

• Flights concentrated along the park's east side.
• Most flew low: 74.59% of aircraft positions within half a mile of the park boundary were below 2,000 feet AGL.
• The higher the altitude, the fewer the flights — overflight density dropped as altitude rose.
• Low and high flights followed different paths: hot-spot cluster analysis revealed different lateral patterns for flights below and above 2,000 feet AGL.
• One main flight corridor had average altitudes mostly below 2,000 feet AGL.

Why it matters

Park and aviation managers can use these results to shape air tour management plans and to monitor whether operators comply.

Sources

• National Park Service, Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division: "Study finds Hawaii pilots fly lower than recommended altitude," summarizing Peterson BA, Shively RD, Jackson SK, Rogowski J, Beeco JA, Joyce D (2023), "Using ADS–B Data to Understand Overflight Altitude Characteristics at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park," The Professional Geographer 75(1): 118–130. The NPS summary's author list differs slightly from the journal citation.