SMO After Dark: touch-and-go violations at Santa Monica Airport
Touch-and-goes at Santa Monica Airport during the hours the city code bans them. Identified from public ADS-B logs.
SMO does not log touch-and-goes outside of allowed hours; we do. And we give neighbors in Santa Monica and Venice a one-minute way to tell the city when it happens. Pilots who know the hours are watched keep them, which is good for the neighborhood and for the airport.
Touch-and-goes right now
…
Every touch-and-go in the banned hours
We email the city about every new landing on this list. Your own report still counts: the city tallies complaints by household, and the more voices behind a landing, the more likely something is done about it.
The Track link under each tail number opens that aircraft's public flight path on adsb.lol, from 10 minutes before the landing to 15 minutes after. The map's clock is UTC, 7 or 8 hours ahead of Pacific time, so each link gives the landing's UTC time to look for.
| When (Pacific) | Tail | Aircraft | Registered operator | Banned because | What the track shows | Report |
|---|
Over the runway right now
Rings are one, two and three nautical miles from the runway. North is up. Trails show the last three minutes.
What we found
Three rules govern noise at Santa Monica Airport. We checked each against public ADS-B tracks and the city's own monthly reports.
takeoffs the night curfew reaches, in nine months of ADS-B replay. The city's near-zero count is right.
touch-and-goes and stop-and-goes in the banned window, December 2025 to September 2026, by 88 aircraft. The city has logged none.
noise-cap violations the city has logged since 2020. One in three drew a fine.
The rule the city polices is the one pilots already follow. The rule it never tabulates is broken every weekend.
Three rules in the code
The night curfew, §10.04.04.080(b)
No engine starts or takeoffs from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays, 8 a.m. on weekends. Landings are allowed. Medevac, police, fire and military flights are exempt.
The touch-and-go ban, §10.04.04.090
None on Saturdays, Sundays, six named holidays, or weekdays from 30 minutes after sunset to 7 a.m. A full-stop landing with a taxi back is allowed.
The noise cap, §10.04.04.060
No flyover above 95.0 dBA SENEL at either of two microphones off the runway ends. Penalties start at $2,000 for a repeat or willful violation.
How we checked
Two independent records
The city's record is its Monthly Noise and Operations Report, 76 of them from January 2020 to April 2026. Ours is the raw ADS-B data that adsb.lol archives every day, replayed for every night from December 1, 2025 to September 28, 2026. Three nights have no archive. Nothing in ours comes from the city.
Takeoffs and landings
A track at or below 400 feet over the runway that climbs through 700 feet within four minutes is a departure. Every departure inside the curfew window was checked by hand against its raw track and the FAA registry.
Touch-and-goes
Two arrivals by the same aircraft within 15 minutes are one pass through the pattern. For every pass in the banned window we read the raw trace, calibrated to that aircraft's own runway altitude reading. On the runway for 75 seconds or less and then climbing away is a touch-and-go. Stopped first, a stop-and-go. Longer or off the runway, a legal taxi-back. Never down, a low approach. Anything unclear is left out, so every count here is a floor.
Calibration
All seven aircraft the city named in its December 2025 curfew log, and all four it cited for noise, appear in the archive at the same minute. In weekday daylight, when touch-and-goes are legal, the classifier finds them in half of all passes.
The curfew holds
night takeoffs in the archive, December 2025 to August 2026: 8 exempt medevac flights, 4 not exempt, 2 radar ghosts, 2 unresolved.
violation the city logged for the same months: an Epic turboprop that waited at the runway end through the cutoff on January 2. Fine: $2,000. Our count matches.
curfew violations in the city's log, January 2020 to April 2026: 10 takeoffs, 6 engine starts. 15 warnings, one fine.
The other three non-exempt takeoffs, in June and July 2026, wait on city reports not yet published. Three of the four were minutes from the boundary.
The touch-and-go ban doesn't
3,017 passes through the pattern in the banned window, each checked against its raw track
8,056 passes in weekday daylight on the same days, when touch-and-goes are legal
In daylight, half of all passes are touch-and-goes. In the banned window, one in six. Most pilots switch to full stops after hours. 88 aircraft didn't.
Confirmed banned-window touch-and-goes and stop-and-goes by month
on weekends
on the code's six holidays
on weekday evenings after dusk
before 7 a.m.
The five busiest tails
Ten aircraft account for 57% of the 497, almost all flight-school trainers. A letter to ten operators would cover half the problem. Four landings by a Civil Air Patrol aircraft are counted here but left off the list on the first tab.
One open question: the city's noise policy page says low approaches are banned in the same window; the code text does not. The 424 low approaches are treated as legal here. If they count, the total is 921.
The noise cap
Two microphones about 2,200 feet off the runway ends are all that count. SENEL folds the whole flyover within 10 dB of its peak into one second, so slow, loud climbs read high. Over 95.0 dBA at either microphone is a violation unless staff attribute it to weather, traffic or engine trouble.
noise violations logged, January 2020 to April 2026. By year: 35, 29, 30, 34, 45, 50, and 17 through April.
fined, $2,000 to $5,000, where the record is legible (50 of 156). The rest got warnings.
December 2025 noise violators found on the ADS-B track at the city's minute. ADS-B carries no sound, so we can confirm who, not how loud.
What each count misses
The ADS-B scan
- Helicopters lifting from a pad, like LAPD's.
- Military aircraft flying without ADS-B.
- Three nights with no archive.
The city's hand log
- Arrival times written in the departure column.
- Narrative text copied forward from earlier months.
- Night circuits logged as a single arrival.
Neither count treats night landings as violations; the ordinance doesn't either. None of these gaps changes a verdict.
Sources
- SMMC §10.04.04.080(b), night departure curfew, as quoted in the city's 2022 Annual Operations Report, p. 11.
- California Public Utilities Code §21662.4, exemption for emergency medical, law enforcement, firefighting and military flights.
- Voluntary arrival curfew: each Monthly Noise and Operations Report, Section III; City of Santa Monica Fly Neighborly Program.
- Santa Monica Airport, Curfew Hours and Exceptions (smgov.net).
- SMMC §10.04.04.090(a) and (d), the touch-and-go ban and its holiday list, as posted by the city. The city's Noise Mitigation Policy page lists low approaches alongside; the code text does not.
- SMMC §10.04.04.060, the 95.0 dBA SENEL limit, quoted in every monthly report, Section VII.
- SMMC §§10.04.04.040, .050 and .055, civil penalties, summarized in the 2022 Annual Operations Report, p. 12.
- City of Santa Monica, Monthly Noise and Operations Reports, January 2020 to April 2026, Section IV and Attachments B, C and D. Downloaded from santamonica.gov on September 28, 2026.
- adsb.lol daily global ADS-B trace archives, 2025 and 2026.
- 14 CFR §91.225, ADS-B Out required within the Mode C veil around LAX, which includes SMO.