August update 2025

     Many thanks to thousands of voices, your letters and support and Coalition members calling for peace and quiet in Glacier National Park, a major victory has been won: a Final Air Tour Management Plan (ATMP) has been adopted, and commercial air tours over Glacier are now set to phase out in Glacier through attrition no later than December 31, 2029.
     THANKS to PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) for seeing this massive effort to completion. The Writ of Mandamus Court order that helped FAA and NPS to bring 23 national parks into compliance with the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000, by completing an Air Tour Management Plan- it is done! Glacier was completed in December 2022.  All parks were completed and signed by mid-December 2024. Final update can be found here: USCA Case #19-1044 

Enforcement

     NPS and FAA are jointly responsible for enforcement. It will undoubtedly be up to the public to insist on it. For anyone visiting Glacier National Park, report a suspected overflight violation here: Patrick.M.Macquarrie@faa.gov, Helena FSDO, 2725 Skyway Drive Helena, Montana 59602-1213 Phone: (406) 441-5240 Fax: (406) 449-5275, Office Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Mountain Time, Monday – Friday.  Other FSDO offices are here here; however, the last update was February 2022, so present status is unknown.

What’s going on in Glacier’s “quiet” skies?!

     A publication is now available - an overflights study in Glacier by NPS/Natural Sounds researchers: Exploring Spatial Patterns of Overflights at Glacier National Park, showing patterns of detailed overflight data over three years (2021-2024), collected from The ADS-B logger device on a mountain top in Glacier. Report is available here: https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2309483. Fourteen other National Park Overflight Studies are also available at this web address.

     This report will help inform enforcement measures for FAA and NPS. In Glacier, only three operators are permitted by Air Tour Management Plan, to conduct tours over the park until 2029 when all tours stop. These three are: Homestead (3 tours annually); Minuteman Aviation (5 tours annually); and Red Eagle Aviation (136 tours annually). Homestead and Red Eagle Aviation appear to be the only aviators complying with the ATMP with no violations associated with their aircraft. There are several offending operators conducting tours illegally over Glacier National Park - Tail numbers have been verified using FAA registry searches and flight-tracking services.

Wilderness Stewardship Award

     Friends for a Quiet! Glacier partners, Former Glacier Deputy Superintendent Pete Webster and Division Lead, Natural Sounds and Night Skies, National Park Service Karen Trevino, received the 2023 IMR Leader in Wilderness Stewardship Award for their work to protect wilderness character at Glacier National Park. The award commends the recipients’ efforts resulting in changes to air tour management in Glacier that tackled a forty-year problem with solutions that provide meaningful and long-lasting protection of wilderness. He is a true wilderness champion, and his actions garnered the respect of the entire interagency ATMP team - including FAA”. The final AMTP for Glacier reduced the number of air tours from 1,793 allowed annually to just 144 per year. In addition the ATMP provides the following additional restrictions to protect Glacier wilderness character: two routes were consolidated into one, allows no more than three air tours per operator and only one air tour is allowed above the park at a time, sunrise and sunset restrictions for crepuscular wildlife and visitor enjoyment, no hovering or circling is allowed, raised the minimum altitudes up to 2600 AGL and 3100 AGL for helicopters and fixed wing aircraft respectively, specifies that any new or replacement aircraft must not be noisier than the authorized aircraft, requires operator training and education, as well as annual meetings with FAA and the operators, requires operators to install and use flight monitoring technology on all authorized air tours, and allows for modifications to the ATMP through adaptive management if needed to protect park resources and values. Most importantly however, because of Pete's steadfast commitment to protecting Glacier wilderness, analytical prowess, and his impeccable negotiating skills, the ATMP also requires the complete phase out of all air tour operations in Glacier through attrition no later than December 31, 2029.  Special thanks go to the eight other Superintendents and their Deputies who kept this effort alive.