If you live anywhere near Airport Avenue, you've probably noticed something that doesn't square with what you thought you knew. Santa Monica Airport is supposed to be winding down. The city has spent two years designing the park that replaces it. And yet this month brought a new route, not a quieter sky. On September 14, JSX Air started flying its turboprops between Santa Monica and Oakland, its fifth route addition at SMO since December.
That's not a policy reversal. It's the fine print of a settlement most residents have never read.
The Contract That's Doing All the Work
In 2017, the City of Santa Monica and the Federal Aviation Administration signed a consent decree that lets the city close the airport at midnight on December 31, 2028. What that agreement does not let the city do is turn away qualified aviation operators before that date. Until the clock runs out, Santa Monica has to keep functioning as an airport, and city officials have said plainly that they lack the discretion to deny a permit to an operator like JSX that meets the federal standards for qualifying aeronautical use.
That's the whole mechanism behind what you're hearing overhead. The city isn't choosing more air traffic. It's bound to allow it. City Manager Oliver Chi has said the closure timeline hasn't moved an inch because of any of this, and the JSX lease itself expires November 30, 2028, one month before the airport is scheduled to shut for good. The growth in flights and the shrinking runway toward closure are running on the same track, not opposite ones.
Five Routes Since Winter
Here's what's actually landed at SMO since the consent decree's endgame started coming into view:
| Date | What started | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 19, 2025 | Las Vegas | JSX's first Santa Monica route, on 30-seat ATR 42-600 turboprops |
| Jan 22, 2026 | Scottsdale | Daily nonstop service |
| Feb 5, 2026 | Las Vegas, expanded | Increased to three flights daily |
| Apr 17, 2026 | Napa | Seasonal service, four days a week |
| Sept 14, 2026 | Oakland | Up to three flights daily, introductory fares from $149 one-way |
Each of those additions came with the same talking point from JSX: the ATR turboprops are quieter and lower-emission than the jets the airport used to host before the runway was shortened in 2017. That's a real distinction. It's also not the same as fewer takeoffs and landings, which is the number that actually shows up on a noise complaint.
The Fight That Isn't About the Planes Anymore
The legal argument over SMO has moved past noise into two separate disputes that are still open right now. Santa Monica residents and the advocacy group Measure LC Defense, including plaintiffs Alan Levenson and Zina Josephs, filed a lawsuit alleging the city approved JSX's commercial operations permit without the environmental review that the California Environmental Quality Act requires. Separately, the FAA issued a director's determination finding that Santa Monica violated federal revenue-use rules by holding onto surplus airport funds for purposes unrelated to the airport, and ordered the city to fix its fee structure.
Underneath both disputes sits a number that complicates the tidy story that everyone in town just wants this over with. A poll commissioned by the nonprofit Spirit of Santa Monica and conducted by FM3 Research found that 67 percent of Santa Monica voters support keeping the airport open in some capacity, against 25 percent who want it closed as soon as possible. The gap held even among people living within a mile of the runway. That doesn't change what happens in 2028. The consent decree isn't a popularity contest. But it explains why every council meeting on this subject still draws a packed room, including one in mid-May 2026 where supporters and opponents of closure faced off in front of the dais.
"Santa Monica Airport will close at the end of 2028, and nothing about this process with JSX Air changes that fact." — City Manager Oliver Chi
The Park Getting Drawn Under the Flight Path
While the legal fights play out, the design work on what comes next hasn't paused for a single quarter. The city's consultant, Sasaki, released a Draft Framework Diagram in March 2026 that organizes the 191.6-acre site into eight districts, among them Immersive Nature for native habitat, Active Sports for organized athletics, Arts & Culture, and an Urban Edge zone meant to stitch the future park into the neighborhoods that already border it. That framework followed a City Council vote on July 8, 2025 to commit to a park-only plan consistent with Measure LC, the 2014 ballot measure that restricts the airport land to parks, open space, and recreational use once aviation ends.
In June 2026, the project picked up real money to go with the vision. The state awarded the Santa Monica Airport Conversion Project a $10 million Proposition 4 Climate Bond grant, announced by Senator Ben Allen alongside Mayor Caroline Torosis, to advance planning and design. That's a state agency putting cash behind a park that technically can't break ground until the runway underneath it goes quiet. The design and the departures are happening on the same calendar, which is exactly why this doesn't read like a normal before-and-after story.
The One Unanswered Question: Park, or Some Housing Too
There's a live debate that the Framework Diagram conspicuously left out, and it's the one thing that could still change what "Great Park" ends up meaning. Some residents and at least one local group have started asking whether part of the 192 acres should be carved out for housing once the airport closes, which would require voters to pass a new ballot measure amending Measure LC. Santa Monica is under a state mandate to plan for roughly 6,100 units of affordable housing by 2029, and proponents of the housing carve-out have pointed to the airport site as a rare opportunity to make meaningful progress on that number in one place. Supporters of the park-only vision see it differently, arguing that any housing or commercial use invites the kind of political split that could stall the airport's closure altogether.
Nothing about that fight is resolved as of this fall. It's worth watching not because it changes anything about the flights overhead this year, but because it's the one variable in this whole story that isn't already locked into a consent decree.
What This Means If You Live Near Airport Ave
If you're close enough to hear these flights, the city's Webtrak tool lets you look up specific aircraft and file a noise inquiry directly with the Noise Operations Office rather than guessing at what just went over your roof. If you're the type who already has opinions about what belongs in the Urban Edge district versus the Immersive Nature district, the framework materials and survey responses are public and still open to comment as the Phase 3B process continues. And if you're simply trying to keep the dates straight: the JSX lease runs through November 30, 2028, the airport closes at midnight on December 31, 2028, and everything in between is going to sound busier, not quieter, right up until it stops.
That's the part worth sitting with. The airport isn't fading out. It's running its full contract to the last minute, loudly, while the thing that replaces it gets built on paper in the meantime.
Marc Robinson has spent two decades reading the fine print behind Los Angeles real estate decisions, from zoning lines to consent decrees, and translating what they actually mean for the people living next to them. If you're weighing a purchase or sale near the flight path, or just want a clear read on how the airport conversion could reshape a specific block in the years ahead, schedule a confidential consultation with Marc Robinson.
