Naples Airport Weighs New Departure Paths — Marco Island Watches Closely

July 15, 2026

Consultants working with the Naples Airport Authority (NAA) are revising instrument flight procedures in ways that could reshape air traffic patterns not just over Naples, but across the shared airspace near Marco Island Executive Airport as well.

What’s changing

The current round of work focuses on departures. According to reporting circulating in local newsletters this week, engineers are redrawing the routes planes use for missed approaches and holding patterns, shifting them eastward. The stated goal is twofold: ease the number of overflights in the near term, while laying the groundwork for a future procedure that would send departing aircraft up faster and higher.

This builds on a change that’s already in effect. Since October 2025, arriving aircraft at Naples Airport have used a steeper 3.5-degree glidepath instead of the traditional 3-degree approach — a shift the airport authority’s own test pilots have said should reduce noise on the ground while also improving safety margins. That arrival-side change followed a Part 150 Noise Study the airport completed in 2024 and a flight-procedures consultant hired specifically to design it.

The departure side of the equation is still being worked out. Airport officials have been clear that a new departure procedure has not yet been finalized.

A separate, more contested idea

Running alongside the departure work is a longer-standing and more controversial proposal known as “Down the Bay.” That plan would redirect roughly 1,000 flights a year that currently head southwest out of Naples over the Old Naples neighborhood, routing them south down Naples Bay instead before they head out to the Gulf of Mexico.

NAA Executive Director Chris Rozansky has been candid that this particular fix doesn’t reduce total airport noise — it relocates it. Residents in neighborhoods that would newly fall under the flight path, including Port Royal, Royal Harbor, and Aqualane Shores, have pushed back on both noise and safety grounds. The former president of the Old Naples Association has argued that shifting the path alone isn’t enough — that altitude and volume both need to be addressed too.

Why Marco Island has a stake in this

Naples Airport isn’t just a Naples concern. It functions as the regional gateway connecting Naples, Marco Island, and the Everglades, and it handled nearly 126,000 takeoffs and landings in 2025. Because Naples Airport and Marco Island Executive Airport share overlapping airspace, any change to Naples’s climb-out corridors or holding patterns has the potential to ripple into traffic patterns Marco Island residents and pilots experience too.

There are also real limits on how far any of this can go. Federal law — specifically the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 — bars airports from imposing new curfews or flight restrictions without FAA sign-off, and the NAA has no authority to cap total flight volume or redirect pilots to other airports. Whatever procedure eventually emerges will have to work within that framework.

What’s next

No timeline has been set for finalizing the new departure procedures, and the “Down the Bay” proposal remains under discussion with no formal decision announced. For now, the changes amount to consultants redrawing lines on a map rather than any locked-in shift in air traffic overhead — but it’s the kind of process worth watching, since the eventual routing decisions are what will determine whether Marco Island sees more, less, or about the same air traffic as today.

This article is based on public reporting and statements from the Naples Airport Authority. Developments are ongoing; check local sources for the latest updates.