Lubbock, TX Noise Ordinances: Aircraft Noise (2026)

City Code of Ordinances § 6.04.003, in article 6.04 (Airport Regulations, Division 1, Generally), targets engine-noise nuisance specifically: it is unlawful for any person to operate aircraft engines through acceleration or deceleration while over the city in a manner that will distract, excite or disturb persons on the ground, regardless of altitude. The prohibition is not tied to a decibel meter or a minimum height; a pilot who guns an engine low or high enough to disturb residents violates the section either way. It was adopted by Ordinance 1233 in 1952 and carried forward through the 1959, 1983 and current codifications without amendment, so the language a violator faces today is the same text the city council passed in the 1950s.

Section 6.04.003 works in tandem with § 6.04.001, which sets a 1,000-foot minimum altitude over the city (with an exception in § 6.04.002 for permitted agricultural aerial spraying), and § 6.04.004, which separately bans aerobatics over the city at any altitude unless the event is approved by the city council, coordinated with the FAA flight standards district office for a waiver, and flown solely within the waived airspace. Enforcement runs through the director of aviation and the airport board: § 6.03 authorizes the director of aviation to eject a violating operator from the municipal airport or ground the aircraft, and the airport board can, after a hearing, deprive an operator of further use of airport facilities.

Because § 6.04.003 sits in the general offense structure of the code rather than carrying its own penalty clause, a violation is punished under the city's general penalty provision, § 1.01.004, as a misdemeanor with each day of a continuing violation treated as a separate offense.