Cobb County, GA Noise Ordinances: Aircraft Noise (2026)

Chapter 14, Article II of the Cobb County Code governs Cobb County Airport, known as McCollum Field, the county-owned general aviation airport whose air traffic control tower (the McCollum ATCT) directs traffic whenever it is staffed. Section 14-74 sets four air traffic rules that apply to every aircraft using the field. Subsections (1) through (3) fix the operating picture the noise rule sits inside: the ATCT controls the traffic pattern and taxiway movement whenever it is open, runway 9 reverts to nonstandard right-hand traffic when the tower is closed, downwind-leg pattern altitude is 2,000 feet MSL (2,500 feet MSL for turbine aircraft) on runways 09 and 27, and every landing and takeoff on those runways must use the hard-surface runway.

Subsection (4) is the noise provision: pilots must implement the noise abatement procedures published and amended by federal, state, and local agencies, but those procedures can never preempt or substitute for an ATCT instruction, so a controller's clearance always controls over a published noise-abatement routing. Section 14-26 defines 'airport' as McCollum Field, 'airport manager' as the county's officer in immediate charge of the field, and 'ATCT' as the McCollum tower; Section 14-61 separately folds all current FAA air traffic and operations regulations into the airport's rules.

Because the governing article is Article II, McCollum Airport, it reaches only the county-owned airport property, not overflight noise elsewhere in unincorporated Cobb County, and it has no application inside Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Powder Springs, or Austell, each of which enforces its own code. The county has not adopted a nighttime curfew or a decibel ceiling at McCollum; the obligation runs to following the FAA's and other agencies' published procedures, not to a locally set numeric standard.