Aloha, Friend. As you know, I have communicated and worked with you to address still-escalating concerns with serious safety risks and widespread community disruption arising from the virtually unregulated operation of helicopters and small aircraft over our state. The great majority of these concerns arise from increasing commercial tour helicopter and small aircraft overflights, but a significant amount is related as well to military aircraft. I want to update you on my actions and ask for your continued assistance.Military aircraft. Most recently, I sent this letter to the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) highlighting our communities’ concerns with loud and low flying military aircraft, especially at night. This followed my prior communications with our military, which initially provided a mixed response.To its credit, our military does now appear to be taking our concerns seriously, with many of its flight paths and operational hours altered to mitigate negative community impacts. Here is a recent Civil Beat online story on this issue, including the military’s formal outreach and request for community input to further mold its practices. As outlined there, I encourage and ask you to report your questions and concerns to the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation through its online form here until Oct. 3.  Commercial tour helicopters/small aircraft. While these operations have become a plague throughout all of our Hawai’i, some of the most heavily impacted locations are our precious national parks and the flying routes to and from. Back in 2000, Congress passed the National Park Air Tour Management Act to protect our parks from the devastation of commercial aircraft overflights. But the federal agencies responsible for implementing that act, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Park Service (NPS), dragged their feet for over two decades, and it took a lawsuit by one of Hawaii’s own community groups to get a federal court to order the FAA and NPS to carry out the law.The FAA and NPS have started by proposing for public comment Air Tour Management Plans (ATMP) for the first four of 24 national parks subject to the court order. These first four are the least impacted and so the easiest to implement ATMPs. But these first ATMPs will establish the ground rules for ATMPs at the most impacted like ours, and so we have to pay very close attention to what is being proposed. In fact, many of the proposals in the first four ATMPs are just not acceptable, either for those parks or any others including ours. I therefore sent this letter outlining my many concerns.The FAA and NPS have now opened the process of collecting public input on proposed ATMPs for seven additional National Parks. I encourage and ask you to review these proposals and submit your own comments on each proposed plan by following the links found here. Comments on this group will be accepted until October 3, 2021. These two issues are just parts of a much larger and broader challenge to require that uses of our nation’s public air space by helicopters and small aircraft must not come at the expense of the safety and peace and quiet of communities on the ground. It is important that each of these issues be addressed by all of us as they arise as they are all related. As always, I am deeply grateful for your questions, input and partnership. For more information on these or any other issues of concern to you, please visit my website at https://case.house.gov or else email me at Ed.Case@mail.house.gov or call me at (808) 650-6688.Be safe and be well.