PALM BEACH, Fla. — The best days on Palm Beach used to be when President Donald Trump was far away, at least for those who value the peace, quiet and lifestyle to which the millionaires and billionaires of this island are accustomed.
No street or bridge closures. No restrictions on boat or air travel.
But a sudden change in Secret Service rules around Mar-a-Lago has extended some of those restrictions, causing an uproar among Palm Beachers and others in nearby historic neighborhoods.
The airspace around the president’s estate is now a no-fly zone 24/7, even when Trump isn’t home, which means noise and soot from flights out of Palm Beach International Airport are being diverted to other parts of the neighborhood.
The Secret Service said the plan will continue at least until October, even after Mar-a-Lago closes for the season in May.
“We want to do everything to make sure we protect our president, and we understand that when he’s there, this is what needs to happen,” Palm Beach County Commissioner Gregg Weiss said about planes being diverted over neighborhoods that were once outside the busy airport flight path. “But when he’s not there, why? What’s the concern at that point?”
Local officials said they were blindsided when the U.S. Secret Service issued the new flight restrictions just two days before they took effect on Oct. 20.
“There was no lead up to this,” said Nancy Pullum, chair of the Citizens’ Committee on Airport Noise. “It just happened. Literally nobody knew. The flight traffic controllers didn’t know. The airport, they didn’t know. Palm Beach County didn’t know.”
The impact on hundreds of homeowners became clear quickly. Pullum lives in the El Cid neighborhood of West Palm Beach, a historic enclave across the water and a few blocks north of Mar-a-Lago.
“It’s thundering,” she said. “It’s as if they’re accelerating when they’re right over me. You go take your trash out to your garbage can, and you realize there’s a plane right over your head, and you can see the belly of it.”
The White House referred questions from The Washington Post to the Secret Service. A spokesman for the agency declined to provide details about the decision.
“In order to ensure the highest levels of safety and security for the President, the U.S. Secret Service requested the FAA institute additional temporary flight restrictions over Mar-a-Lago,” the spokesman said. “We recognize that these changes could have an impact on the public and appreciate the Palm Beach community’s understanding as we work to keep the President safe.”
The airport is three miles due west of Mar-a-Lago. Trump has long sought to change the flight patterns that for more than 70 years have sent outbound jets directly over his century-old mansion. The new flight restrictions do just that, sending most outgoing planes from Palm Beach International Airport away from Trump’s estate, to the north.
Trump filed three lawsuits against the county and airport over airplane noise since he bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, all of them before he became president.
The first was in 1995; it was dropped a year later when the county agreed to widen the flight path so fewer jets flew over his estate and to lease him 200 acres of vacant land south of the airport, where he built the Trump International Golf Club.
A second lawsuit in 2010 was dismissed. Trump sued the airport a third time, in 2015.
“I am saving one of the great houses of this country and one of its greatest landmarks,” he said then, “and it’s being badly damaged by the airplanes.”
That lawsuit was dropped when Trump was elected president the next year, and air traffic over Mar-a-Lago was banned — but only when he was there.
“This is an opportunity for him to seize what he’s really wanted to do for a very long time,” one resident said at a recent citizens’ noise committee meeting. “This could be stretched for three years. It could be forever.”
The airport started as a single airstrip in 1936, a decade after properties such as Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach and homes in El Cid, Flamingo Park, Grandview Heights and other neighborhoods near the West Palm Beach waterfront were built.
It was converted for use by the U.S. military during World War II, and it kept growing after it was returned to the county, accommodating the mid-century tourism boom and raising issues of noise pollution ever since.
Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post built Mar-a-Lago in 1926 on 17 acres of land that stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway. The opulent mansion had 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms. In her will, Post left the estate to the federal government as a “Winter White House” or a place for visiting dignitaries. But without regular use, the property’s $1 million annual upkeep prompted the government to put it up for sale.
Trump bought it for about $8 million, successfully fought the town for permission to turn it into a club, and created a go-to destination for Palm Beach society and, in the past decade, for political power brokers as well.
“Donald Trump says that his house is on the National Register of Historic Places,” Margie Yansura said. “Well, my house is on the National Register of Historic Places. We’ve lived here for 45 years, and we’ve fought hard to save this historic neighborhood. I’m retired. I would like to sleep in, but I can’t past 6 a.m., and it goes on until 11 at night.”
The county and the airport have worked with residents and citizen groups for years, hammering out agreements over the flight paths. Property was priced accordingly; people moved in or out aware of the jet traffic overhead. The new Temporary Flight Restrictions from the Trump administration upend all that.
Local real estate agent Don Todorich said homes in a flight path are valued as much as 20 percent less. “They paid more money not to be in a flight path for a reason,” he said.
Trump is the only president to declare his winter White House a legal domicile, but he’s not the only one to face the ire of neighbors inconvenienced by presidential visits. Residents in Kailua, Hawaii, complained about limited beach access and traffic restrictions when President Barack Obama and his family spent their annual two-week Christmas vacation there.
President John F. Kennedy was the first to make his Winter White House on Palm Beach. He visited a family estate several miles north of Mar-a-Lago.
During the Palm Beach winter social season — which runs from Halloween to Mother’s Day — Trump’s club is open to paying guests. In his first term, Trump came to Mar-a-Lago about 145 times. He declared it his primary residence in 2019. So far this year, he has visited it more than a dozen times. He is back again this weekend for Thanksgiving.
Local officials are trying to get answers from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Secret Service on why the new rules were implemented. The airport director sent a letter to the FAA that says the agency is “fundamentally altering the status quo.”
U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat who represents the area that includes Mar-a-Lago, said her constituents — from both parties — are complaining to her.
“It’s a quality-of-life issue, not a political issue,” said Frankel, who expects to meet with the Secret Service next month.
Trump garnered 68 percent of the vote from the nearly 8,000 Palm Beach residents who cast a ballot in 2024. Local billionaires such as investor Nelson Peltz and casino developer Steve Wynn held fundraisers for Trump.
But even the most stalwart supporters are upset.
“What I hear from my own house is my wife complaining that the planes are flying over the house at 5:30 in the morning, and I’m hearing the same thing from far too many residents,” said Martin Klein, who lives on Palm Beach north of Mar-a-Lago and is a member of the committee on airport noise.
Klein, an attorney who represented Trump when he first moved to Palm Beach, wrote a letter to the president hoping that “some accommodation can be reached regarding airplane flight paths over Mar-a-Lago when you are not in residence.” He hasn’t yet received a reply.
Klein said he he’s hoping the island’s influential billionaires can help.
“We need to get these people on board to tell the president: ‘Hey, look, this is just unacceptable,’” he said. “They need to complain as much as we’re complaining.”
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