I learned to fly at this airport back in the 80's and 90's and later became a flight instructor there when I decided to make Aviation my career. It has always bothered me how the local media portrays the airport as a place where the wealthy land their noisy, polluting private jets, disrupting the lives of the virtuous citizens of the "People's Republic of Santa Monica". The reality being that 80 to 90 percent of the traffic there is single engine pistons mostly being used for flight instruction and most of those students are scraping together every penny they can to pay for said instruction, while the flight school owners are hardly getting rich off their business.
The local media also omit mentioning that the airport is used as a medevac base for nearby hospitals. I frequently flew life saving transplant organs in and out of there in some of those "noisy jets".
More recently the city instituted a landing fee on every aircraft taking off and landing in an attempt to further strangle operations there.
I have no sympathy what so ever for the rich assholes (Property values in Santa Monica are now equal to or greater than nearby Beverly Hills) that live around the airport, they knew damn well when they brought their properties that they moving in next to a 24 hour a day operating airport, and if they were really honest they would concede that they experience far more noise from local street traffic than from the airport.
I would love to find a way to put every one of these NIMBY airport whiners on the TSA "No fly" list.