FARMINGTON – The final public hearing on a proposal to lower the flight ceiling for military jet pilots training over Western Maine is scheduled for Tuesday in Farmington.

Officers of Otis Air National Guard in Falmouth, Mass., will explain why they want to drop the ceiling from 2,800 feet to 500 feet in the Condor Military Operation Area above Franklin, Oxford and Somerset counties.

For decades, F-15 Eagle pilots from the 102nd Fighter Wing Cape Cod and F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots from the 158th Fighter Wing in Burlington, Vt., have used the airspace above Western Maine for maneuvers and pretend dogfights. The jets typically travel at 350 to 450 mph.

The low-flight plan has been pushed for four years among the F-15 Eagle pilots, who train for their mission of air-to-air combat.

The proposal would allow both groups to fly low across an area bordered roughly from Greenville southwest to Sumner, west to Bethel, north along the Canadian border and east to Greenville.

The training missions would be about 30 minutes long and mostly in the winter months because the jets cannot carry the fuel tanks needed to reach the area from Massachusetts during the warmer months, Gen. L. Scott Rice from the Massachusetts Air Guard explained last year. The training would take place for approximately 40 to 60 hours a year.

The jet pilots would be required to avoid populated areas and avoid eagle nests from February to August.

At the last hearing in July 2007 in Farmington, more than 100 residents voiced concerns over safety, noise and the future of the tourism-based economy being developed in the area to replace lost manufacturing jobs. The proposal was opposed in a show-of-hands vote, and a request was made that a full environmental impact statement be conducted.

After that meeting, the guard received a letter from the governor’s office basically requesting a fifth and final hearing, he said.

After the Tuesday meeting, the Guard will look at three action plans, he added.

“If there are any additional comments that haven’t been addressed, we’ll go back and look at those or, secondly, if we get the same basic type of issues, we’ll make sure those have been addressed and have been accommodated in the final document filed with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). If neither one or two needs to be done, we’ll file the document with a finding of no significant impact,” Knudsen said.

Once these actions have been fulfilled, filing with the FAA could take place sometime next spring, he added.

The hearing starts at 6 p.m. Dec. 2 in Thomas Auditorium at the University of Maine at Farmington.