CHESAPEAKE — A group of homeowners sued the Chesapeake Airport Authority on Tuesday, alleging that the city's small regional airport has violated their property rights by routing planes over their homes.

The residents are seeking financial compensation.

"It's a taking of their property; it's damage to their property," said Joseph T. Waldo, a Norfolk-based attorney who filed nine lawsuits in Chesapeake Circuit Court on behalf of 17 residents in West Landing Estates, a roughly 30-home subdivision built on farmland in the early 1990s. The subdivision is about a mile and a half southwest of the airport, directly in the approach to the airfield's sole runway.

Chesapeake Regional Airport, open since the mid-1970s, sits on about 400 acres on West Road, just east of U.S. 17 in the southern part of the city. The Chesapeake Airport Authority is a nine-member board appointed by the City Council to oversee the airfield.

As the airport has evolved from a rustic airstrip into a fledgling suburban airfield that can accommodate corporate jets and military helicopters, some nearby residents say they've been duped.

Steve Haynes, who is among the plaintiffs, said he's fed up with planes flying over his home, sometimes as low as 300 feet, as well as with what he claims has been brusque treatment by airport and other city officials who haven't taken his concerns seriously.

"We want them to change the approach," said Haynes, who retired from the Navy after 27 years, including stints on carriers. "I don't think there's any other way to fix it."

Airport Authority Chairman Thomas E. Love said Tuesday that he had not seen the lawsuits and could not comment on the case. He added that "the authority is obviously concerned about our neighbors."

On June 23, a handful of top airport and city officials, including then-Mayor-elect Dalton S. Edge, Love and Airport Manager Joseph E. Love met for two-and-a-half hours with a group of West Landing Estates residents to hear their grievances. Thomas E. Love and Joseph E. Love are not related.

The airport manager said Tuesday that the subdivision had been identified as a noise sensitive area and that pilots have been asked to avoid flying over it whenever possible.

Edge, however, made it clear at the June meeting that closing the airport was not on the table.

"I just don't see shutting down the airport," he said.

Haynes and other West Landing Estates residents who attended the June meeting said they knew there was an airfield nearby when they built or bought their homes, but that the airport has slowly grown into a much busier, noisier neighbor than they ever bargained for.

City officials have pointed out that the airport was there first.

Waldo said the we-were-there-first argument won't fly.

"It's kind of the red-herring," he said. "The courts have routinely said it's not about the airport; it's about the airplanes that fly over the homes."

The lawsuits essentially argue that the airport authority has taken an easement through the airspace over the homeowners' property without paying for it.

Just as property owners would expect compensation from the government if a road in front of their homes were widened, those in West Landing Estates affected by increasing air traffic at the city's growing airport are also entitled to compensation, Waldo said.

The lawsuits state that the airport authority "has compensated other owners in or near the flight path for avigation easements it has taken," but that it has refused to compensate those in the nearby subdivision.

The homeowners' suits do not seek damages at this point, but rather the appointment of a condemnation commission to determine just compensation.

City real-estate records show that the assessed value of all 30 properties in West Landing Estates increased this year by an average of 16 percent. One property, for example, sold in March for $468,000. Last year, it was assessed at $292,400. As of July 1, its assessed value rose to $340,400.

Waldo, however, said the assessments are generated by the city.

"Tax assessments have nothing to do with appraisals for damage purposes," he said. "The market is determined by an informed buyer, with full disclosure."

In 2001, nine residents of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake sued the Navy, alleging that their property values had been lowered because of noise from Navy F/A-18 Hornets operating near Oceana Naval Air Station and Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Fentress.

The lawsuits, later expanded to include about 2,000 homeowners, are still pending.