East Hampton Settles On Restriction, Not Permanent Closure, For Airport

The five members of the East Hampton Town Board appeared this week to be in agreement that the town would move toward a temporary closure of East Hampton Airport, possibly as early as this winter, that would allow it to change the designation of the airport and impose new restrictions on air traffic there in the hope of reining in the noise impacts on neighborhoods across the East End.

Board members and their consultants acknowledged that there is an enormous amount of work still to be done before any steps can be taken — from laying out exactly what the goals of new restrictions would be, to crafting new rules and definitions and balancing impacts on flights and airport revenues to ensure the airport remains financially self-sustaining.

Board members pledged that new restrictions would be weighed with an eye toward both reducing the impacts on those who live near East Hampton Airport, as well as preventing new ones at Montauk Airport, where residents fear traffic would be shifted by any restrictions on aircraft at East Hampton.

The board’s positioning, though, means that the airport will remain open, at least for the foreseeable future — a reality that brings some relief for recreational aviators but disappointment for those who have lobbied with increasing fervor for its permanent closure.

Closing the airport temporarily would make it possible for the town to have the airport reclassified from a public airport to a “private use” airport, which would give the Town Board the power to set and adjust a broad range of rules governing nearly every aspect of the airport’s operations, and to adjust its fees as it deems necessary.

The town’s aviation attorney, Bill O’Connor of the law firm Cooley LLP, said that the town is entering “uncharted waters” and that it is still unclear how long the airport would have to remain closed to affect the designation change in the eyes of the FAA, which currently still prohibits the town from imposing any restrictions on flights.

He said it is rare that a public airport is able to escape the demands attached to FAA grants, which typically last 20 years, like East Hampton has by refusing to accept any federal assistance since 2001.

The last assurances tied to FAA grants to East Hampton Airport expired on September 25.

“The first question is: Do we have consensus for closing the airport [temporarily]?” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc asked the four other board members during a Zoom discussion on Tuesday afternoon.

“It seems apparent from our discussions that there is consensus on that,” Councilman Jeff Bragman responded.

The board and its consultants will now embark on a new effort to determine exactly what it hopes to accomplish with new restrictions, how those restrictions will affect things like flights to Montauk and other areas, changes in aircraft, and the financial solvency of the airport.

Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who led the town’s effort in 2014-15 to craft restrictions on flights, said the board would need to identify specifically what it sees as the problem that most needs to be addressed and how to track the impacts of whatever rule changes are made in a quantifiable manner.

“We all need to be on the same page as to how do we define the problem, how do we define meaningful relief and how do we measure that we’ve gotten that meaningful relief,” she said. “We know there are aviation interests who, if we go to a private use airport and introduce a suite of restrictions, are going to be lining up to litigate.

“It’s going to take time,” she added.

Van Scoyoc said that the main problem is the same as it was in 2014-15 when the Town Board last tried to impose restrictions on flights, only to be blocked by a federal court: helicopters, and more specifically, the frequent flights by commercial, commuter helicopters shuttling wealthy city residents to East Hampton on summer weekends.

In previous discussions, board members have nodded to a variety of possible restrictions, from barring the noisiest aircraft like helicopters and large jets entirely, to banning just commercial flights.

O’Connor said there are also options for quotas or “slot rationing” of flights into the airport for commercial companies that could be commoditized for the sake of revenues.

Special weekend curfews could be set to give residents more peace and quiet during their time off, forcing those seeking the convenience of flying to adjust their schedules accordingly.

If commercial flights are to be targeted, what constitutes a commercial flight would have to be specifically defined to address whether various arrangements — like individually chartered helicopters or fractional ownership of jets arranged by companies like NetJets — are commercial operations or not.

The town could also take other steps, like shortening the main runaway to reduce the size of jets that could land there.

Whatever path the town takes, as a private use airport it would be free to adjust its rules as it goes and sees what the impacts of the changes are, near and far.

More restrictions will likely come with additional costs, he noted. Keeping track of various types of aircraft and who is landing at the airport and how often will have administrative requirements, and he said the town may want to consider keeping the control tower open longer, even year round, to ensure rules are being complied with.

And any reduction in the number of flights will impact the airport’s currently robust revenues. Barring large jets, especially, would have a major impact on the airport’s revenues, Van Scoyoc noted, since they pay the highest landing fees and buy large amounts of jet fuel — the airport’s two main sources of revenue.

“You have to be able to maintain the airport without that aircraft type if you are going to eliminate commercial jets, for instance, and that would have to be reapportioned across the rest of the users,” the supervisor said. “If you’re eliminating all commercial traffic, I don’t know what the total ops would be at the airport, but it’s going to be significantly less. That might be what the community ultimately wants, but we’ll have to understand how we’ll maintain the airport based on those ongoing costs.”

Freed from the grant assurances, the town is also no longer tied to limits on fees set by the FAA and can adjust what it charges aircraft to use its runway as it sees fit.

Councilman David Lys suggested the town could consider imposing a “sunset clause” on certain components of the airport’s operations, like demanding a shift to unleaded fuel or electric aircraft, over time.

The Town Board would always have the option of abandoning the new operating program and deciding to close the airport outright, O’Connor said, in response to a question from Councilwoman Sylvia Overby.

Actually closing the airport could happen in as little as 30 days, O’Connor said, allowing for a notification period for pilots.

The best time for a temporary closure of the airport, to allow the change in designation,  it needs to be closed for an appreciable amount of time to satisfy the FAA’s legal department, would be in January or February, O’Connor said, when aircraft traffic is at its lowest level of the year.

The board’s increasingly clear intentions to keep the airport open struck a cord of disappointment with those who have been calling for it to be closed and had come to believe that a permanent closure was on the table.

“What I understood was going to happen was a significant change, possibly closure,” said John Kirrane, a Noyac resident and frequent critic of the airport who said he was disappointed in the apparent “backtracking” by the board. “It’s starting to feel like this is turning into class warfare. The haves, who have an extraordinary amount of wealth don’t give a darn about the middle class communities that they are impacting, nor the environment that they’re destroying. And they will do anything and say anything to keep their precious airplanes and helicopter flights to make their commutes from wall street easier.”