Representatives of the Federal Aviation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey offered their perspectives on airline noise affecting residents of more than a dozen communities in Nassau County at a meeting on Monday night, but they didn’t offer any immediate solutions.
Members of the Town-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee who convened the meeting in Lawrence Village Hall primarily focused on two heavily trafficked arrival approaches at JFK Airport, and were visibly frustrated about responses they received on the issues raised during the crowded two-hour meeting.
Ray Guardio, the East Williston representative on the committee, said airliners frequently violate the FAA’s rule for aircraft approaching JFK International Airport to maintain an altitude of 2,500 feet in the area. Guardio said flight data from the Port Authority indicated that of 2,137 flights over East Williston in January and February, more than 1,000 – or 87 percent – were flying below 2,000 feet.
“Our assumption is that TRACON is allowing that to happen,” Guardio said.
TRACON, the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, is an FAA facility located in Westbury that monitors and regulates commercial airline traffic.
Most of those planes are approaching JFK on runways 22L or 22R, and 80 percent are on visual approaches that take them directly over Williston Park, East Williston, Garden City New Hyde Park and the Five Towns, Guardio said.
Ralph Tamburro, the traffic manager for the radar approach control unit, acknowledged the percentage of flights involved. But he said the planes at that altitude are not on those flight paths.
Tamburro said TRACON has taken measures to remedy that issue.
“We’re using more runways with the increase in traffic,” he said. “We’re rotating the runways four or five times a day now.”
Tamburro made a brief presentation of slides that showed a multitude of green and red lines representing airline approach and departure paths from JFK, but didn’t clarify issues of diverting approaching planes to other paths.
Tamburro said the next phase of traffic redirection will take place in October, but he said there would only be changes made in departure routes from JFK.
“We catch what’s thrown at us and pitch it back,” said David Siewert, JFK tower manager.
Tom Bock, general manager of airspace technology and operational enhancements for the Port Authority, said a study undertaken three years ago explored the prospects for using Islip, MacArthur and Stewart Airports as alternative landing fields, particularly for cargo traffic.
But he said that even if those airports each enabled 10 more flights a day to land on their runways, it wouldn’t make a significant difference in overall traffic patterns.
Bock noted that 80 percent of commercial airline passengers in the New York area come from within 25 miles of their airport destinations, and suggested changes are needed in the next decade to redirect New York metropolitan area airline traffic.
“If we do nothing now, we max out traffic by 2025,” he said.
Guardio said that FAA statistics indicate the vast majority of incidents involving birds struck by aircraft – the problem that caused an airliner into an emergency landing in the Hudson River near Manhattan last year – occur under 2,000 feet.
“That’s very troubling,” he said. “Yet the FAA has no problem letting them fly below 2,000 feet.”
Airlines incur fines of $250 by the FAA for each flight that violates that rule.
But Toby Nussbaum, a representative from Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s office at the meeting, said the penalty is ineffective.
“A $250 fine for these airlines is ridiculous. It’s probably easier for them to pay the fine and keep the airliners flying low,” she said.
Nussbaum said that McCarthy was planning to introduce a bill soon to give homeowners a tax rebate for soundproofing their homes.
Kurt Langjahr, who represents New Hyde Park on the noise abatement committee, said he wants to see the FAA fulfill its obligation to pay for soundproofing of schools in his community.
“We need remediation to those communities in the Sewanhaka High School District. I’d like somebody to tell me when we get the money,” Langjahr said.
Paul Laude, FAA program specialist for the eastern region, said that’s not likely to happen. Laude said the FAA’s national office had recently halted a remediation project the regional FAA office had begun work on in New Jersey.
“The rule is the rule nationally,” Laude said.
Most of the questions from residents of the disparate communities under the flight paths of planes landing at JFK complained about their frustration in phoning in complaints to the FAA and the PA, who they said routinely respond by saying the other agency is responsible for addressing noise issues.
Kendall Lampkin, executive director of the noise abatement committee, said there is “a need for one voice and one number” to field complaints about noise and respond to residents in a timely manner
He suggested the creation of a joint aviation noise information service to be empowered by both the FAA and Port Authority to contact the JFK tower and TRACON about complaints and get back to residents about their complaints.
“We do hope to have something in a few months,” Laude said.
Some of the FAA and Port Authority officials said they would attend the next meeting of the noise abatement committee on July 25.
