Dan's Papers - December 21, 2007 - Helicopters Overhead, But Without The Noise

Last week, Senator Charles Schumer announced that next season the helicopters that fly people out to the Hamptons from New York City, will take new routes through the sky to get here. It won't be because a new law is passed, but it will be because a route has been agreed upon between the chopper owners and the authorities.

The route will have the helicopters leave the East River heliport at 30th Street, go up the East River, out above Long Island Sound, and then follow along the coast of Long Island at a height of 2,500 feet, five miles from shore until the helicopters get over Shoreham. (Currently there are no height regulations, and some services have been seen flying as low as 800 feet.) Here, the helicopters will fly over the land for the first time, but follow a route over a very rural area with few people living in it, over Mt. Sinai, Wading River and Calverton, and then either down through the Pine Barrens to Gabreski Airport in Westhampton or out to the North Fork over Aquebogue after passing to the north of Riverhead, and then across Peconic Bay until finally necessity will take them once again overland, but again in the least populated area possible, which would be Noyack, and then down over the woods of northern Bridgehampton, to finally come in over East Hampton and drop down to the runway.

The route certainly does seem designed to follow the path of lowest population. And though it is a voluntary route for the helicopter owners at this time, Schumer has said that new laws will be passed about what routes can and cannot be taken if this route is not adhered to. And the manager of the East Hampton Airport says that if the route is not followed, he may be forced to limit helicopter access there. Incidentally, both Assemblyman Thiele and State Senator LaValle have bills in committee that would require this route be followed, and they are ready to take them out of committee if the routes are not followed.

There are approximately 4,000 individual helicopter takeoffs and landings at the East Hampton airport in the summertime. About 2,000 are in Westhampton. This averages out to 40 takeoffs and landings a day, 7 days a week, all summer, although in East Hampton probably half of them happen on Fridays and Sundays. That means that during daylight hours on those days there are probably about eight trips coming or going every hour. This is about double the traffic of just four years ago.

The trip normally takes 45 minutes. It will be 55 minutes if the new, slightly longer route is followed, and all the helicopter companies we have contacted said they would use the new route. But there are many companies.

Supervisor Jon Kaiman of North Hempstead, who is along the flight path of the more direct route, is skeptical that all of the companies will follow the suggested route. He commented to Newsday that with some of them, "If they could fly through our front door and out the back door to save 10 seconds, they would do that."

It is true there have been suggested flight paths before that have not been followed by all the company owners. Last summer, the East Hampton Airport manager's office received over 3,000 complaints from citizens about the noise emitted by low flying helicopters. That's almost as many calls as there are helicopter flights.