Local Groups Oppose FAA Plans For Local Airports
BY RICHARD GENTILVISO

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg grapples with how best to alleviate traffic congestion on the ground in New York City, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is trying to come up with a new solution for the same problems in the sky.

After some study, the FAA announced last month it has a preferred plan, called the Integrated Airspace Alternative. The FAA says the plan will help reduce air traffic delays and make air traffic more reliable, not only in New York but in New Jersey and the Philadelphia area as well.

At a public hearing held last week, Rose Marie Poveromo, representing Assemblymember Michael Gianaris, strongly disagreed. Poveromo, also a member of Community Board 1 and president of the United Community Civic Association serving residents in the area near LaGuardia Airport, opposed the FAA's proposal because it will increase the noise, air and traffic pollution in a community that is already oversaturated and overburdened by airport activities, she claimed.

"This selection will cause irreparable damage to our quality of life," Poveromo said in an interview with the Gazette. George Napolitano, a representative for Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, also attended the public hearing and said Maloney supports Poveromo's statement of opposition to the FAA selection "100 percent".

"They [FAA] were more concerned with planes going over Westchester and Connecticut," said Napolitano. "They're not interested in Queens County, although we have two major airports," Poveromo said. "We represent the community that is under assault."

The Integrated Airspace Alternative was one of four proposals the FAA has been studying. The other three are Modifications to Existing Airspace, Ocean Routing Airspace and Future No Action.

Poveromo, chair of the aviation committee, said Board 1 voted in favor of Future No Action, which assumes no changes in the existing airspace and continued operation under existing conditions. Future No Action is the baseline standard by which environmental impacts for the other alternatives will be measured against.

Currently, airspace is layered with one level for arriving air traffic and another for departing. Within those layers, airspace is limited to specific lower and upper altitudes and geographic boundaries. The preferred Integrated Airspace Alternative would change that structure.

"This new concept in airspace design will help us handle the rapidly growing number of flights in the Northeast in a much more efficient way," FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey said in a March 23 press release.

Last year, LaGuardia Airport handled 400,000 flights and Kennedy International handled 378,000, according to a February 18 New York Times report. However, Kennedy International has 5,000 acres with two sets of parallel runways while LaGuardia has only two runways on just 560 acres. Moreover, since LaGuardia's two runways cross one another, they can't be used simultaneously.

On any given day, LaGuardia Airport has 75 scheduled flights per hour. When delays reached an average of 38 minutes for arriving flights at LaGuardia after Congress had passed a law in 2000 that lifted limits on traffic at LaGuardia and other busy airports, the federal government reinstituted limits on flights into LaGuardia.

"It's insane, the demand out there," said Pasquale DiFulco of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates LaGuardia, in the Times report.

In February, the FAA proposed maintaining a cap on the total number of flights at LaGuardia but with a twist. The government wants to sell landing rights at LaGuardia to the highest bidder, claiming the so-called landing slots are a public resource.

Airlines have contradicted that statement, saying that the government does not have the right to auction landing rights and that it would increase ticket costs.