East Hampton Officials To Meet With FAA To Discuss Airport Closure Parameters

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told Montauk residents on Monday that he and other town representatives are meeting with officials from the Federal Aviation Administration next week to discuss what a temporary closure of East Hampton Airport would have to entail in order for the town to be able to change the designation of the airport from public to private and impose new restrictions on aircraft traffic.

Van Scoyoc said that he hopes that the town will be able to affect the temporary closure in February, when the number of flights into the airport is typically at its lowest level of the year. He said it is important to the Town Board that the new designation and restrictions be in place before the summer so the town can begin reducing the noise impacts on residents who live in neighborhoods under flight paths.

Speaking to members of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee via Zoom on Monday, the supervisor, who would win reelection to a third term in office the following day, reiterated his pledge that the town would impose new restrictions with a close eye on how shunning some flights from East Hampton Airport might nudge more to Montauk Airport, bringing with it new noise impacts and concerns about traffic at the hamlet’s remote airfield.

“I’m well aware of what East Lake Drive is like … it’s a narrow, winding road,” he said. “Any significant increase in traffic along that roadway is going to problematic, I know.”

But he also reiterated his previously stated belief that the raw data of diversion studies that have been conducted by analysts for the town and pilots groups does not accurately relate to the amount of air traffic that can reasonably be expected to shift to Montauk. The size of Montauk’s small tarmac, for one, will mean that the numbers of helicopters that trade in and out of East Hampton Airport during the busiest summer periods — primarily Friday afternoons, Sunday afternoons and Monday mornings — could never be accommodated at Montauk’s facilities.

“You can’t expand that airport, it’s hemmed in by wetlands, so they only have just so much space,” he said.

He said he could offer no update on town efforts to purchase the Montauk Airport outright, which he had hinted previously was under discussion with the current owners.

Members of the MCAC spotlighted concerns raised in a letter by pilots groups to Montauk residents that expressed fears that if the town were to officially close the airport with the intention of reopening it in short order, anti-airport groups from Wainscott and Southampton Town would go to court and try to stop it from being reopened, potentially affecting a longer term, or even permanent closure.

But Van Scoyoc said that he thinks such a tactic would not only fail in court, but would be discouraged by any legal counselor because the plaintiffs in such an effort could be left liable for economic losses caused by their legal challenge should it lose on the merits.

Town officials hope to work out a package of restrictions on flights in the next couple months that, the supervisor said, they hope will significantly tamp down the number of flights, especially by helicopters, into East Hampton Airport while still allowing enough traffic to prevent new waves from going in search of other landings. He said he was not in favor of a proposal by Councilman Jeff Bragman, one of his opponents in Tuesday’s election, that called for a complete halt to all commercial flights into East Hampton, to test what the impacts would be on Montauk over a season.

“We’re trying to move forward in a quick but careful way,” he said.