'New' East Hampton Airport Will Have Instrument Guidance Ready For Opening Day, Town Says

East Hampton Town told local pilots this week that it now expects to have new instrument flight procedures in place at East Hampton Airport by May 19 — the day the town expects to “reactivate” the airport as a private facility with new flight restrictions in place, and a new location code: JPX.

The instrument guidance, known as special procedures, allow aircraft to approach or depart the airport in low-visibility conditions or at night, following specific flight track and descent and ascent procedures using only the plane’s instruments.

There had been concern that the new instrument flight rules procedures would not be ready in time for the airport’s reactivation, forcing some aircraft to divert to other airports in poor visibility, fly below low clouds or precluding some flights to the airport altogether. In a February 2 letter to the town, an FAA official had said that it could take the federal agency up to two years to approve new instrument flight guidance and other resources.

In a letter to pilots this week, East Hampton Airport Director Jim Brundige said the new flight procedures are expected to be in place on May 19 and laid out the procedure by which aviators will need to apply to both the town and the FAA to be approved for using the new instrument guidance procedures. Aviators will have to have applied by April 8 to have approvals in place by May 19.

The FAA also informed the town this week that the new private airport’s identification symbol will be JPX. The airport’s current location code is HTO but would be discontinued when the public facility is officially deactivated at midnight on May 17. The JPX designation, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said, was randomly generated by the FAA. He said the town had inquired about choosing its own identification code but was told that was not possible.

“That is a big step, because the new ID doesn’t come until they have completed their airspace survey, so it’s a major milestone,” Van Scoyoc said.

The town plans to officially close East Hampton Airport — which opened in 1937 — at midnight on May 17. Doing so, the town’s attorneys have said, will allow the airport to be re-opened on May 19 as a new private airport. The town says this will give the Town Board the authority to impose new limits on flights that were not possible at a public airport under the FAA’s authority.

The Town Board has yet to propose or adopt any specific limitations but has said it plans to do so by the end of May. Consultants have recommended a package of curfews, limiting most helicopters and particularly loud airplanes to no more than one trip per day and banning the largest private jets entirely.

The proposal has been met with a number of objections from the aviation community and from residents who live near other airports in the region that, they fear, will see spikes in aircraft traffic if East Hampton curtails traffic at its runways.

Three groups of airport users and residents of Montauk and Southampton Village have filed lawsuits asking a court to block the town’s plans to close the public airport. A group of aviation industry organizations has also said that they do not believe the transition to a private airport will free the town to impose the sort of limits on air traffic that the town has planned without FAA permission.