Blade's New Regularly Scheduled Sag Harbor-NYC Seaplane Service Sets Off Alarms In Village

Seaplanes have landed in and taken off from the bay outside the Village of Sag Harbor for years. But the news this week that Blade, the booking agency known for its pricey, round-trip helicopter and seaplane flights between East Hampton Airport and Manhattan, was offering regularly scheduled service between Long Wharf and the waters off 23rd Street, accompanied by a slick online advertising campaign, set off an alarm bell among some village officials.

“We have never had a discussion about this, because it was never an issue,” said Sag Harbor Village Trustee Aidan Corish. He said increased seaplane traffic could become a problem if East Hampton Town, which is attempting to impose restrictions at its airport, succeeds in limiting the number of flights there.

In such a scenario, Sag Harbor could become an attractive alternative because of its central location between East Hampton and Southampton, Corish said, adding, “I don’t want to see an already overburdened Sag Harbor become the traffic hub of the East End.”

Corish has also been the most vocal opponent of the Hampton Jitney’s proposed Peconic Jitney passenger ferry service between Sag Harbor and Greenport, which the Village Board will consider at a hearing on June 14.

At first, Mayor Jim Larocca dismissed Corish’s concerns, which were echoed by Trustee Bob Plumb, saying in an interview on Tuesday morning that the seaplanes visiting Sag Harbor, whether they be scheduled flights, on-demand charters or private planes, were operating outside the village’s jurisdiction.

“We don’t control the air space, and we don’t control state waters,” the mayor said. “We have no authority over them.”

He said worries about a possible rise in seaplane service were nothing but “speculative horrors.” “There are people with crystal balls, always conjuring up numbers that have no basis in fact,” he added. “I can’t deal with that.”

But after reviewing Blade’s advertisement for the service, Larocca had changed his tune by Wednesday morning, saying the company had implicated the village “in its deceptive ad campaign” by implying that passengers could fly to the city directly from Long Wharf.

“Let’s be clear,” the mayor said via email. “You cannot fly from Sag Harbor Long Wharf. Not in a jet, not in a helicopter, not in a seaplane, and not in a turboprop. Period. Exclamation point!”

He said he would ask Village Attorney Elizabeth Vail to send a cease-and-desist letter to Blade, requesting that it discontinue any advertising linking the village to the service, and lodge a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration about “the false and misleading advertising and the misuse of our village name.”

The mayor said the village’s only connection to any seaplane service was that it allowed Ken Deeg, who runs a village-licensed launch service, to place a float on a mooring at the far end of the mooring field about 4,000 feet from shore, where seaplanes can tie up and transfer passengers.

“I believe it is inappropriate for the village to have any connection to this operation, even innocent launch service transfers,” the mayor said on Wednesday. “I therefore recommend that we rescind our prior approval of the placement of a seaplane float and amend our contract with Ken Deeg to prohibit servicing any seaplane activities in our area.”

The village, with an assist from state government, has authority up to 4,000 feet from shore, while most other municipalities only oversee up to 1,500 feet from the shore. The village’s waterways law prohibits seaplanes from landing or taking off any closer than the 4,000-foot limit, but they are allowed to taxi and moor as close as 1,500 feet from shore.

This week, Deeg said he had been picking up passengers from seaplanes for years. The difference this year is the mooring float, which used to be just off the breakwater, has been enlarged to make it safer, and it was moved farther away from land “so you can’t hear the planes,” he said.

Blade CEO Rob Wiesenthal said on Tuesday that the regular flight schedules offered on the company’s app were added because of the threat that East Hampton might substantially limit access to its airport.

“We needed to have plans for alternative destinations ready in case the Town of East Hampton drastically limited the number of flights available to our Hamptons customers,” he said.

While scheduled flights remain available, the company does not expect the number of flights it arranges to or from Sag Harbor to change much from the levels seen in previous years — as long as the airport continues to operate the way it always has, he said.

Following the Memorial Day weekend, for instance, there was no sign of aircraft activity at several times flights were scheduled on Monday and Tuesday.

Most of the flights to Sag Harbor, Wiesenthal surmised, will continue to be privately chartered flights. He said he could not say how many flights the company has flown to Sag Harbor in years past but that the number is relatively small.

“I live in Sag Harbor, I can see where the seaplanes land from my house, and most of the ones I see are not ours,” Wiesenthal said.

Despite Wiesenthal’s assurances, the company is marketing the Sag Harbor service — with ticket prices starting at $895 each way — with a slick 30-second commercial on its website and YouTube. It shows an attractive young couple at Blade’s lounge on 23rd Street, a plane taking off from the city and approaching Sag Harbor before it taxis to the float. Friends meet them there and bring them to the village dock in a speedboat, as the song “Brandy” plays in the background.

Yet another friend waits to pick them up in a convertible vintage Ford Bronco — which just happens to be parked the wrong way — in front of the windmill at the foot of Long Wharf.

The ad ends, as the man grabs hold of the Bronco’s rollbar to hoist himself Tarzan-like into the backseat.

Corish thinks that ad, and stories like one that recently appeared in Vanity Fair, in which frequent fliers were quoted as being “happy to land at nearby Sag Harbor airport,” show the times are changing.

“I find it disturbing that Sag Harbor is described as having an airport,” he said.

He suggested that the village needs to get a handle on what could happen if the East Hampton Airport does restrict flights and a sizable portion of that air traffic is redirected to Sag Harbor.

Plumb said he, too, was concerned about the potential for increased air traffic. But he said the open bay might make it difficult to land or take off on windy days and choppy conditions could make the float unstable. That could be enough to pose “logistical problems” that would limit the number of flights, he said.

He said the village may be limited in how it could control the air service to requiring commercial operators to get a permit to dock at village piers. “I think we may have missed the boat in terms of doing anything about it, at least this year,” he said.

“Our legislation needs to catch up with a changing environment,” Corish said. “We need to discuss the ramifications. We are facilitating the last mile of these trips with no benefit to the village.”

Wiesenthal agreed that Sag Harbor would see more flights if East Hampton Airport adopts new restrictions. “People are going to continue wanting to fly,” he said. “The traffic is worse than ever and the infrastructure in the Hamptons and close to the city has not changed.”

With reporting by Michael Wright