Aviators Accuse East Hampton Town Of Contempt As 'New' Airport Becomes Reality Despite Court Ruling

East Hampton Airport has continued to operate largely as always this past week — but attorneys for East Hampton Town and the plaintiffs in three lawsuits seeking to block the town from imposing new restrictions on flights have traded blows and accusations through state courts daily.

One of the three groups of plaintiffs has asked the State Supreme Court to charge the town with contempt of court, saying town officials misrepresented the inevitability of certain technical aspects of the airport’s operations changing because of the planned shift to a private airport, which was blocked by a judge on May 16.

The town’s attorneys have argued the inability to pause the changes when a temporary restraining order was issued at the last minute was a function of the FAA’s processes, and out of the town’s hands. They have accused the plaintiffs in the case of creating a dangerous situation for pilots by using the courts to try and dictate aviation policy, simply to defend against modest limits being placed on aircraft traffic.

But the plaintiffs’ attorneys have countered that the town had not been forthcoming about the details of the FAA’s process months ago, when the plaintiffs filed and then withdrew an initial TRO request, which could have halted the town’s plans in time for the FAA to leave the airport’s systems unchanged while the legal wrangling was worked out.

“It is plain that the town has consistently made false representations to this court regarding the deactivating of HTO Airport,” attorney James Catterson, who represents East End Hangars Inc., one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits, wrote to Justice Paul Baisley last week. “At no point during these contentious proceedings, with dozens of submissions, hundreds of exhibits, and oral argument before this court, did the town ever mention that temporary injunctive relief issued by this court would be effectively moot due to a deadline for the town to notify the FAA that the deactivation was not permitted by this court.”

Baisley declined to hold the town in contempt and also rejected a town request to modify the TRO he had issued. The town asked an appeals court to lift or modify the TRO but was rebuffed.

The two sides will appear in a Riverhead courtroom before Baisley again this Thursday, May 26, to argue the merits of the TRO.

Regardless of the legal crossfire, the 85-year-old East Hampton Airport, known by its call letters, HTO, in aviation circles, officially became known as JPX on the Federal Aviation Administration’s charts last Thursday morning. Attorneys for the town have been calling the “new” airport East Hampton Town Airport, though it’s not known whether that will be the official new name of the facility.

The change in designations had been planned as part of the town’s proposal to close the airport at midnight on May 17 and reopen it on May 19 as a technically new, private airport. The FAA had signed off on the move in April and told the town it could impose a “prior permission required,” or PPR, system of flight rules — though the FAA has never expressly weighed in on whether the actual limitations on flights proposed by the town comply with federal aviation law.

The town had planned to use the new designation of the airport as an avenue to imposing curfews, caps on the number of commercial flights per day and banning the largest private jets — all with an eye toward reducing the noise impacts on residents of the neighborhoods beneath flight paths to and from the airport.

The scheme faced a flurry of legal challenges. The first three lawsuits were filed back in February, when the town had originally proposed its temporary closure scheme. Earlier this month, two charter airplane pilots petitioned the FAA and the U.S. Department of Transportation to intervene and rule that the town’s restrictions violate federal law. And on May 14, a national aviation business organization filed a lawsuit in federal court asking a U.S. District Court judge to block the town’s plans.

Attorneys for the three sets of plaintiffs in the first lawsuits — the charter aircraft booking service Blade, a group of East Hampton airplane hangar owners, a group called the Coalition to Keep East Hampton Airport Open, and a collection of more than two dozen homeowners from neighborhoods surrounding other airfields in the region, primarily Montauk — had asked the court to impose a temporary restraining order back in February, when the town had originally planned to effect the closure, but withdrew the request when the town delayed the temporary closure until May. When the closure was again imminent, the plaintiffs renewed their request for a TRO blocking the move, and it was granted last Monday, May 16.

The town pledged to abide by the court ruling and issued new notices to aviators that the closure would not be going ahead as planned, but FAA officials announced the next day that there was no way to reverse technical changes had that had been set in motion with their flight guidance systems. Charts of flight lanes throughout the Northeast had already been modified to remove HTO as of May 18.

Flight guidance procedures published by the FAA with instructions on how to approach HTO and land in low visibility, had already been deleted and were set to be replaced by new procedures developed for JPX and controlled not by the FAA but by a private contractor working for the town.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have said that regardless of the inevitability of the shift from HTO and JPX, the new systems are not a completely apples-to-apples change for pilots because the new flight guidance procedures for JPX are not published publicly by the FAA and accessible to anyone like they were for HTO.

Because the town has paid to have the new procedures developed for the PPR system, it has set up an application process to access them that requires pilots to submit an application that indemnifies the town and presents proof of insurance in order to receive access. The town has granted permission to more than 100 pilots and aviation companies, but the attorneys have argued that the system still violates the terms of the judge’s restraining order by effectively constraining access to the airport. They have demanded that the town immediately expedite any new requests for access to the procedures without any requirements of indemnification as long as the TRO is in place.

“Our positions are crystal clear — your clients should not be imposing higher fees than before to use this airport and they should not be imposing new onerous conditions, such as indemnification and proof of insurance covering the town, than before to use this airport and receive access to the special instrument procedures there,” attorney Randy Mastro, who represents Blade in the lawsuits, wrote in one exchange with the town’s attorneys.

Town attorneys have argued that they have taken all the steps they can to smooth the operation of the airport under its new requirements, while being somewhat hamstrung by legal necessities in the steps that had been taken to prepare for the expected transition to private operations. They have throughout cast the demands by the plaintiffs as legal nitpicking.

“Petitioners have, from the start, treated this litigation as a game to prevent the Town from regulating the airport in any manner that does not align with their preferences,” one of the town’s attorneys, Nicholas C. Rigano, wrote in one retort on Wednesday. “But this is not a game. Someone is going to get hurt.”