Fewer Flights, Quieter Skies, Less Money
(12/24/2008) When the 2008 summer season ended, the number of planes
 Morgan McGivern
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landing at the East Hampton Airport decreased dramatically, Jim Brundige, the airport manager, reported recently.
Compared to last year, the number of plane “operations,” or takeoffs and landings, this fall, is down an average of 30 percent.
Last month, the number of helicopters coming and going was cut almost by half — from 264 during November 2007 to 136 this year. At the same time last year, there were 155 jet operations at the airport; this year, there were 99. In all of 2007 there were 31,292 operations at the airport, compared to 28,460, year-to-date, as of early December.
This month, Mr. Brundige said at an East Hampton Town Board meeting several weeks ago, “it’s like somebody turned off a light switch.”
“Yesterday, we had three flights in here,” Mr. Brundige said Tuesday. “I can only speculate about the drop-off in traffic,” he said. “It started with fuel costs. They’ve come down now,” he said, but the effect of the downturn in the “economy in general has included people in high-income brackets.”
Fuel sales at the airport have also taken a sharp dive. Last year, for instance, 40,800 gallons were sold in the month of November. This year, the total was 21,300. From September through November, a total of $17,280 in fuel sales occurred, $8,249 less than last year. The town earns a percentage of overall fuel sales, which are conducted by contractors at the airport.
Citation Shares, a jet company that is one of the airport’s biggest customers, in terms of numbers of planes that come and go, is laying off pilots and generally tightening its belt, Mr. Brundige learned from a director of operations at the company. The cutbacks are “across the board,” Mr. Brundige said.
The good news is, with fewer jets and helicopters taking off and landing at the airport, complaints about aircraft noise, a thorn in the side of a widening circle of Long Island residents, have declined. Helicopter traffic concerns have led to the involvement of Representative Tim Bishop and Senator Charles Schumer, and discussions with the Federal Aviation Administration.
But, with fewer landings, the airport is also seeing less revenue from landing fees. However, Mr. Brundige said, “we’ve still covered our budget.”
Unlike other East Hampton Town funds, in which deficits have increased, the airport fund remains in the black, Mr. Brundige said. Before the drop-off in air traffic, “I was going to anticipate about a $300,000 surplus,” he said. However, he said, the fund “still will have a surplus of about $100,000.”
He said he hopes to apply some of the money to “noise abatement efforts, such as a seasonal control tower.”
An increase in landing fees that went into effect in September has tempered the economic effect of fewer landings this fall. For private aircraft, the landing fee for a single-engine propeller plane went from $5 in 2006 to $7 this year. Landing fees for a multi-engine turbine aircraft, such as a turbo-prop, helicopter, or jet, doubled, from $25 to $50, as did the fee for landing a larger plane of 25,000 pounds or more, from $100 to $200. A new fee of $400 for landing a private jet of over 50,000 pounds has been instituted. Fees for commercial aircraft are slightly higher.
A $350 landing fee for “large cabin class” helicopters was also added this year, as was a night landing fee surcharge of 25 percent, for planes touching down between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., which is discouraged because of the disturbance to neighbors.
Income from the sale of advertising space at the airport, a program instituted this year, also bolstered the airport’s bottom line, raising $97,500.
East Hampton Town entered into a three-year contract last spring with Luxury Media Partners, an advertising sales company, to sell ad space at the airport during the summer season on billboards, light boxes, banners, and other sites. Town officials retained veto power over specific proposals, based on concerns about over-commercializing the public facility. The town is to receive half of all proceeds.
This year, ads were sold for several billboards that faced the tarmac and the parking lot, Mr. Brundige said, as well as for scrolls at the edges of flat-screen TVs in the terminal and on the patio that were tuned to Plum TV.
“Our fears that they would be gaudy or not fitting with the rural aesthetics of the airport — we no longer fear that,” Mr. Brundige said. “They don’t jump out at you; they’re not intrusive, but your eye is drawn to them.”
Originally, Brian Pusillano, of Luxury Media Partners, had estimated that the ads could bring in as much as $600,000. “It was a disappointing year,” he said Tuesday. “But it was our set-up year. We didn’t have anything [already in place] to show” potential advertisers, he said. The contract with the town was not finalized until late March, after the point in the year when companies have often made their seasonal advertising decisions. In addition, Mr. Pusillano said, “we had one major cancellation.”
Despite the fact that this year “we’re looking at a very tough advertising economy . . . I’m relatively optimistic,” Mr. Pusillano said. “We’ll certainly improve upon it this year.” Several potential advertisers are due to visit the airport in the coming month, he said. The potential customers that advertisers desire to reach will still be using the airport, he said. “People are still going to come out to their houses.”