There were 859 takeoffs and landings at East Hampton Airport over Independence Day weekend, the highest total since 2019, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee during its meeting on Saturday.
Aircraft operations were unfettered by restrictions that the town board had intended to implement as of May 19. The airport’s aviation designation was changed from HTO to JPX, but a New York State Supreme Court justice, in response to multiple lawsuits filed against the town, granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the town from closing it as a public facility and reopening it two days later as a private one. The order remains in place.
There were 213 takeoffs and landings, also known as operations, at the airport on June 30, a Thursday. On July 1, there were 227 operations. Activity slowed to 63 operations on July 2, climbed to 135 on July 3, and soared to 221 takeoffs and landings on Independence Day, a Monday.
In contrast, there were 743 takeoffs and landings over the holiday weekend last year, and 745 operations in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2019 holiday weekend had 1,014 takeoffs and landings. The statistics came from Jim Brundige, the airport manager, Ms. Overby said.
Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said on Tuesday that there had been a total of 7,774 takeoffs and landings at the airport from Jan. 1 through June 30, well below the 12,002 operations in the same period last year. In 2020, there were 6,946 takeoffs and landings between Jan. 1 and June 30, and 9,030 operations during the same period in 2019.
To date in 2022, slightly more than 12,000 complaints about aircraft noise have been registered, Ms. Overby told the committee. The most, 2,956, came from Wainscott. Nearly as many came from the North Fork, followed by Shelter Island, from which 1,186 were recorded. Slightly more than 1,000 came from Northwest Woods in East Hampton, 949 from Noyac, 778 from East Hampton Village, 667 from Sagaponack, 503 from North Sea, 314 from Water Mill, 294 from Bridgehampton, and 236 from East Hampton North. An additional 54 complaints were recorded in Hampton Bays, North Haven, and Montauk, most of those coming from Hampton Bays.
“It’s not just the volume,” Barry Raebeck, director of the Coalition to Transform East Hampton Airport, said in response to the statistics read by Ms. Overby. Flight patterns appear to be changing as well, he said, observing that aircraft, which would normally fly at an altitude of around 2,000 feet on approach, “much more often are flying below 1,000 feet, and now directly over the houses.” Some pilots have moved their flight paths to the west, he asserted, saying that “voluntary compliance that was being followed is falling apart.” Others at the virtual meeting agreed.
Mr. Raebeck noted that attorneys from the Cooley law firm, outside counsel to the town for airport matters, have said that they were told by the town board to do the necessary research and then take steps to close the airport as soon as legally possible. “I think it’s very clear that we are being held hostage by the ‘airporters’ in our own community,” he said, “being extorted by people who refuse to acknowledge they are a huge problem for this community. We are being bullied. It’s just awful, and I don’t think we should take it a whole lot longer.”
The court issued a temporary restraining order “just for discussing that we are going to close the airport,” Ms. Overby said. She, too, feels bullied, she said, “and I think our airport is not being run by the people who own the airport, which is everyone who lives in East Hampton. We are not able to run our own airport” — 600 acres of land “that’s been taken away from you, as far as I feel.”
Erin King Sweeney of the East Hampton Community Alliance, which advocates for the airport to remain open but is not involved in litigation against the town, said that “we have long been publicly supportive of many of the town’s actions toward the future of the airport. We share the sentiment of 80 percent of residents who support reasonable restrictions.” As she has stated previously, she said that her group offered to meet with town officials numerous times “to discuss a sustainable future for the airport. I do not believe the current T.R.O. prevents this type of discussion.”
Ms. Overby said that that would be up to the five members of the town board. “I don’t know how you get over a T.R.O.,” she said, adding that “I know some of your attorneys are the same ones that are suing us.”
