A crackdown on helicopter flights out of a Kearny heliport could be coming after Labor Day.
Hudson County residents and officials pushed for a limit on noisy civilian helicopter traffic over residential neighborhoods in Hoboken and Jersey City at a meeting this week.
Concerns have mounted after the deadly crash in April, when a sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and fell into the Hudson River, killing a family of five passengers and the pilot.
Hudson County Executive Craig Guy is focused on flights that take off from the HHI Heliport in Kearny. Local ordinances and agreements limit the traffic there, but Guy asserts the heliport is not in compliance.
“They testified to certain hours that … the helicopters would fly. Well, guess what? They’re outside of those — that framework that the company testified to. That’s unacceptable,” Guy said. “People should not be waking up and have their kids woken up in the middle of the morning, 6 a.m., 5 a.m., 7 a.m., by these helicopters.”
Officials gave HHI 30 to 60 days to cut back on helicopter flights, Guy said, and HHI had agreed to limit most flights to between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Jeff Hyman, CEO of HHI Heliport, said in an interview with Spotlight News, “What we agreed to with the politicians in our meeting is what we are doing. Ninety percent of our flights are being flown between the normal operating hours.” The remaining flights do not go far outside that window, Hyman said, and the volume will decrease further in winter. But Guy is not satisfied.
“We’re getting some legal understanding with the town of Kearny, as we speak. And after Labor Day, the town of Kearny will be calling upon the enforcement of that ordinance, whatever that looks like. All aspects of our ordinance need to be enforced,” said Guy.
Advocacy groups say they are encouraged by officials’ readiness to take action, especially after verbal agreements with the heliport to reduce the number of flights out of Kearny reportedly didn’t hold up, according to Corey Davis with the Safe Skies Coalition.
Advocates also welcomed Gov. Phil Murphy’s Aug. 18 letter to the Federal Aviation Administration requesting a hard limit on nonessential helicopter flights, safer flight paths and restricted operating hours.
“Across all levels of government, everyone is realizing that this is a major issue that needs to be dealt with,” said Nick Wierda of Stop the Chop.
Bipartisan action is also underway in Congress, where local members including Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th), who lives in Jersey City, introduced bills to address the issue. One would require the FAA to examine noise and safety concerns from chopper traffic within a 20-mile radius of the Statue of Liberty, a major tourist attraction.
“We know that we have helicopters that fly over some of the most densely populated areas, not just in New Jersey, but the entire country,” Menendez said. “These helicopters fly extremely low. There’s not much of an opportunity if they had to make an emergency landing to do it anywhere but on land in a densely populated area. So, we believe this is a safety issue. There have been a number of tragic incidents over the last several decades, and we believe it’s the FAA’s obligation to make safety the number one priority, especially because many of these helicopters provide nonessential services.”
Menendez joined three House members from New York — Republican Nicole Malliotakis, and Democrats Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman — on a related bill that would prohibit nonessential civilian helicopter flights near the Statue of Liberty, with limited exceptions.
“The ban will have an obvious impact on the current operators. Greater regulations may be more costly for them, but that is a price they should have to pay to ensure that everyone that lives underneath the air spaces that they are operating in knows that they are doing so in in the safest possible way,” said Menendez.
