NEW YORK: After decades of complaints about noise and air pollution from the tens of thousands of tourist helicopter flights that circle Manhattan each year, New York City announced a deal Sunday that would cut their number in half by January 2017.
In addition, the helicopters, as familiar a site on the city’s waterfront as sea gulls and joggers, will not fly on Sundays starting on April 1 and will be banned from flying over Governors Island and Staten Island.
The agreement, announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio, was intended to address the complaints while trying to keep aloft a multimillion-dollar industry. Last year, more than 59,000 flights took off from Pier 6 near the Battery, the only heliport that provides the tours.
The de Blasio administration hailed the move as a way to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers while protecting an industry that helps pay for operations at the Pier 6 heliport through $2.9 million in rent.
“Everyone gave a little to get to this outcome, but the solution will mean a more livable city for everyone,” de Blasio said.
Yet there are many who believe that even one tourist helicopter is too many.
“I’m happy there’s finally movement on the issue, but I have serious doubts that the 50% will be enough,” Rep Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat who represents the West Side of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, said.
Like many elected officials, Nadler has been campaigning for an all-out ban on the helicopters dating to the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, something he still believes is the best course of action.
According to the agreement, tour operators would have to reduce the number of flights by 20% by June, and the following month, they would be required to submit monthly reports tracking flight routes, including whether any helicopters stray too close to land.
The aircraft are allowed only over the harbour and Hudson River as far north as the George Washington Bridge. A third-party monitor, paid for by the operators, would also conduct field observations.
Currently, 219 people are employed in the industry, according to the city’s Economic Development Corp, including 50 at the Pier 6 heliport, which is owned by the city and operated by Saker Aviation.
The tours used to take off from the city’s two other heliports, at East 34th Street and West 30th Street, but they were all moved downtown by 2010 after neighbourhood opposition.
Liberty Helicopters of Kearny, New Jersey, has been ferrying tourists around the city for 29 years, employs 100 people and flies 10 helicopters in the summer season, said Chris Vellios, the chief operating officer.
“We’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and make these reductions work, but it’s better than an outright ban, which the City Council had been considering,” he said.
Liberty spent $120,000 lobbying the mayor’s office and the EDC last year, and the Helicopters Tourism & Jobs Council, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, spent $85,000 on lobbying.
Liberty’s tours charges passengers $150 for 15 minutes and $225 for 20 minutes, and the helicopters can seat up to six people (less, depending on weight).
The trips loop along the Brooklyn waterfront, past Governors Island to Red Hook, across to the Statue of Liberty, and then up the Hudson River, leaving every few minutes. Because they do a loop, residents say that it seems as if twice as many helicopters are buzzing by their homes.
“It’s a compromised compromise,” John Dellaportas, the president of the Stop the Chop NYNJ and a resident of Battery Park City, said. “So instead of a flight every two minutes, it will be one every four minutes.”
On Sunday afternoon, the heliport was not quite so busy, with tours leaving every five to 10 minutes. A roar would overtake the promenade, sending ripples across the water.
Athenie Brake was visiting for the weekend from Alberta, Canada, and had just taken her father, Wayne, out for a birthday tour. She took her mother last year, as well.
“If this isn’t offered on Sundays, we won’t be able to take a trip,” she said. “We just came down for the weekend, and if they don’t offer it, we won’t get the chance.”
Josep Genebriera and Nicholas Eklund, a couple from Jacksonville, Florida, said a Sunday ban would have gotten in the way of a birthday surprise Genebriera had planned. “But I guess I could have just booked it for yesterday,” she said.
Air pollution is another concern. Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, was co-author of an article that was published over the weekend in The New York Times denouncing the growth of helicopter flights at the same time the city had begun to reclaim its waterfront for recreational space.
Benepe — who said in an interview that he can hear the helicopters from his own apartment on West End Avenue — and Merritt Birnbaum, executive director of Governors Island Alliance, wrote that certain helicopters generate 950 pounds of carbon dioxide per hour, more than 42 times the emissions of the average car.