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New York Lawmakers Want To Ground Commercial Helicopter Flights
By
Emily Suzanne Lever
Published Oct 25, 2019
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By
Emily Suzanne Lever
Published Oct 25, 2019
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Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Nydia Velázquez and Jerrold Nadler have introduced legislation at the federal level that would ban “non-essential” helicopter traffic in New York City, with emergency services and news organizations still permitted in the city’s airspace. That would mean the end of helicopter sightseeing tours and Ubering to the airport in a luxurious chopper ride above the hoi polloi.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who isn’t averse to the occasional helicopter ride himself, expressed general support for the idea of getting rid of commercial helicopter flights without going so far as to endorse the legislation.
"There's too much noise in this city,” de Blasio told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Friday morning. “Helicopters are very disruptive, people are worried about the safety issues. I'm very interested in what we can do to reduce or phase-out tourist flights." He added, however, that there are some private uses of helicopters that are "appropriate and pertinent."
The bill is the latest in a long fight to crack down on choppers, as residents of frequent flyover areas like Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights have long complained about noise and air pollution. And following every helicopter crash, of which there have been 26 in the city since 1982, there's a new attempt to legislate and regulate commercial helicopter flights. Earlier this year, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez launched a campaign to stop an NYC helicopter company from allowing dogs on open-door flights.
Some regulations have come down on the industry. Commercial helipads were banned from Manhattan rooftops following the infamous 1977 crash atop the Pan Am building. And a 2016 local law capped the number of tourist flights at 28,000 per year (a measly 76 per day). And doorless helicopter rides were banned after a sightseeing helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in 2018, killing five people.
But attempts to get rid of commercial helicopter flights have failed one after the other. Rep. Anthony Weiner called on the TSA to ban helicopter flights over Manhattan on national security grounds in 2006. In 2016, Councilmember Margaret Chin introduced a bill that would have imposed noise limits on aircrafts, effectively banning the helicopter tourism industry by setting a standard their helicopters could not meet.
The reason helicopters chauffeuring tourists around continue to whir above our heads despite continuous opposition? It might be the city Economic Development Corporation. The nonprofit corporation owns the Downtown Manhattan Heliport and leases it to helicopter tour operator Saker Aviation Services. A contract renewal of the arrangement in 2016 undercut Chin’s bill.
For Stop the Chop NYNJ, a group that’s long advocated for a ban, there’s also a symbolic reason in addition to practical considerations: “That they cost hundreds of dollars for just a few minutes of thrill-seeking, forcing tourists literally to look down on the rest of us, make them an almost-parodic symbol for the age of inequality,” the group said in a press release.
The fate of this new attempt at a ban is up in the air, for now.
Tagged
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helicopter ban
Emily Suzanne Lever
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