The Yonkers, N.Y. city council voted unanimously Tuesday night to remove heliports from approved city building codes. This move is designed to thwart a proposed plan by Helicopter Flight Services (HFS), operating as HeliNY, to establish a helitour base from a barge anchored to the shoreline along the Hudson River next to a sewage treatment plant in an industrial zone in the city's Ludlow Park section.
HFS is currently under contract to purchase the adjacent property that is now used for school bus parking. It had proposed a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven-day-a-week operation there running Bell 407s and Airbus EC130s flying three to six times per hour in what could have amounted to 13,000 to 26,000 flights per year. Tourists would be shuttled to the heliport by bus from New York City or a nearby subway station at Ludlow Street.
The helicopter operator developed the Yonkers plan in response to a plan imposed to cut helitour flights originating in New York City by 50 percent at the start of next year, but it faced immediate push-back from prominent Yonkers politicians and community groups, despite HFS's presentation of a detailed noise-abatement and environmental plan in May.