NBAA has joined with several other stakeholders in filing legal challenges to tomorrow's planned closure of East Hampton Airport (KHTO) on New York’s Long Island. The town's plan calls for the airport to reopen 33 hours later as private-use East Hampton Town Airport (KJPX), with access restrictions under a prior permission required (PPR) program.
The latest legal; effort consists of a pair of motions filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York asking for an injunction. In a motion of contempt filed on May 14, the claimants argued that the town’s plan, which includes imposing high landing fees, bans on aircraft weighing more than 50,000 pounds, and restrictions on aircraft with high decibel levels, violates the permanent injunction issued by the court in 2015 following a previous attempt by the town to impose similar restrictions in violation of the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 (ANCA). The motion noted that the town’s plan “has no basis in law and is contemptuous of this court’s prior ruling.”
The second complaint asked the court to rule that the town’s attempted reclassification of the airport is preempted by ANCA and to prohibit the town officials from any further attempt to close the airport or impose noise regulations until the town complies with ANCA requirements.
“Allowing this airport’s closure and reopening to proceed would undermine decades of federal policy and create a dangerous path by which other communities could similarly claim ‘local control’, restrict access to their airports and destroy the functionality of the national air transportation system,” said NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen.