Five months after New York’s Westchester County first attempted to privatize its airport, a major business aviation hub serving the metro New York area, the county has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to manage the facility. The initial plan, floated in November, simply sought to award a 40-year lease of dual-use Westchester County Airport (HPN) to California-based investment firm Oaktree Capital Management. It met with a chilly reception from the county’s lawmakers, who decried the lack of transparency in the process and noted that there are several suitable companies that would be interested in the contract, including the incumbent AvPorts, which has managed HPN since 1977.
General aviation accounts for nearly 80 percent of traffic at the airport, yet the county did not request input or feedback on the earlier deal from stakeholders, according to private operators and businesses that serve the industryl.
In December, county legislators agreed to draft and issue the RFP. The due date for proposals is July 14, and according to the timeline issued by the county, it expects to make its selection by the end of August, with an eye toward completing the process by year-end. If the deal is approved, HPN would become the first commercially served airport in the U.S. (aside from Puerto Rico's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan) to be privatized.