By: Vincent Tartaglia
A bill cosponsored by U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Nydia Velázquez and Jerrold Nadler is being introduced. Called the Improving Helicopter Safety Act of 2019, its goal is to cut down chopper noise and the chances of helicopter crashes in one of the most densely packed cities in the world.
The proposed legislation comes in the wake of a fatal helicopter crash in June and thousands of complaints about helicopter noise.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has outspokenly endorsed the notion of scrapping non-essential helicopter flights over Manhattan, but has failed to give his thumbs-up to the federal legislation put forth by the trio.
“There should be no non-essential flights over Manhattan,” de Blasio said during his weekly radio segment on WNYC. “The only helicopters that should be going over Manhattan is if it is public service, uniform services, things that are essential.”
“I have no use for them, personally,” the mayor added, referring to tourist flights. “There’s too much noise in this city. 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. I don’t think it’s particularly important to have ride-share helicopters.”
Maloney is the chief sponsor of the bill. “After the crash atop a building on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan in June, she called helicopter accidents “one of the nightmares New Yorkers worry about … I truly, deeply believe that non-essential flight should be banned from New York City. It is just too densely populated, it is too dangerous, and there is absolutely no safe place to land,” reported The Brooklyn Eagle.
Since 1982, the paper points out, “there have been roughly 30 helicopter crashes in New York City, causing at least 25 fatalities, the legislators said, citing National Transportation Safety Board records. The city banned helicopters from landing on rooftop helipads following a gruesome accident in 1977 in Manhattan. Besides safety issues, the city’s 311 call center has received nearly 2,000 helicopter noise complaints through Oct. 15 this year, a Brooklyn Eagle analysis of city records shows.”
Helicopter flights between Manhattan and Kennedy or Newark airports “have surged 81 percent in five years, to nearly 4,400 roundtrips in 2018. And roundtrips between Manhattan and LaGuardia jumped by more than 40 percent,” according to ny1.com.
There may well be a lot more to come. In March, a company called Blade expanded operations offering continuous ride-sharing flights between Manhattan and the airports,” ny1.com added. “Not only are you putting more passengers on a helicopter to split the cost, but we have a dedicated aircraft that’s going back and fourth all day long,” said Will Heyburn, Head of Corporate Development for Blade. And now Uber is testing a ridesharing service between Wall Street and Kennedy Airport.”
