Re:
5Q With Sharon Pinkerton
Please note that Pinkerton misrepresents the environmental damage that the FAA's airspace redesign and other Port Authority initiatives would generate in the [New York] metro area. In addition, the only effective way to address delays is through demand management. Below is the New Jersey Coalition Against Aircraft Noise's (NJCAAN) recent call that the Port Authority conduct a comprehensive study of its airport expansion scheme.
"NJCAAN has called upon the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to conduct a comprehensive environmental assessment with regard to the 77 capacity enhancement recommendations found in its “Flight Delay Task Force” report. In conjunction with the FAA and air carriers, the Port Authority is implementing these recommendations without adequate environmental studies, which we believe require an environmental analysis under the cumulative impact provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), general conformity provisions of the Clean Air Act (CAA), and section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act.
The recommendations in this report include new low-altitude flight patterns in the metropolitan area over densely populated residential communities. In addition, implementation of the GPS based flight-pattern technology concentrates flight patterns over specific areas, heightening the noise impacts.
We believe that these 77 recommendations will not meaningfully reduce delays, which are due to air carrier over-scheduling of operations during peak-hour periods. The only effective way to handle the excessive volume is through demand management, which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is attempting to implement at the area airports. However, the Port Authority has adamantly opposed this FAA initiative. NJCAAN believes that instead of supporting a combination of unstudied and environmentally adverse airspace changes, the Port Authority, instead, should support demand management in compliance with the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA’s) World Wide Scheduling Guidelines (WSG), which is utilized at over 140 airports worldwide."
PA Flight Delay report
IATA WSG report
~ NJCAAN president Robert Belzer
