Just plane nasty: Fluid from aircraft pelts Malverne couple

Sludge is the best way to describe the oily black substance that fell from the sky onto two Malvernites sitting in their backyard last week.

Around 9:30 p.m. last Thursday, Arthur Hughes and his wife called Malverne police to report that they had been pelted with drops of the stuff as they sat on the patio of their Nassau Boulevard home. They thought a plane flying overhead had leaked mechanical fluid and feared it would be in danger.

Malverne cops called the Port Authority and Federal Aviation Administration and discovered that the sludge might be treated sewage that leaked from the aircraft.

“We are currently investigating the incident and are not yet sure if the debris that fell was definitively from a plane,” FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen told the Herald. “Hopefully, we will be able to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Hughes and obtain some samples of the substance in an effort to gain some understanding of what actually happened.”

Bergen also said that this case is rare and that the FAA often receives reports of “blue ice” — a mixture of excrement and disinfectants that freezes at high altitudes — falling from airplane lavatory holding tanks in people’s yards.

A neighbor of the Hughes, Laurence Major Jr., visited the pair minutes after the incident occurred and observed what he describes as droplets an inch or smaller in size on their clothing, faces, porch deck and patio table.

Malverne residents have long become fed up with the raucous, low-flying aircraft arriving at and departing from Kennedy International Airport. Air traffic over the village has increased in recent years, according to residents, who are most disturbed by the noisy machines in the twilight hours.

Mayor Patricia McDonald said she is concerned with the effect of the noise on her constituents, and this incident further heightens her worry. “Our community, along with several others that experience this disturbance, has a very vested interest in this investigation into the falling objects,” she said, “and hope that these aircraft problems can finally be addressed.”