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Mostly Cloudy Nassau airspace more crowded under new flight patterns
More jets began flying over Nassau County on Oct. 20, under new flight patterns designed for New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia, causing many residents to become concerned about the frequency of jet noise.
Under the route redesign, which went into effect at 7:30 a.m. last Thursday, westbound planes are now required to head east over Nassau County and then north to Westchester County, before finally turning west, instead of heading directly west, over Robinsville, N.J. — the way westbound flights had been traveling since the 1960s.
The new patterns were created by the Federal Aviation Administration, following a nearly 10-year study, known as the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Airspace Redesign Project.
The goal of the study?
To use airspace more efficiently and reduce flight delays at five major airports: Newark Liberty International Airport and Teterboro Airport in New Jersey; the John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in New York; and Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania.
“New York is the most complex and congested airspace in the world, and we have to use every bit of the airspace,” said Jim Peters, a spokesperson for the FAA in New York. “New York and Philadelphia have the most delayed airports in the country. We wanted to make the operation that we have in New York more efficient.”
Peters explained that the redesign provides five airspace “roads” for jets, rather than the three that were allotted under the old design. Under the previous routes, he added, flight-gridlock over New Jersey was a frequent problem due to the limited roads.
According to Peters, the new departure routes out of JFK could send up to 200 jets a day over Nassau County, but the FAA won’t have a good idea of how many aircraft are using the patterns for nearly a year. Although the FAA changed the patterns, airlines can still file for any routes they choose, he explained.
