FAA rerouting jet traffic in New York, Philadelphia

FAA rerouting jet traffic in New York, Philadelphia    The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said a new way of handling air traffic in and around New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia will help reduce delays and will make air travel more reliable.
   “This new concept in airspace design will help us handle the rapidly growing number of flights in the Northeast in a much more efficient way,” said FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey. “This airspace has been unchanged since the 1960s, and we need to look at creative new ways to avoid delays.”
   The FAA said the plan, known as the Integrated Airspace Alternative, would reduce the complexity of the current air traffic system operation in the New York area and Philadelphia by more efficiently directing aircraft to and from major airports in the two metropolitan areas.
   But the changes, announced last Friday, are already provoking complaints that it will create unacceptable noise in some communities.
   Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J. issued a press release criticizing the plan, saying it would “force more than 300,000 New Jerseyans to live with more air noise in their communities and homes, including residents in northern Bergen County, Gloucester County, Essex County and Union County.”
   “New Jerseyans deal with enough noise in their daily lives. We don’t need the peace and quiet of our communities shattered by the needless roar of a jet engine,” Lautenberg said. “We all appreciate the importance of rerouting planes, but we cannot do so at the expense of our quality of life, as the Bush administration is proposing to do.”
   The FAA said the preferred alternative would save an estimated 12 million minutes of delay annually for the four major metropolitan airports — Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark and Philadelphia.
   The agency expects to publish the final Environmental Impact Statement sometime this summer. A series of five informational meetings, one in each study area state, will be held late next month and in early May to discuss noise mitigation associated with the preferred alternative.
   The FAA said it expects to issue a “record of decision,” the agency’s decision on how to proceed with the airspace redesign project, in late summer 2007.
   Additional project information is available at the following Web site: www.faa.gov/nynjphl_airspace_redesign.