By Phil Corso
A meeting has been set between the Federal Aviation Administration and lawmakers in northeast Queens with hopes of grounding residents’ concerns about new flight noise booming throughout their communities.
According to a spokesman for state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), the senator will join state Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside) Friday to meet with the FAA at its Queens regional office on behalf of their concerned constituents.
Elected officials on the federal level, including U.S. Reps. Steve Israel (D-Hauppauge) and Grace Meng (D-Bayside), were also invited to the meeting, but their attendance was not confirmed as of press time.
For months, community leaders throughout Bayside, Douglaston and beyond have been pushing for a seat at the negotiating table with the agency, which had previously said it would listen to public comments after testing a NextGen procedure for flights departing from Runway 13 at LaGuardia Airport.
Last month, Avella said he and Braunstein had already met with the FAA in September to discuss changes the agency was testing involving departure and landing patterns at LaGuardia. In that meeting, the senator said the FAA finished a six-month testing phase of the new procedures and indicated it would go on to examine its data before following up with area elected officials and northeast Queens communities.
Officials were told soon afterward that the new flight procedures were to be made official by the FAA and a follow-up meeting was never scheduled, Avella said.
“Frankly, it is a disgrace that the FAA has apparently instituted this new departure procedure without the proper input from the community,” Avella said. “This new departure procedure has and will continue to have a profound impact on the quality of life for residents in northeast Queens and they deserve to be heard. I tried to make this point very clear in my meeting with the FAA.”
Reach reporter Phil Corso by e-mail at pcorso@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4573.
