Mark Huber is an aviation industry veteran who has worked in the flight training, aircraft sales, aircraft component, and airport development businesses. He has flight time in more than 50 different and diverse aircraft, including helicopters, aerobatic aircraft, vintage warbirds, jet fighters, business jets and turboprops, and transport-category aircraft. He has jumped out of several of these—on purpose—with a parachute. His defense and aviation journalism has been published in a variety of national and international periodicals.

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Mark Huber

On January 31 New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) office announced a deal that would force the city’s four existing helitour operators using the downtown heliport (JRB) to curtail flights by 50 percent by January 1 next year. The reduction begins in April with an elimination of all Sunday flights, followed by further reductions of 20 percent each in June and October (the bookends of the busy summer/fall tourist season) from the baseline of the same months last year. The remaining 10 percent cut will come in January. The operators had been facing a total ban from the New York City Council, and the industry essentially viewed de Blasio’s compromise as a way of keeping the air-tour industry viable in the face of growing community opposition to anecdotal helicopter noise complaints.
“It was basically an ultimatum provided to the air-tour operators,” Helicopter Association International (HAI) president Matt Zuccaro told AIN. “The mayor runs the city of New York and he decided, ‘This is it. This is basically what I am offering you and I expect you to comply.’”
&nbsp;“I’m happy with the mayor’s position of no outright ban and trying to find an equitable solution,” Jeffrey Smith, vice president of the Eastern Region Helicopter Council (ERHC) told AIN. “I just wish the negotiations weren’t so politically charged that they would have done actual [noise] studies. We just wish it would have been handled a little differently, but something had to be done.”
The tour flights take off from the downtown heliport at Pier 6. Saker Aviation leases the FBO there from the city’s Economic Development Corp (EDC). Under the deal, the number of flights allotted Saker into the heliport will be cut to 50 percent of the tour operators’ 2015 activity.
Chris Vellios, COO of air tour and charter company Liberty Helicopters, told AIN that he expects each operator to be allotted cuts on the basis of its 2015 flight numbers. Liberty operates a mixed fleet of 10 Airbus AS355 twins and AS350 singles. Vellios said he expects the cuts will mean that Liberty needs 25 fewer employees during the summer/fall months and will reallocate some of its tour helicopters to its charter fleet. “We don’t plan on selling any of our helicopters,” Vellios said. “This is an unfortunate thing, but we were facing a total ban.”
&nbsp;“Nobody in this situation ever gets what they truly want. I’m at least encouraged that an agreement was reached. It shows a path for the future of air tours in New York and the parties are working together,” HAI’s Zuccaro said.
<h2>Temporary Changes</h2>
However, the deal is expected to last for only two years, at which time further cuts could be imposed or a total ban resurrected.
“The interesting part is that even with this good-faith effort and everyone giving up to get a consensus, you still have opponents saying this is not satisfactory. They are not going to be satisfied until the entire industry is shut down. That is not a reasonable negotiating position, and it’s not in good faith by any stretch of the imagination,” Zuccaro said.
“This plan is only a two-year extension [of the EDC’s concessionaire agreement with Saker],” Smith said. “You don’t know what the concessionaire agreement will be after that. There are a lot of variables that we don’t know. There’s nothing to show what change the metric of a 50-percent flight reduction will bring about. If you have demand for tourist flights and you cut the supply by 50 percent you’ll raise the price to mitigate some of the losses, but you can raise it only so much or people can’t afford it.”
Any demand for lower-priced and more abundant air tours of New York City could be met by launching them from outside the city in places such as White Plains or in New Jersey, Smith warned.
“A move like this can spread the number and locations of operators, and then we have no control over where the operations happen. I don’t think tour operators in New York City will [fight] it because they want to maintain their foothold at the downtown heliport. But the demand could be there for people to get in a bus and go to a different location and get on a tour and fly around New York City. The FAA is not going to restrict the airspace,” he said.
This would not only load up the airspace where the current tour operators fly; these new operators would not be bound by current voluntary routing agreements not to fly across areas such as Central Park. “A tour operator from another part of the country might find it advantageous to get into this market. Then the city of New York has no authority and no say over where those tour routes are,” Smith said.
Nationally, Zuccaro thinks the agreement will embolden helicopter foes in other markets, particularly Los Angeles. “There are going to be people who interpret it as a call to arms and target air-tour operations in other locations. It’s unfortunate,” he said.
Smith agrees. “This is going to have a ripple effect across the country again. It’s another New York thing that other communities see and act on, and I think you’ll see it in L.A. and other places. It also boosts the [pending] New Jersey legislation [A.B. 1198] that would ban air-tour operators from basing in New Jersey licensed airports or heliports.”&nbsp;
While that bill has widespread political support, in the event it passed it would likely draw an immediate legal challenge as a violation of FAA grant assurances.
Meanwhile, New York’s helitour operators will soon need to make do with less. 
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