Residents in a Bergen County town are accusing the Federal Aviation Administration of reneging on a plan to change the flight path at Teterboro Airport.
Residents in Hackensack have complained for years that private jets landing at the airport are too loud and fly too close to buildings. FAA officials were supposed to change the flight paths by the end of the summer. But that plan has been delayed.
“If I’m sitting on my deck and my phone rings, I have to go in my house and close my door to be able to have a phone conversation,” says Hackensack Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino.
Canestrino, a retired aerospace engineer herself, says that the planes fly too close to apartment buildings and Hackensack University Medical Center when coming in to land.
“Multiple apartment buildings housing approximately 9,000 folks and those apartment building are even taller than the hospital building,” she says.
The new flight path plan would have had planes descending west of the heavily populated hospital areas. But Canestrino and other officials are accusing the FAA of dragging their feet on the plan.
Some residents say that fewer planes used Teterboro when they moved to the area. But they say that the number has been increasing. The FAA says that nearly 175,000 takeoffs and landings occurred at Teterboro last year.
The FAA says the delays are due to the federal government shutdown earlier this year, which delayed the completion of an environmental study. The new flight path should go into effect in March 2020.
Hackensack officials say that they are contemplating going to court over the issue.