Copter, copters everywhere. Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Earlier this month, Uber made a feature called “Copter” available to all of its users in New York City. Now, for a few hundred dollars, anyone with the Uber app can splurge on a quick, relatively glamorous airborne trip to Kennedy airport.
Aside from the clear and present danger to public safety, helicopters are deafening. Noise complaints to the city’s 311 service pertaining to choppers are on track to reach record levels this year, the Wall Street Journal reported in September. The hovering birds have menaced Shakespeare in the Park, disturbed moments of solace on the Hudson, and made midtown even more cacophonous, creating a soundscape similar to a war zone.
“During the Bloomberg administration, we had a mayor who was a helicopter pilot himself, so we couldn’t get anywhere. [Bloomberg] didn’t want to restrict them at all,” Nadler’s district director Rob Gottheim said. But the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who presented himself as a man of the people, appeared to offer an opportunity to rid Manhattan of copters, or at least to limit their activity.
The FAA could issue Temporary Flight Restrictions over Manhattan, as it has for the airspace over Disneyland and Disneyworld since 2014, and as it does during major events, such as the United Nations General Assembly. Some city action has had an effect. When tours originate from Manhattan heliports, regulations limit operators to designated routes, with some exceptions. And cuts to the number of flights allowed to take off and land recently pushed one rent-a-chopper business into bankruptcy. But there’s a giant loophole: New York’s rules have no impact on New Jersey operators, who operate in a Wild West of regulations.
In a familiar New York story, control of a significant portion of the city’s helicopter industry — two of Manhattan’s three heliports — rests mostly in the hands of a single family. Al Trenk is co-founder, owner, and director of Liberty Helicopters, as well as co-founder and director of Saker Aviation, which operates the Downtown Manhattan heliport. Trenk’s daughter, Abigail, operates the West 30th Street heliport via her company Air Pegasus.
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