With reference to your very informative article in The Roslyn News of May 22-28, 2019, titled “Aircraft Noise,” we, in my Village of East Hills, are also suffering greatly from the noise, pollution and reduction in quality of life due to low flying aircraft.
Our Mayor, Michael R. Koblenz, has been doing yeomen work in our attempt to eliminate this problem, but he cannot carry the ball alone, so I’m glad that there is a Nassau County Legislative Committee working on this issue.
It is my suggestion that the committee get in touch with the union representing the air traffic controllers and hire one or two retired air traffic controllers who worked in the Garden City office, and during their employment had to follow FAA instructions as to how they routed aircraft.
As The New York Times reports, aircraft manufacturers, airlines and the FAA are all in bed together and the FAA is in the hip pocket of the airlines. A shocking and sad example of this are the Boeing crashes of the 737 Max aircraft. The FAA will talk about public flying safety and we all agree that that’s paramount, but what they won’t talk about is routing aircraft to save fuel and millions of dollars in expenses for the airlines.
It is my suggestion that the retired air traffic controllers would be able to explain to us better routing so that planes don’t fly over heavily populated Long Island communities. We do not want to appear to be crying NIMBY (not in my backyard). The retired flight controllers, acting as our consultants, will be able to give us the expertise that we don’t have so that the aircraft could be routed away from heavily populated areas of Long Island and still keep the plane riding public safe.
—Lewis J. Katz, LJK:PD
