Aviation Conspiracy: My Comments On The FAA Airspace Redesign Plan

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Quote of the Week: "The NY-NJ-Philadelphia Airspace Redesign DEIS, although cleverly crafted to look scientific, is actually cynically designed to maintain many of the unscientific, politically influenced unjust aircraft routes." comment on the NY-NJ-Philadelphia Airspace Redesign DEIS by me

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter #363...............................................................................February 12, 2006 Past newsletters can be accessed at:

--------------------------------------------------------------------- My Comments On The FAA Airspace Redesign Plan

--------------------------------------------------------------------- As Bill Sees It: (Editorial) My Comments On The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) of the New York New Jersey Airspace Redesign Plan. The FAA has asked for comments on the Airspace Redesign Plan so I thought I would give them some this week. I intend to comment as the vice president of Friends of Rockaway, which is a environmental group that I have been buttociated with for a long time. My comments and criticisms of the plan focus mainly on the Rockaway area impacted by JFK Airport as that is the area where I have the most experience. I'm sure that the FAA has used the same crude, corrupt, criminal and arrogant analysis for other areas in the plan. I paid particular attention to the way the FAA plan dealt with the community of Lawrence, Long Island. Lawrence has a powerful lobbying organization whose purpose is to divert planes away from their community (the Lawrence Diversion). I was amazed, but not surprised, that the FAA clbuttified (Vol. 3, Appendix E, Sec. 4) it as a high (65+ DNL) zone which they indicate by the color orange (see map on the left on their low detail (better to hide the truth) map which of course doesn't even show JFKAirport or it's runways. The black and white Port Authority of NY-NJ noise map above it shows the real JFK Airport noise impacts on Lawrence. The Port Authority maps have always shown that Lawrence has always gotten their flights diverted away from them over their neighbors. This relationship with the FAA is so close that the FAA even listed the Lawrence lobbying group as one of the "agencies consulted" in the formation of the plan!!! The FAA is supposed to answer any comments that are made on their DEIS. No doubt it will be the usual lies and distortions that make up the plan itself. I was wrong when I said that the EPA has to "approve" this con job, they only have to "comment" on it. I am looking forward to seeing that. I'm sure there is tremendous pressure for them to rubber stamp this piece of crap. I really think an investigation into this outrage and lawsuits are in order.

Re: Corruption, deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of information in the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia Airspace Redesign Plan DEIS

The NY-NJ-Philadelphia Airspace Redesign DEIS, although cleverly crafted to look scientific, is actually designed to maintain many of the unscientific, politically influenced, unjust aircraft routes. It demonstrates the deep arrogance and contempt the FAA has for NEPA and their lack of concern for environmental and health impacts of aviation on the public.

While my comments focus mainly on JFK Airport which impacts, having lived there from 1990 to 1997, I am sure they apply to many other communities in Airspace Redesign Plan area. The plan's intention to deceive can easily be seen by the way the language that the FAA uses to hide their real intent. The one word the FAA never uses in their routing rationales is fairness.

This DEIS can only be described as a official con job designed to expand aviation at the expense of those least able to defend themselves. I request that this severely flawed DEIS be thrown out and redone using science and fairness as its basis instead of official corruption and political influence.

My reasons for requesting that the FAA's DEIS be thrown out and-or redone are:

1. Heavy use of technical jargon in unintelligible, unreadable maps , charts with columns of numbers with no interpretation and extremely large online files (58 megabytes) readable to only those with high speed Internet connections. The FAA has made no effort to put technical information into a form understandable to the public. No one but engineers involved in airspace planning could possibly understand most of their aircraft routing maps. This is obviously an example of the FAA hiding impacts from the public in this plan. The typical JFK Airport routing map on the left not only doesn't show the airport, it doesn't even show one landform!!!

2. Continued concentration and increased flights over poor and minority JFK Airport communities. The DEIS indicates that there will be no changes to JFK routing. In other words projected increases of JFK Airport operations will be inflicted on the poor and minority areas, which already have flights diverted from Lawrence, LI and concentrated on them. Concentration of flights over poor and minority communities. The FAA goes to great lengths to hide actual population impacts by using things like "generalized land use maps" (see below right) in order to hide the protected (wealthy and white) communities impacts and continue their policy of diversion of flights over poor and minority communities.

3. Use of Phony "Land Use" (see maps below) maps instead of population maps to determine airport routing environmental impacts on people. This is another example of the FAA avoiding showing the actual impacts of noise on people. In the case of Rockaway what you see when you look at their map is not 14 story apartments full of people but large stretches of once vacant land. The purpose is once again to use the poor and minority areas as dumping grounds and to protect the politically connected. The map on the left was prepared by N.Y. City and uses the year 2000 census tracks. An updated analysis would show even more population in the Arverne area.

4. Falsely portraying Rockaway populated areas as being "vacant." The JFK Airport "Generalized Land Use" (Vol.2, 3-08) map (picture on right) misrepresents vast stretches of land as being "vacant." The Arverne section of Rockaway consists of many apartment houses and the once vacant land is all built on or in the process of being built on. Yet the FAA falsely portrays it as vacent in order to divert flights over it.

5. Use of low resolution pictures, especially "noise maps," with little detail, in extremely large files. In the online site the "noise modeling technical report" was 58 megabytes! Only people with a very high speed Internet connection could access this. I believe this was purposely done to reduce public access.

6. Use of aircraft routing "maps" that do not show airports and even landforms that could be correlated to the plane routes. Some of these maps are so incomprehensible that they look more like a Jackson Pollack painting than an aircraft route. The picture below is typical of how the FAA shows aircraft routing. This shows the contempt and arrogance the FAA has for the public and the NEPA process. 7. "Noise Sensitive" areas mentioned, but not identified. These areas are mentioned in the DEIS Executive Summary but not identified as to where they are, or what criteria is used to determine what makes one community noise sensitive and one noise tolerant. I suspect that this one of the non-scientific terms that the FAA uses to justify racist and politically influenced aircraft routing over communities.

8. DEIS "Environmental Justice" section (Vol.4 Appendix I) consists of merely a computer printout of census tracts. No other information was given, such as maps or comments on minorities significantly impacted. The plan ignored the current and future impacts of increased overflights of JFK Airport on the poor and minority communities of Rockaway, N.Y. City. I guess the FAA thought it better to say nothing than be caught in a lie.

9. Safety Issues Involving the reduction of plane separation over N.Y. City not adequately dealt with. Changing the separation distances allowed for planes over the congested N.Y. City metropolitan area airspace is a major change. This change of five miles to three miles separation could cause a major collision or wake turbulence crash as what happened in Rockaway with the American Airlines Flt. 587 crash in 2001. This is a major change in flight operations and should have a detailed separate analysis of the safety implications for the flying public as well as the people on the ground.

10. Air Pollution Increases Not Addressed Or Analyzed. There seems to be a total ignoring of the air pollution impacts of the Airspace Redesign Plan on communities and the ozone layer and local communities from increased numbers of planes this plan will allow to be used at NY-NY and Philadelphia airports.

11. FAA used old, inaccurate maps to indicate land use. These maps do not reflect current or immediate future residential area usage. This is especially true in the Arverne section of the Rockaway peninsula where there has been dramatic home building and population growth in the last few years. Many of these areas are clbuttified by the FAA as "vacant."

12. No mention is made of night flights or the FAA's "preferred noise abatement runways" which concentrate night time flights and noise over poor and minority communities. Because the plan carefully avoids any routing changes at JFK Airport, that will mean that the FAA intends to increase the already heavy concentrations of flights on those poor and minority communities, like the Arverne section of Rockaway, which already have flights unjustly concentrated over them. 13. The FAA completely ignored the JFK Airport noise impacts on minority communities from planned increased flights. The FAA has decided not to change the flight routes at JFK Airport. This means that they apparently intend to inflict increased noise impacts on poor and minority communities that have long had their flights diverted away from Lawrence, Long Island (the Lawrence Diversion) and over them.

14. Falsely identifying Lawrence, Long Island as a JFK Airport 65 DNL high noise impact noise area. The FAA has falsely identified Lawrence, Long Island as a high impact (orange color) noise area. If the year 2000 "baseline" that the FAA used for their noise map is correct, which I doubt, that year must be a aberration to actual noise impacts. I believe this is a false representation as Port Authority (see picture below) maps have always shown departure flights headed for Lawrence as being diverted over Rockaway putting Lawrence in a much lower noise contour. Also, JFK Airport is not even indicated on the FAA map. (Vol. 3, Appendix E, Sec. 4)

15. Listing of community lobbying groups as "consulting agencies" in Airspace Redesign Plan. The Town and Village Aviation Safety-Noise Mitigation (TVASNAC) organization is headquartered in Lawrence, L.I. and is a lobbying group for Lawrence and other nearby communities (the Five Towns). The "Governor's Group of Nine" is another political lobbying group which consists of people concerned with protecting particular wealthy, white areas from overflights. I think it is outrageous that these groups were included as "agencies" in the DEIS plan. They obviously have an influence on FAA policies while other communities do not get the same privilege. This unfortunately, is typical of how the FAA decides which community gets flights directed over them.