As owner and sponsor of East Hampton Airport on Long Island, the Town of East Hampton is in the process of changing the airport’s status from public use to private use. When the new private-use airport opens, it will do so as a prior permission required (PPR) facility. In coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration and navigation charting cycles, the deactivation will occur at 11:59 pm on May 17th and activation of the new private-use airport will occur at 9:00 am on May 19th.
The Town is committed to ensuring that the status change is as least disruptive to aviation as possible. As part of this status change, the Town of East Hampton is working with an FAA-approved third-party vendor, Flight Tech Engineering, as well as the FAA itself to develop and implement Special procedures— privately owned instrument flight procedures that are approved by the FAA—in order that instrument flight rules operations will be available and permitted at the new private-use airport. Flight Tech is a third-party Navigation Services Provider and flight operations consulting firm with expertise in assessing, designing, implementing, and flight validating instrument flight procedures. Flight Tech has designed and implemented instrument procedures at airports throughout the United States and works with airports and operators of all sizes to improve access to their facilities. Flight Tech uses the same tools as the FAA and other government organizations which allows it to recreate the actual flight paths and obstacles each aircraft encounters which are different than those covered by PART 77 protection surfaces. Additionally, Flight Tech provides airport and aircraft operators with a broad array of survey, feasibility, performance, and other consulting services for both private and public applications.
Following the completion of an aeronautical study conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration under the provision of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulation, the FAA issued ‘Notice of Airport Airspace Analysis Determination Establish Private Use Airport **Conditional No Objection**
The notice issued to the Town of East Hampton on March 18, 2022 states, ‘This private use airport will not be eligible for FAA funded Instrument Flight Procedures (IFPs). Private Use airport sponsors must either enter into a reimbursable agreement with the FAA and pay for all development and maintenance costs associated with new requested special instrument flight procedures, or the airport can work with an FAA-approved 3rd party instrument flight procedure developer directly and pay all associated Page 2 of 4 costs related to development and maintenance costs to that 3rd party developer for special instrument flight procedures. In both cases, such developed special IFPs will not be published in FAA publications, nor will they be available to the general public for use. Only those entities specifically authorized by the airport owner will have access to use those special IFPs. The airport operator will provide the IFR procedures to the authorized users. Based upon data from the prior public-use airport, the use of the Gulfstream-IV (Cat D) required a Cat D traffic pattern. No traffic pattern overlaps were discovered with neighboring private-use airports, 49NY, NY03 and 80NY, therefore No Objection.’
