Following a decision by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to permit the town of East Hampton in New York to use airport funds to pay for legal fees stemming from its unsuccessful effort to impose access restrictions at East Hampton Airport, the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) has expressed its disappointment.
NBAA maintains that the town’s use of airport revneue to pay for its legal fees is contrary to agency precedent, is bad policy, and at odds with congressional instructions.
“We are disappointed with the FAA’s decision,” said NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen. “Operators at East Hampton Airport were effectively double-charged in the fight for their right to use the airport. The town of East Hampton significantly raised the landing fees at the airport to generate additional revenue, at the same time that it was incurring the legal expenses associated with defending the unauthorised restrictions.
The underlying litigation responded to an attempt by the town of East Hampton to impose a series of noise and access restrictions at HTO. Ultimately, the federal courts agreed with NBAA and local aviation operators that the restrictions violated federal requirements, and they have since been lifted.
In its appeal to the FAA, NBAA stressed that East Hampton had been advised by its own counsel that the proposed restrictions were illegal, and that prior federal guidance had made clear that airport revenue can be used only for the benefit of an airport. NBAA stated that “the town had an explicit anti-airport and bad-faith agenda. The town openly refused to utilise the opportunities provided by, much less comply with, the applicable federal laws… the FAA is unlikely to ever have before it, in its own words, a clearer ‘unique’ case of the ‘abuse’ of airport accounts to fund impermissible legal expenditures.”
