A primary purpose of this project is to increase airport capacity, which the FAA did not model in the project’s environmental impact statement (EIS). In order to achieve increased capacity, the Airspace Redesign will increase flight distances by 3.7 miles on average per aircraft. The FAA claims that the project will reduce aircraft noise and aircraft emissions, but does NOT increase capacity. So how do more planes flying longer distances reduce aircraft noise and emissions as the FAA claims?

A core argument that we provided to the Court is that the FAA modeled the same number of aircraft operations in its base line (no action alternative) and its selected (Integrated Airspace alternative). As an example, Newark Airport’s operations currently are approximately 430,000 per year. However, in the year 2011 the FAA modeled 524,000 operations per year—approximately 20% higher. As a result, the FAA avoided modeling the environmental impacts for a 20% increase in traffic for Newark Airport at longer flight distances. (Note: the Agency has been confronted with extreme operational challenges in implementing Phase 1 of this project calling into question that it will ever achieve this higher level of operations.)

Given that the Court dismissed our complaint, the Public will never know the real environmental impacts of this project, if the FAA is successful in achieving its volume goals. This raises the question as to whether or not the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) adequately protects the Public’s health or merely is a statute that Federal agencies can manipulate given the “substantial deference” granted the Agency by the Court.

Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will appeal this decision all the way to the US Supreme Court, if necessary. The New Jersey Coalition Against Aircraft Noise (NJCAAN) expects to join this appeal.

Updated June 14, 2009