Editor's note: An earlier version of this story and its headline drew inaccurate conclusions about helicopter traffic over Memorial Day weekend and the potential impact of proposed legislation targeting some Manhattan helipads. It also misstated the days that the helipads operate. The story has been significantly revised and follows this note.
Complaints to 311 about helicopter noise in New York City are soaring.
There has been a 17-fold increase in calls over the past five years about the constant chop-chopping over neighborhoods, according to city data. The City Council is considering two bills aimed at tackling the increased aerial traffic contributing to the rise in complaints.
Advocates for the bills have said they’ll eliminate a major source of the noise: the roughly 30,000 tourist flights each year that originate from a city-owned helipad in Downtown Manhattan, plaguing residents with their near-constant drone. The bills would also curb tourist and commuter chopper traffic to and from a second city-owned Manhattan helipad at East 34th Street.
Both bills, debated at City Hall earlier this year, specifically target those two helipads, which are operated by New York City’s Economic Development Corporation. One bill would ban all nonessential flights (think sightseeing tours and commuters) from the two locations, while the other measure would ban traditional nonessential helicopters but allow seemingly quieter and more futuristic eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft.
Both bills would go into effect roughly six months after being signed into law.
While many residents are welcoming this change, some in the outer boroughs have said they worry the bills wouldn’t go far enough. And the fight to reduce helicopter traffic is showcasing just how complex regulation is.
‘Minimum benefit, and maximum harm.’
City Council Majority Leader Amanda Farías, a sponsor on both bills, said the goal was to rein in an industry that’s affecting residents on multiple levels.
“Right now, New York City’s helicopter industry is bringing minimum benefit, and maximum harm from both noise and carbon pollution,” Farías said in a statement.
At an April Council hearing on the proposed legislation, the Economic Development Corporation, a city-directed nonprofit that brokers deals between city government and private businesses to spur economic growth, argued that its helipads don’t actually bother people all that much.
The group claimed that just 4% of the 311 complaints about helicopter noise from spring 2023 to April 2024 were about flights originating from their two city-operated heliports. The other 96% come from other heliports in the region, according to Jennifer Sun, executive vice president for planning at the EDC.
This figure contrasts sharply with data from the City Council, which traced about one-third of helicopter noise complaints in May 2023 to the two EDC-operated helipads.
Stop the Chop, an advocacy group fighting to end nonessential helicopter traffic around New York City, contends that tens of thousands of flights each year originate from those two EDC-operated helipads. They’ve said that restricting flights from these two departure points would significantly slash noise complaints and pollution.
“This is important because it’s [helicopter noise] destroying the quality of life for tens of thousands, if not millions of New Yorkers,” Andrew Rosenthal, president of Stop the Chop, told Gothamist.
The group attended the April hearing in strong support of the proposals.
As for the EDC’s assertion about 311 complaints, Melissa Elstein, who chairs Stop the Chop's board, said her group disputed the data collection methods and was skeptical of the figures.
The outer boroughs
Some helicopter-haters in the outer boroughs said that they support the bills, but more needs to be done to regulate helicopters in the region. One Brooklyn advocate group said the aircraft will still buzz overhead, ferrying wealthy commuters and joyriders between commercial airports and helipads outside the city’s jurisdiction.
Mark Young, president of the South Midwood Residents’ Association, has also been pushing the city to do something about the noise. He said the neighborhood group has been tracking helicopter flights over the area.
Their data, Young said, showed that many of the helicopters flying over their Brooklyn homes do not come from city-operated helipads. Adding to their agita, he also said their analysis shows that most of the choppers fly at altitudes well below Federal Aviation Administration recommendations – a minimum altitude of about 1,000 feet in most cases.
While Young said he supports the pieces of legislation making their way through the City Council, he said he doesn’t think it will stop the helicopters flying over that part of the borough.
“We support our colleagues in the city,” Young said from a backyard near Brooklyn College in mid-June. “But to be very blunt, those two pieces of legislation do not impact the millions of people that live in the outer boroughs, particularly Brooklyn.”
A police helicopter – which would not be affected under the two City Council bills – flew overhead during the interview.
A Gothamist analysis of flight data from Memorial Day Weekend, which kicks off the summer travel season, shows that many of the flights that buzzed over Brooklyn and Queens originated from commercial heliports and airports like Newark, Linden and East Hampton Town airports. All told, about two-thirds of the nearly 2,000 helicopter flights recorded from the Thursday-through-Tuesday holiday weekend originated from helipads not operated by the EDC.
That weekend, only about a quarter of helicopter flights took off from the city-run Downtown Manhattan Heliport. That’s in part because that heliport is closed on Sundays, and the East 34th Street Heliport is closed Saturdays and Sundays. The findings align closely with the City Council’s analysis, which found that 64% of helicopter flights in May 2023 originated from helipads not under the EDC’s purview.
According to data collected by the South Midwood Residents’ Association, many of the flights that pass over Young’s neighborhood come from helipads in New Jersey, which are outside of New York city and state jurisdictions. And a Stop the Chop analysis found that many of the commuter flights over Brooklyn ferry passengers from West 30th Street to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.
Neither the New Jersey nor West 30th Street heliports would be affected by the new bills.
The 30th Street Heliport in Manhattan is the origin of many flights over Young’s part of southern Brooklyn, according to public data collected by the South Midwood Residents’ Association. The facility is operated by the Hudson River Park Trust, whose board of directors is appointed by city and state officials. But while it is run by appointees, the helipad is outside of the city’s direct regulatory control.
‘I tried to stop it.’
City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who sits on the Committee for Economic Development, acknowledged at a hearing that the city cannot solve the issue alone.
“New Jersey makes a lot of money,” Brewer said at a Council hearing in April, referring to profits generated by helicopter operations there. “I tried to stop it. It ain’t going to happen by itself without the federal government.”
The latest attempts at reining in nonessential flights in New York City come after decades of other efforts, including a deal reached during former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration that reduced the number of tourist flights from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport by half. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani also closed a helipad at East 60th Street in the 1990s after complaints about noise and safety.
Congressional representatives from New York have also said they support banning nonessential flights from helipads in the city. Last year, U.S. Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman penned a letter to city and state officials calling for the end to nonessential flights.
Nadler spokesperson Rob Gottheim also said the representative supports the Council's measures.
Gottheim also said the ultimate solution would be passing federal legislation to have the FAA restrict nonessential helicopter travel in New York City's airspace. Partisanship in Congress, however, has made that difficult, he said.
The view from the air as Gothamist travels to JFK Airport via helicopter.
Flying to optimize nap time
Manhattan’s 30th Street helipad is also the launching spot for an increasing number of helicopters because it serves as the headquarters for Blade, which operates short-distance passenger flights as well as a human-organ transport business.
Blade, which began running passenger flights in 2014, offers one-way rides between 30th Street and JFK Airport for $145 to $250 per person. The company also offers flights to the Hamptons.
Blade does not release data on the number of flights it operates, but some residents and lawmakers contend that companies like Blade and Uber, which also operates helicopters, are a major contributor to increased helicopter traffic in New York City.
Blade CEO Rob Wiesenthal said the company is filling a need given New York City’s heavy road traffic. In an interview, he also said Blade has committed to switching to quieter and emissions-free electric eVTOL aircraft in the coming years.
When asked for a timeline on when that might happen, he said New York City is likely to see “exhibition” flights between the heliport and the airport by 2026 or 2027.
In the meantime, Wiesenthal said Blade is committed to other traditional tactics to mitigate noise impact like requesting to fly as high as possible and limiting flights at certain times at night. Blade agreed to host Gothamist on a 10-minute flight to JFK Airport to experience their operations firsthand.
The route matched many of the flights Gothamist tracked over Memorial Day weekend. We took off from West 30th Street Heliport in Manhattan and flew over Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, eventually hooking south towards the airport. The return trip from JFK went southwest across Jamaica Bay and then north, following Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and back to Manhattan.
Other passengers on the flight to the airport included a family from Greenwich Village. The father, Dan Wallace, told Gothamist that taking a flight out of JFK has become a better option for his family than other airports like Newark in New Jersey or LaGuardia in Queens because of the faster helicopter commute.
Wallace pointed to the time and stress of getting to the airport in a taxi with a car seat and small children.
“It’s easier to manage the naps,” he said.
Elizabeth Shwe contributed reporting.
