Despite the concerns of Queens residents, a planned 728-foot extension of a John F. Kennedy International Airport runway is unlikely to be halted.
The Federal Aviation Administration has demanded the move as a safety measure, and so the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said there was little it could do to avert the change. But residents of Southeast Queens, already plagued by noise pollution, are fearful of having more planes in close proximity to residential areas.
“There are days when there is just one plane after another,” Barbara Brown, chairperson of the Eastern Queens Alliance, told the New York Daily News. “If you’re in the middle of a conversation, you have to stop until the plane passes over.”
Port Authority officials, however, say the extension won’t come with an increase in the number of flights or a shift in flying altitudes.
“This is not a project that will bring more airplanes to the runway,” Thomas Bosco, interim director of the Port Authority, told the Daily News. “It gives us the opportunity to repave the runway and provide a safe environment for aircraft takeoffs and landings and the air-traveling public.” [NYDN] — Julie Strickland