Washington, D.C.--Congressman Eliot Engel praised the proposal by the U.S. Department of Transportation to rescind plans to auction takeoff and landing rights at New York-area airports. Last October, the Department of Transportation proposed to withdraw these rights from airlines operating at airports in the New York region and auction them to the highest bidder.

Rep. Engel said, “I congratulate Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for his proposal to stop this bad proposal from the previous Administration. Auctioning of the slots takeoff and landing rights at the airports, known as slots, would have increased ticket prices and eliminated air service to 25 small communities.

“This proposal was the second foolish plan put forward by the previous administration,” said Rep. Engel. “The first was the highly-flawed Federal Aviation Administration’s Airspace Redesign Plan to change landing patterns in the New York metropolitan area. That plan would lead to 400 or more daily, low-altitude overflights in Rockland County and counties in northern New Jersey. Now we have to defeat that plan.”

Rep. Engel repeated his support for Rockland County and the other localities fighting the FAA plan in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The 11-term Congressman said he remains committed to fight the FAA’s misguided proposal and will continue to monitor the case. He supports the argument made on behalf of Rockland County and 11 other municipalities in several states, that the FAA had failed to study the impact on 64 counties of the region and the hundreds of parks. They have also violated their own rules by using faulty data on noise and traffic effects.

“This plan was wrong from the start, in its design and its communication. It is just simply wrong. It is time to correct the error once and for all,” added Rep. Engel.

Regarding the auctions, Rep. Engel said that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Air Transport Association, the industry’s largest trade group, opposed the auction with the Port Authority estimating it would increase ticket prices by 12 percent. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals granted a stay of the auction last December on a case brought by the Port Authority.

The plans for the slot auctions at New York’s JFK and LaGuardia Airports and Newark Liberty International Airport were announced by the Department on Oct. 10, 2008. The auctions were proposed as part of a plan to reduce congestion and delays at the region’s airports, along with caps on the number of flights per hour at each of the airports.

In proposing to rescind the auctions, the Department noted that the rulemaking was highly controversial and that most of those filing comments opposed the slot auctions. The Department also noted that circumstances have changed since the rules were issued, including changes in the economy.

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