Riverhead, hoping to stifle helicopter noise, appeals to FAA to enforce North Shore route

On an otherwise quiet July afternoon, Patricia Berry closed the windows of her Wading River home as the familiar summer rattling of helicopters passing overhead began.

But shutting the windows does little to dampen the sound — and feel — of aircraft flying at low altitude. Berry tracked the helicopter online and saw it was flying at 800 feet. The next two passed at 975 feet and 1,050 feet — both far below the minimum of 2,500 feet required by the Federal Aviation Administration’s North Shore Helicopter Route.

“The whole house shakes,” Berry said in an interview, describing a barrage of aircraft over her home on a Sunday afternoon as weekend visitors to the East End flew back to Manhattan. “It’s intolerable.”

With that federal rule requiring helicopters to fly along Long Island Sound set to expire Wednesday, Berry is among a group of Riverhead residents and officials calling on the FAA to renew the route and step up enforcement of the flight path to curb worsening noise.

The town reconvened its Helicopter Noise Task Force, a five-member board made up of affected residents, July 16 to address the issue. The task force had been inactive since 2022.

Riverhead Supervisor Jerry Halpin said in a statement the panel will “address what has again become a quality-of-life issue … helicopters flying too low over private homes, rather than offshore, away from communities where people live.” 

Helicopter noise has long plagued East End residents. The flights have grown in popularity as a way to avoid heavily trafficked roads to the Hamptons and get there quicker: Flying from Manhattan to East Hampton can take 35 to 45 minutes, compared with  a drive that can take upwards of three hours on summer weekends.

The North Shore route, which has been mandatory since 2012, applies to helicopters flying to and from the East End. It requires helicopter pilots to fly one mile offshore at a minimum altitude of 2,500 feet. The rule permits pilots to fly over land to reach their destinations, often either East Hampton Town Airport or Francis S. Gabreski airport in Westhampton Beach.

According to flight data figures from last year, Gabreski is the busier of those two airports: It showed 44,566 operations for 2025. The town airport reported 25,252 flights, 5,516 of which were by helicopter. 

Pilots can deviate from the route if safety or weather concerns arise, “or transitioning to or from” a landing destination, according to the rule, which was last extended in 2022.

Though the FAA route has alleviated noise in western Suffolk communities, it has funneled more air traffic over homes like Berry's farther east.

Still, without the FAA rule, she believes the situation would be worse.

“If they decide not to extend it, it’s just going to be people going wherever they want,” Berry said.

A crossing point

John Cullen, chairman of Riverhead’s task force, said Wading River is increasingly used as a crossing point to reach the Hamptons. 

Cullen, of Northville, said some pilots voluntarily fly all-water routes, either around the North Fork or along the South Shore, to minimize disruptions to residents. But he and others want the FAA to consider making an all-water route mandatory. 

“There are a couple of bad apples that just won’t swing it around Orient Point," the North Fork's eastern tip, Cullen said in an interview.

Berry recently attended a meeting of Suffolk County’s Gabreski Community Advisory and Review Board and learned there were 567 aircraft noise complaints filed already from January to April this year, 83 of which were from Wading River.

By comparison, the same period last year saw 192 complaints, according to county data.

More recently, air traffic spiked at Gabreski during last month's U.S. Open golf tournament at Shinnecock Hills. Preliminary data showed a 49% increase for the week of the tournament over the same period last year, according to an airport presentation at a June 25 meeting.

Riverhead officials are pressing federal lawmakers to not only support renewing the North Shore route but to enforce it and explore alternatives in light of residents' complaints. Town officials have reached out to Rep. Nick LaLota and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Riverhead Councilwoman Denise Merrifield, who lives in Wading River, said the FAA should re-evaluate the route.

“I want them to consider being a little bit more generous with where they want people to cut across to go to Gabreski, and not just make it Wading River,” she said at the task force meeting.

Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine is also echoing calls to the FAA to renew the rule.

In a letter to the agency dated Wednesday, Romaine said letting the rule expire risks unrestricted helicopter traffic over the area. He, too, urged the agency to explore alternatives.

“Merely extending the existing route indefinitely without evaluating whether a more effective alternative is available would fail to adequately address the concerns residents have raised for years,” Romaine wrote in the letter.

In an email, FAA spokesman Chris Mullooly declined to provide a status update about the North Shore route but said it remains in place. “If a community member is concerned about aircraft noise, the best course of action is to contact their local aviation community roundtable or airport operator,” the agency said in a statement.

Riverhead Councilman Ken Rothwell, the liaison to the town task force, said enforcement is lacking. The FAA should investigate helicopters that deviate from the route and hold pilots accountable through fines.

“We need our federal representatives who control the airways to hold these helicopters to their flight schedule,” Rothwell said in an interview.

He attributed some of the increased air traffic to the popularity of services like Blade, which advertises 39-minute, $795 flights between Manhattan and the Hamptons, and said Riverhead shouldn’t bear the burden. That company did not respond to phone and email requests for comment.

“We love tourism, but we don’t need it in the air above us,” Rothwell said.

Officials at the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, a nonprofit that represents helicopter pilots, could not be reached for comment.

Other towns cope

Other eastern Long Island towns also have been contending with aircraft noise — and it's not always helicopters that are the culprit.

Teresa McCaskie, who chairs Southold's Aircraft Noise Steering Committee, said that panel plans to reconvene this month because the area has been “inundated” with seaplanes.

“They are not flying neighborly, they are not respectful to the communities and battering the Southold area,” she said in an interview.

McCaskie, of Mattituck, said helicopter noise in the Southold area has lessened, and that the influx of complaints from Wading River, to the west, could mean pilots are turning over land sooner.

She described shifting air traffic as a game of "whack-a-mole."

In East Hampton, aircraft noise complaints dropped 61% over the past four years, Newsday recently reported. Officials there said voluntary efforts to reduce noise, including curfews and flight paths, may be contributing to the decline.

But lawsuits have blocked East Hampton Town efforts to curb noise, and a 2024 state appellate court ruling prevented the town from closing the town airport.

As part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, Congress directed the General Accountability Office to study helicopter noise mitigation. East Hampton is among five municipalities — along with Los Angeles, Honolulu, New York City and Naples, Florida — interviewed for the study, according to Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez.

“We shared how our experience tells the story of how the system is broken,” Burke-Gonzalez said during a July 14 work session. “The sheer frequency of helicopter operations and the uniquely annoying characteristics of helicopter noise has been a continuous source of concern and complaints for decades in our community.”

Officials did not provide a timeline for the federal report to be available to the public.

Meanwhile, in Riverhead, the town has launched a new helicopter task force complaint form online. It directs residents to submit concerns to the town and regional airports.

The revived task force plans to meet again next month to discuss the status of the FAA route and enforcement efforts.