Holding pattern on copter flight plan makes more buzz

It's as key to Hamptons-weekend extravagance as Diva vodka martinis and Lamborghini golf carts: The Friday-afternoon helicopter ride east.

Wasting half the cocktail hour in LIE backups? Getting stuck on Route 27 behind a pokey landscaper's truck? Only a schlub would suffer indignities like those.

But those choppers all have rotors, and those rotors all make noise. And the buzz-buzz-buzzing in the sky from the high-flying time-is-money weekenders has been making life increasingly miserable for the suffering people on the ground. The heaven of soaring above it all has created a special earsplitting hell below.

So why can't the racket be quieted once and for all?

Despite years of trying, no one - not the local politicians, not the Federal Aviation Administration, not the helicopter companies or their high-flying customers - has gotten beyond toothless voluntary guidelines.

And on Friday, we learned the roar won't be dulled this summer either.

How much longer should the ground people wait? Local citizens' groups on the North Shore and the East End say some of their folks almost have to wear earplugs to their backyard barbecues. And they sure wish the government would do some real governing.

But the FAA needs more time to evaluate public comment, the federal agency says. It would tell the pilots to do most of their flying where most people aren't - at least a mile offshore in the Long Island Sound and, when crossing over land, choose "least populated" areas.

This may not be perfect, but it is a decent starting point. And no voluntary guideline seems capable of succeeding here.

ASKED AND

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