Grounded charter flights make for quiet night at Republic Airport

The historic grounding of all flights in the U.S. Friday made for a “quiet night” at Farmingdale’s Republic Airport, but also guaranteed a busier-than-usual weekend if the order is lifted sometime tonight, according to the head of one private airline.

James Chitty, CEO of Farmingdale-based private jet charter company Talon Air, said if he’s already relieved his pilots from duty for the day, “so they can leave as early as possible tomorrow, assuming we’re back back to normal.”

Chitty said his company, which operates about 40 aircraft, had two jets preparing to take off out of Republic — Long Island’s busiest private airport — when all flights were grounded.

“Even if we get the all-clear tonight, everybody's going to be looking to take off tonight and you're just going to sit on the runway,” Chitty said. “We're giving people the option … ‘Hey, would you like to go tonight? Would you go tomorrow morning?’ And so far everybody's opted for tomorrow.”

Once flights are able to resume, Chitty said, it will take some time to get equipment and crews in place, including pilots who travel on commercial airlines to get to the private jets they need to fly.

“We've done what we can to mitigate that and swap crews around, use people in different parts of the country,” he said. “But depending on the size of your operation, that's not always the easiest thing to accomplish.”

If anything positive comes out of Friday’s incident, Chitty said it might be the attention brought to the need to improve communications in the aviation industry and “the need to have more contingency plans in place if something like this were to happen again.”

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.