Early Nantucket Flights an issue in Barnstable
BY DANIEL W. DRAKE
The environmental subcommittee of the Barnstable Municipal Airport Commission met last Wednesday to consider the issue of noise resulting from early morning flights to Nantucket from the Hyannis airfield. The early flights usually transport daily newspapers (as well as, on Wednesdays, The Nantucket Independent) to the island to be available to retailers and readers early in the day, and to afford the airlines the necessary scheduling flexibility to ensure they are able to take care of the passenger traffic which begins about 5:30 a.m.

The chair of the subcommittee and a commission member for about 15 months, Donald Megathlin said, "This is a huge issue for the Town of Barnstable. We can't put noise abatement in the back seat anymore. 24,000 people are in the flight path of this airport. We have to be concerned for their safety and well-being." He cited statistics provided by the airport staff that there were a total of 85 flight operations (take-offs and landings) from the airport between four and six a.m. (29 of them between 4 and 5:30 a.m.) during September, 2006. Seventy of those operations were by Island Airlines, which carries the newspapers. The airport received 8 noise complaints for the entire month.

Representatives of one of the distributors of the daily newspapers, as well as the Nantucket newspaper, spoke on the need to have the papers get to the island as early as possible. Bill McGrath, the chairman of Island Airlines, addressed the scheduling issues for the carriers. His comments were echoed by Steve Phillips, the chief pilot for Cape Air/Nantucket Airlines. McGrath also mentioned that noise abatement issues at the Barnstable airport have been discussed for 30 years and that he believed the airlines had done everything they could to cooperate with the airport and the community.

Both Arthur Kimber, Chairman of the airport commission and John "Griff" Griffin, the vice chairman, attended the meeting although they are not members of the subcommittee. Kimber pointed out that under Federal Aviation Administration rules the airport could not impose restrictions on flight operations. Griffin underscored the cooperation the airport had gotten from the airlines over the years, but noted the political climate would be improved "...even if we could get fifteen minutes," meaning that a voluntary decision by the airlines to postpone the earliest flights for that amount of time would be helpful.

Before he left in the middle of the meeting, Megathlin stated his intention to engage in fact finding on Nantucket to determine whether retailers and readers need to get the newspapers as early in the morning as they are now arriving. The subcommittee did not take any formal action to follow-up.

In a subsequent telephone conversation, Megathlin said "It is not just me. All seven of the commissioners feel equally strongly about this (issue)." When asked what he sees as the next step, he said, "We certainly don't want to do anything averse to the economic interest of Nantucket. We feel we will have accomplished something if the flights don't start until 5:30 a.m."

A person very close to the noise abatement issue, who declined to be identified, said that the number of people impacted in Barnstable and Yarmouth is more like 2,400 than the 24,000 cited by Megathlin. Commission chairman Kimber did not reply to a telephone message requesting further comment.

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