Curtis Tate and Rodrigo Torrejon | NorthJersey

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An influential planning group recommends phasing out general aviation operations at Teterboro Airport, shifting its flights to the region's three major airports and expanding both Newark Liberty and JFK to absorb the traffic.

The Regional Plan Association made the recommendation in a report Monday on the region’s airports, noting that Teterboro would eventually be inundated by rising sea levels. The small relief airport is popular with business jet owners and travelers because of its proximity to Manhattan.

Tariq Zehawi/NorthJersey.com

"The cost of maintaining Teterboro, both financially and environmentally, will be increasingly hard to justify with rising sea levels, and should eventually result in closing the airport," the association said in its report. "Over the next 20 to 30 years the airport will slowly start to lose its battle with sea-level rise and will need to be replaced."

The group's plan involves building a new runway and midfield concourse at Newark, as well as improving the airport's connection to passenger rail. It also envisions two new runways at JFK, where terminals would be expanded, consolidated and connected.

Those moves would help JFK absorb flights from La Guardia, which would then handle some flights shifted from Teterboro.

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The group recommends spending $50.8 billion over 40 years to make the changes, but ultimately the decision rests with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bi-state agency that operates Teterboro, as well as JFK, Newark and La Guardia airports.

Ron Marisco, a Port Authority spokesman, said the agency would review the recommendations and said investments in the region's airports are key.

"Investing in the region’s airports to create the world-class facilities that travelers deserve is one of the Port Authority’s top priorities," he said in a statement, "which is why we’ve dedicated more than a third of our $32 billion capital plan to rebuilding them and sparking billions more in private investment."

Though the Regional Plan Association, a 90-year-old urban research and advocacy organization, has influence over public works, economic development and open space projects in the New York area, its recommendations are not always followed.

Last year, the group recommended phasing out the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan and replacing it with a new terminal at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, as well as expanding rail transit capacity from New Jersey to New York.

New Jersey's elected officials, who instead prefer to rebuild and expand the existing bus terminal in its current location, panned the proposal as too "New York-centric."

Noisy neighbor

Teterboro, the region's primary reliever airport, handled more than 167,000 flights in 2016. More than 50 years ago, the Port Authority, following the Regional Plan Association's recommendations, shifted non-commercial traffic away from the three biggest airports to Teterboro to accommodate growth in commercial air travel.

Now, Teterboro Airport’s traffic adds to the region’s already crowded airspace, and the noise from the airport isn’t popular with nearby residents.

The Port Authority's own plans involve expanding Teterboro, though, not phasing it out.

In a joint application with Signature Flight Support, one of the airport's tenants, the Port Authority plans to add three hangars, all of which would be at least 40,000 square feet. In order to do so, the plan calls for 100,000 cubic yards of fill to be packed into 11 acres of wetlands.

Residents, environmentalists and local officials have already objected to the plan, citing severe flooding in towns like Little Ferry, South Hackensack, Moonachie and Teterboro itself. They say the project would eliminate swaths of wetlands, which act as a natural sponge for rainwater.

In a February letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, which will make the final decision on the project, the Environmental Protection Agency said the plan would have an "unacceptable impact" on the Meadowlands region.

While all three of the region's major airports are to some degree vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change, Teterboro faces potential inundation with as little as 3 feet of water, the Regional Plan Association says.

And simply walling it off could shift the flooding problem elsewhere, the group warns.

"It could be difficult to justify significant investments in elevating or walling off the 827-acre airport and its connecting roadways," it said. "Protecting the airport alone would only worsen conditions in surrounding communities by displacing flood waters."

Closing Teterboro would eliminate two persistent problems, the group notes: conflict with nearby airports and the noise impact on surrounding communities.

"Its closing would free up airspace around [Newark Liberty], which would improve the reliability, flexibility in operating that airport," it said. Closing Teterboro "would also mean the reduction of noise that inflicts the dense communities that surround it, such as Lodi and Rutherford."

Resistance likely

The proposal to close Teterboro is likely to run into resistance.

The Regional Plan Association proposes to pay for the cost of expanding Newark and JFK airports by raising the passenger facility charge, a fee all airline passengers pay to support aviation infrastructure improvements at airports.

It's currently capped at $4.50 per passenger per flight segment. A proposal in Congress would allow airports to charge as much as $8.50.

The airlines, however, have fiercely opposed raising the fee, branding it as a tax on air travelers. Supporters of raising the fee counter that airlines have reaped billions of dollars in ancillary charges on baggage and flight changes, none of which goes toward improving airports.

The Regional Plan Association also calls for collecting tolls on the access roads to Newark Airport to generate funding for infrastructure improvements and maintenance.

Such tolls would shift the cost to passengers, who already pay some of the highest tolls in the country. New Jersey drivers pay about 20 cents for every dollar of the total toll revenue collected nationwide.

Teterboro's main users aren't likely to be happy, either. Business aviation operators like Teterboro's proximity to both the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge, as well as the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

"We believe the airport should continue to provide its longstanding, important role in the aviation system," said Dan Hubbard, a spokesman for the National Business Aviation Association.

Celebrities and wealthy executives like Teterboro because they can arrive and depart with a greater degree of privacy than they would have at the region's major airports. The area's hospitals rely on Teterboro to transport patients and donor organs.

But Rich Barone, vice president of transportation at the Regional Planning Association, said the improvements are needed to accommodate anticipated growth in air travel in the New York region.

The group forecasts 169 million air passengers at the big three airports by 2060, up from 133 million in 2017. And because the New York region is an important destination, Barone doesn't think a few extra dollars per ticket will discourage people from coming.

"We have the ability to absorb that," he said. "We’re not going to turn people off if we raise the [passenger facility charge] a dollar or two."