Ever since the nerve-shattering morning of September 11, the skies over Manhattan have been strangely quiet. At first it was the same sort of silence that settled over the rest of the U.S.–the product of a total operations ban that was the national airspace lockdown. The skies over the Big Apple were clear, save for police, emergency, public service and military traffic, and the ominous pall of vile-smelling smoke and dust that rose from the funeral pyre of the World Trade Center.
Later, as America’s airspace gradually came back to life, Manhattan was still blanketed by two mammoth no-fly zones. The biggest was the 25-nm proscribed zone radiating out from the VOR at JFK International, an area of enhanced Class B (ECB) airspace that more than covered the New York City metro area and then some.
In the weeks that followed, as operational exemptions into that forbidden area were granted and then the overall size of the restricted area was reduced from a 25-nm radius to 18 nm, New York-area helicopter operators found themselves beset by another crippling constraint. All three Manhattan heliports were closed to any but emergency and official traffic.
