NYC lawmakers to severely restrict non-essential helicopter flights; eVTOLs exempt
April 28, 2025
New York City Council has voted to severely restrict all ‘non-essential helicopter travel, including tourist and chartered helicopter flights’ over the city. Despite acknowledging the safety considerations arising from a spate of fatal accidents in recent years, the bill was nevertheless proposed “with a goal to mitigating noise pollution and its impacts on health and quality of life,” explained Speaker Adrienne Adams.
With the restrictions set to take effect from 1 December 2029, this sweeping move will drastically reduce the number of helicopters able to operate from NYC’s three public-use heliports. Notably, comparatively quieter (albeit as-yet commercially unproven) eVTOL aircraft will be allowed to operate. During the past five years, New York City has experienced a 2,329% increase in helicopter-related noise complaints, most of them over the Manhattan area.
Recognising that while there are “thousands of commercial helicopter flights over the City of New York each month,” there have been “several notable accidents over the City’s airspace, raising congestion and safety issues,” stated the council in its proposal. Resolution No.233 therefore called upon the FAA to ban what it termed all non-essential helicopter travel.
Industry groups such as the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), National Air Transport Association (NATA), General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and Verticon Aviation International (VAI) have all strongly criticised the bill. “Contrary to the bill’s language, many of these flights are essential to supporting the city’s economy, emergency and security preparedness and other services,” explained NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen.
Before April 2025’s high-profile Hudson River crash, 2019 also saw two notable accidents over the City’s airspace, including the crash of a charter helicopter into the Hudson River and a separate accident on the roof of a building in Manhattan. Other separate incidents in 2009, 2011 and 2018 also resulted in the deaths of 15 individuals; “reminders of the dangers associated with helicopters in an urban setting,” wrote the Council.
Although measures initiated by the New York City Economic Development Corporation in 2010 succeeded in eliminating “short tours, sightseeing tours over Central Park and the Empire State Building, and sightseeing flights over Brooklyn,” a “great deal of public outcry for relief from harms caused by helicopter tours in New York City still exists,” it continued. Vertical Aviation International, however, slammed the bill as “maybe the most serious political assault on the vertical aviation industry in the Northeast that we’ve ever seen… even considering longstanding efforts to shutter our industry”.
