Westchester County is trying to compel charter airlines to use the public terminal at Westchester County Airport for some flights.
Contour Aviation and Delux Public Charter, as well as passenger ticket sellers Blade Urban Mobility, JetSuiteX and XO Global, are violating airport regulations, the county claims in a complaint filed March 7 in Westchester Supreme Court.
The issue comes down to how charter services, airlines and passenger services are defined.
Commercial passenger airlines such as American Airlines, Delta and jetBlue are required to use the public terminal for passenger check-in, baggage checking, passenger security screening, gate assignment, and passenger boarding.
Charter companies, business jets and private planes use private terminal services operated by Ross Aviation, Signature Flight Support and White Plains Aviation Partners.
A charter flight is not considered a passenger service, according to the complaint, because seats are sold wholesale to sports teams or businesses, for example, and not to individual passengers.
But in 2019 charter ticket sellers began offering flights to individual passengers, the complaint states, “who wish to avoid flying with the general public out of the airport terminal on a typical commercial flight.”
As long as the aircraft has fewer than 10 passenger seats, the flights still qualify as charters, according to the complaint.
But last year, the county contends, Blade, JetSuiteX and XO began selling individual tickets on larger planes used by Contour and Delux. Contour uses a Bombardier CRJ-200 with 16 seats. Delux uses an Embraer-135/145 with 30 seats.
That makes the ticket brokers “indirect air carriers,” according to the county, and qualifies the flights as airline passenger service that must use the public terminal.
The county says the companies have refused to comply with county regulations.
JetSuiteX spokesman Benjamin Kaufman said the company does not comment on pending litigation. The other defendants did not respond to emails requesting comment.
The county is asking the court to declare that the county law applies to the charter businesses and ticket sellers and to bar them from violating the law.
Westchester Supreme Court Justice Lewis J. Lubell has scheduled a hearing on April 8.
Article fails to mention that the charter operators have also sued the County in Federal court to stop the county from its attempts to move these flights into the terminal. That lawsuit claims the county is significantly overstepping it’s jurisdictional boundaries in attempting to invent new rules for something that’s governed at the Federal level.