12/11/99

By Matthew Futterman
STAFF WRITER

For 35 years, Joyce Powell watched her mother stare up at the planes flying into Teterboro Airport, shake her head and predict that one day a plane would crash right there in their Hasbrouck Heights neighborhood.

When that prediction came true Thursday night, Powell immediately thought of her mother, Norma DePaolo, now deceased.

"She lived until she was 80 and grew up here when it was just fields," Powell said yesterday, standing across the street from the yard where a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron crashed, killing all four aboard but injuring no one on the ground. "She saw the town and the airport grow, and she was terrified that a crash would happen one day."

While nearly everyone in Hasbrouck Heights thanked a higher power for keeping residents out of harm's way, the crash highlighted an ongoing conflict between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns Teterboro Airport, and the residents of the small Bergen County towns that surround the airport. The residents say it has grown too big and too busy to fit comfortably in such a densely populated area.

What was once a quiet landing strip for weekend warriors flying Piper planes has become the major hub for corporate jet travel for the New York metropolitan area.

From 1990 to 1996, corporate jet traffic at Teterboro rose nearly 50 percent, from 50,640 takeoffs and landings to 74,553, or about one every seven minutes. Those numbers may continue rising 2 to 4 percent each year, according to officials at Johnson Controls, which runs the airport for the Port Authority.

As the jets rumble overhead, shaking otherwise quiet streets, residents and elected officials say they are forced to consider the potential disaster of a crash.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who flies into Teterboro regularly, said he will ask the Senate's transportation subcommittee for an emergency investigation into small-aircraft safety. Lautenberg toured the crash site yesterday and said it is only a matter of time before a far more serious accident unless action is taken.

"We have to do more than just stand around these crash sites and say were sorry about what happened and we're thankful that it wasn't much worse," said Lautenberg.

Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9th Dist.), who has asked for a limit to the size of the planes using the airport, said: "The quality of life here is being intruded upon by others in the name of industry and commerce. It's time for the Port Authority to understand that there are limits."

Bill Trevor, a spokesman for the Port Authority, said the agency has tried to balance its duties to provide first-rate service to corporate jets and private planes at Teterboro with its responsibility to ensure a safe airport and a good neighbor.

"We've always been willing to listen to the communities about their concerns, and we will continue to," Trevor said. "What happened Thursday night was a tragedy that has left us feeling both saddened and concerned."

Lautenberg said he wants investigators to consider whether airports in populated areas should be able to ground small planes when the weather is bad, and whether Congress should tighten its inspection and license requirements for planes and pilots that use these airports.

Joe White, a pilot who flies into Teterboro regularly for FlexJET, a Dallas-based private airline service, said Teterboro provides the same challenges as other general aviation airports in populated areas in Chicago and Los Angeles.

"You know it's busy, so you plan ahead," said White.

But for residents of Hasbrouck Heights, the jet traffic into and out of Teterboro is too close for comfort.

The airport's runways are a few hundred yards from local football and baseball fields and the local swim club.

"I sit out there at the pool in the summer and I feel like the planes are going to come down right on top of me," said Cathy Bernetti, a Hasbrouck Heights resident.

John Cunzweiler, 67, has lived in Hasbrouck Heights for 25 years and says his concern about the airport is never far from his mind.