By Hank Russell
LIMBA (Long Island Metro Business Action) invited Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter to speak about the latest developments in the town on May 16. The first topic she dived into was Islip-MacArthur Airport.
“It’s near and dear to my heart,” Carpenter said as former airport commissioner Shelley LaRose-Arken sat in at the meeting. (LaRose-Arken is currently the executive project lead at Islip-MacArthur.) “It is such a gem and people are finally coming to realize it.”
Carpenter said she is “so excited” to learn about the possibility of a new terminal being built on the north side of the airport property. It was reported by Long Island Life & Politics that Governor Kathy Hochul came to the airport to announce that the state will provide $150 million in infrastructural funding to connect the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) station in Ronkonkoma to the proposed terminal.
In addition, Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine provided an additional $50 million. “It’s incredible what he did,” she said.
Carpenter said the proposed terminal project has generated the interest of 54 firms looking to develop there. Most of the firms are outside Long Island and the United States. Some of the companies come from other countries such as Canada, the Netherlands and Germany, who will build the new terminal “on their own dime,” she said.
In other developments at the airport, JetBlue currently offers 18 nonstop flights, including two to North Carolina and one to Lakeland, Florida, thereby avoiding Orlando. Breeze currently offers eight destinations, including Jacksonville and New Orleans. But for the fliers, Carpenter said, it’s not enough. “I hear [from flyers] constantly, ‘We want more destinations,’” the supervisor said.
When asked whether Islip-MacArthur can be susceptible to a situation similar to Newark Airport, LaRose-Arken said there are “a lot of large airport towers” that can be “affected by a cyberattack, but the Transportation Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration are “addressing the issue,” she said.
LaRose-Arken said the airport is located in an airspace that would not be susceptible to cyberattacks. “That’s good news … because [the agencies] will figure [the cyberattack] out before it gets to us. … We’re light years ahead of the federal government.”
What has hurt the airport was the “start-stop cycles” of many airlines in which “airlines came in, held a huge press conference and, two months later, would pull out of here.”
“We really need to work on it and gather the data and analytics [needed] to make [the airport] profitable,” Carpenter continued.