by Jack Motz, East Hampton Press
A web of interlocking court cases have temporarily blocked East Hampton Town officials from evicting Long Island Airlines from East Hampton Town Airport.
Court papers suggest Long Island Airlines is one of only two fixed-base operators at the airport, where it has provided fueling and hangaring services for some 30 years — though Airport Director Jim Brundige said LIA has been defunct since 2018, and Sound Aircraft Services is the only remaining fixed-base operator.
Last year, East Hampton Town officials sought to end LIA’s lease, alleging LIA had broken the terms by not once providing environmental testing samples, which it was supposed to do every few years since the lease began in the 1990s.
This prompted a pair of court cases that added to the larger batch of airport cases filed after East Hampton Town officials sought to change the airport’s use from public to private with a prior-permission-required framework — a move that a court thwarted with a temporary restraining order in 2022.
But one of the LIA court cases ended when acting New York State Supreme Court Justice John Rouse sided with the town, finding that LIA had not complied with the lease.
So, East Hampton Town officials sought to evict LIA in August, and Town Justice David Filer issued an order allowing the Suffolk County Sheriff to take the necessary steps — until yet another court order derailed the town’s efforts.
This one was a stay order, which blocked the town and the sheriff’s office from moving forward with the eviction, pending LIA’s appeal. Both the town and the sheriff’s office agreed to hold off on the eviction proceedings.
At that point, HeliFlite, a luxury helicopter service that sued the town in May 2024, got in on the action, seeking a separate order in Suffolk County Supreme Court in November that would have permanently blocked town officials and the sheriff’s office from moving forward.
This flared up recently when the town sought the warrant to evict LIA from its hangar, prompting a flurry of back-and-forth motions in Suffolk County court.
Fearful of a de facto monopoly on fixed-base operators, HeliFlite said it wanted assurances that LIA’s eviction would not harm its business — but HeliFlite said it received no such assurances.
Town attorneys argued in response that the Town Board did not terminate the lease on a whim and pointed back to Rouse’s order, which found that LIA had violated the lease.
Nicholas Rigano, the town’s outside counsel, rushed to point out that the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office has agreed to hold off on going through with the eviction until the litigation is solved, as the appellate court’s stay order mandated.
Meanwhile, HeliFlite contended that evicting LIA would mean the town is discriminating against HeliFlite by ensuring its operations funnel through the one remaining — “town-favored” — fixed-base operator.
This would have left HeliFlite’s approximately 100 flights in October derailed or delayed, attorney Scott Middleton told the court — meaning eviction for LIA would effectively mean eviction for HeliFlite.
“The town, by adopting a resolution to terminate the lease of LIA, one of its two FBOs, will irreparably harm the business of HeliFlite,” Middleton said.
Had there been studies of how eviction might impact the airport or thought given to ensure an alternate fixed-base operator took LIA’s place, HeliFlite’s concerns would be muted — but town officials have acted thoughtlessly, he said.
“The town is creating a de facto monopoly that will curtail air traffic without any assurance the ground support of a single FBO will be able to continue status quo operations at the airport to avoid any disruptions or reduction in services,” he said.