STEWART AIRPORT – The chairman of the Stewart Airport Commission says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which assumed management of New York Stewart Airport in Newburgh in 2007 promised to use Stewart to relieve the overcrowded Big Three jetports in metro New York.
It has been almost 19 years since then and Stewart Commission Chairman Paul Quartararro said has yet to happen.
He noted JFK, LaGuardia and Newark have a total of 150 million passengers a year, maxing them out at some 3,000 flights per day while Stewart has one or two.
“Maybe finally the time has come, the airports downstate are just too crowded. They really have no other choice but to start bringing flights up to Stewart to relive the congestion, to relieve the pollution,” he said. “We see what happens whenever there is an issue with the weather and what happened with Newark this past summer.”
Last month with the retirement of Rick Cotton as the long-time executive director of the Port Authority and the announcement of Kathryn Garcia to replace him, there should be a renewed effort to grow Stewart as promised years ago.
Quartararo went so far as to speculate that with the Port Authority billions of dollars in debt for the modernization of JFK and LaGuardia, they need the revenue from Hudson Valley residents to travel to New York and spend their money there instead of at Stewart.
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