Stewart Manor resident Lee Ackerman said he was walking his dog last Tuesday afternoon when he discovered a metal plate from an Airbus A380 airliner lying in his backyard.
“It is what it is. It’s very disconcerting to have pieces of planes falling into your yard,” Ackerman said, recounting the experience at a special meeting of the Town-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee on Monday night
He said he reported finding the plane part to the Nassau County Police Department and the Federal Aviation Authority a few days later.
The 12.5-inch by 11.5-inch metal plate bore a diagram of a landing strut and maintenance instructions for an A380, an airliner that can carry 500 passengers.
Ackerman said the plate weighed no more than one pound.
“On a plane worth a couple million dollars, there should not be landing gear falling off,” Ackerman said at the meeting in Stewart Manor Village Hall.
Committee Executive Director Kendall Lampkin on Tuesday questioned why more information about the plate that fell into Ackerman’s backyard wasn’t yet available.
“We’re almost a week into this and no [airline] carrier has come forward to say they’re missing a part,” he said.
Lampkin said he alerted Airbus executives last Friday about the meeting to discuss the fallen plane debris, but said Airbus Group Inc. spokesperson Clay McConnell told him the company was unable to send a representative to the meeting from its Herndon, Va. headquarters. He said McConnell also told him the company was seeking information that could help it identify the plane that dropped the landing gear “template”.
Lampkin said Carmine Gallo, regional administrator of the FAA eastern region, told Lampkin he also could not attend the aircraft safety committee meeting.
“Without injury or damage, will they just be able to sweep this under the rug? This is not nebulous and there should be a response,” said Cristina O’Keeffe, Stewart Manor’s representative on the aircraft safety committee.
Ray Gaudio, East Williston’s representative on the aircraft safety committee, said he doubts the FAA is concerned about the incident.
“The FAA doesn’t like saying a part fell off a plane. Nothing is going to come of it as far as I’m concerned. This is just going to disappear,” Gaudio said.
FAA spokesman Jim Peters said on Tuesday the FAA is investigating the incident.
The federal agency also released a statement saying, “The FAA confirmed that an instruction panel a resident of Stewart Manor in Nassau County found last week was dislodged from the inside of a landing gear door of an Airbus A380 aircraft.”
Airbus acknowledged the incident in a statement saying: “We are aware of reports that a placard from an aircraft was found on Long Island. Obviously, we do not know how the label came to be found in a garden. Once an aircraft is delivered to an airline, it becomes their property and maintenance of the aircraft is the responsibility of that airline. If authorities request help from us in any investigation, we would be pleased to assist.”
Gaudio said two similar incidents occurred in Nassau County in the past several years, including a 2010 accident when a cargo door from an Alitalia airliner landed on the grounds of what was then a county courthouse building near Franklin Avenue in Garden City. In 2012, he said, blocks of blue ice struck the rooftops of several houses in Valley Stream.
After the meeting, Kurt Langjahr, New Hyde Park’s committee representative, said he thinks the plate dropped off the plane because many Airbus A380 parts are glued in place.
“The FAA and the plane mechanics have to make sure the parts stay on the planes,” Langjahr said.
In other developments:
• Aircraft safety committee members participating in citizens’ “roundtable” to provide input on a Port Authority airport noise study of JFK and LaGuardia airports said little progress has been made toward getting the study underway.
O’Keeffe said the roundtable group of resident from Nassau County, Queens and Brooklyn can’t yet agree on whether separate roundtables should be established to address noise issues at JFK and LaGuardia or whether one roundtable should be in place with two subcommittees focusing on issues at each of those airports.
“The fact that it’s taken nine months to decide what this roundtable is going to look like is frustrating. It’s bureaucracy at its very worst,” O’Keeffe said.
Langjahr said he favored one roundtable, adding, “The noise that affects Queens affects us.”
State Assemblyman Ed Ra, who had pushed for what is called a Part 150 study, said the Port Authority is saying it can’t comply with all the aspects of the study.
“We’re trying to nail down some of the parameters with help from the governor’s office,” Ra said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to conduct an airport noise and land compatibility study last November for JFK and LaGuardia.
