(Editor's Note: This letter was originally sent to Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy and is being printed here at the author's request.)

The last several months have proven the unwarranted 16-hour a day restriction (10 p.m. through 2 p.m. the next day) on usage of the approaches over communities such as Garden City and Stewart Manor into Runway 22 Left at JFK is having a devastating impact on our community as well as New Hyde Park, South Floral Park and Elmont.

This restriction has no basis today as the route east of us is managed by highly sophisticated methods of controlling aircraft arrivals under most weather conditions - VOR, DME and PAPI. In fact your administration supported the implementation of the Precision Approach Path Indicator system at JFK.

For more than three decades the FAA had used the 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift, sending bad weather traffic over Floral Park and good weather traffic over Garden City and Stewart Manor. We are now seeing the majority of the traffic delivered during the aforementioned restricted hours up to 16 hours a day, leaving our neighbors with limited traffic mostly from 2 to 6 p.m. This situation is unfair to your constituents in the affected communities and will become more of a burden as the Airbus 380 begins service in 2006.

We are also seeing the 2000 Tower Agreement between JFK and TRACON no longer being followed. The Town of Hempstead's aircraft safety committee (TVASNAC) spent years developing and refining this agreement to ensure no one community received more than eight hours of traffic in a 24-hour period and, in the case of the aforementioned communities, no arrivals were permitted between the hours of 2300 and 0700.

I offer the following suggestions to help resolve these problems:

-With the understanding there is construction being performed on Runway 13L, ask the FAA to shift night traffic onto 4L/R, which are among the designated night runways. Can 31R also be used?

-Permanently return our communities to the 2-10 p.m. shift. This would eliminate complaints about the 16 restriction and nighttime flights.

-Have the Port Authority install a monitor in Floral Park and compare monthly statistics on arrivals with communities east of us to ensure equitable distribution of traffic using the PAPI system.

-Work with the FAA, Port Authority and TVASNAC to re-implement and sign a new Tower Agreement, which retains the present nighttime runway assignments.

If any community under existing flight paths finds the suggestion of equal sharing of traffic unacceptable, then the burden is on them to work with the FAA to deliver their planes to communities or routes other than through the Village of Floral Park.

Robert O'Gorman