A rarely used offset approach is at the center of Hackensack's effort to change how some planes arrive at Teterboro Airport. On October 6, the City Council passed a resolution urging the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to require eligible aircraft to use an alternate approach along Route 17. City officials say nearly half of arrivals fly low over Hackensack homes, schools and parks on the approach to the busier runway.
A Decades-Old Fight Over Where Planes Fly
As reported by Daily Voice, Hackensack officials say an alternate route already exists but goes largely unused, and the resolution calls for flights to be distributed more evenly among Teterboro's runways. Mayor Caseen Gaines argued that the burden of Teterboro flights should not fall disproportionately on working families, and said low-flying planes roar over classrooms and distract students. The concern has shadowed the airport's main approach path for years.
The dispute itself is not new. According to the same Daily Voice report, concerns about planes flying near Hackensack University Medical Center and surrounding neighborhoods date back to at least 2007, when airport noise officials first raised the issue in an FAA presentation. New Jersey's congressional delegation at the time, including Frank Lautenberg, Robert Menendez, and Steve Rothman, backed efforts to steer flights away from the hospital and nearby homes.
The Route 17 Approach Was Built, Then Barely Used
The FAA began developing a new approach in 2008 and finished its final design in 2015, then tested a quieter Route 17 approach for six months in 2016 specifically to cut noise and avoid the medical center, the outlet reports. Only 234 aircraft used the alternate route during that entire trial. An air traffic control manager said at the time that the approach demanded more work from pilots than the traditional Runway 19 route flown with a standard instrument landing system, since pilots had to manually enter landing waypoints, which increased workload and time spent looking down at cockpit instruments instead of outside the aircraft.
The Federal Aviation Administration ultimately decided not to make that tested approach permanent after pilots declined to use it, per the FAA presentation cited in the same account. The agency did eventually implement a formal version of the offset path, the RNAV (GPS) X RWY 19 procedure, in July 2021, following a Finding of No Significant Impact issued the prior September, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Under FAA chart specifications detailed by the Teterboro Users Group, the procedure carries a 13-degree offset final approach leg and requires pilots to negotiate proximity to the WABC-AM antenna tower before turning at a visual descent point just 2.6 nautical miles from the runway threshold.
Why Pilots Keep Skipping the Quieter Route
City figures cited by Daily Voice show Runway 19 handled 48.75 percent of Teterboro arrivals in 2025 and 48.58 percent during the first half of 2026. In 2025, the offset approach was used for 80 eligible arrivals, out of 39,460 total arrivals—about 0.2 percent. City officials also reported that total aircraft movements at Teterboro rose 11.5 percent in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, with private jet movements up 12.26 percent.
Aircraft flying the traditional Runway 19 approach pass near Hackensack University Medical Center at an average altitude of 750 feet, per an FAA presentation referenced in the Daily Voice account. The hospital sits roughly 1.7 miles directly north of the runway and houses Bergen County's primary Level I Adult Trauma Center, according to the FAA, putting both the medical campus and nearby residential high-rises in the path of low-altitude straight-in flights.
Pressure Builds Across Bergen County
Hackensack isn't alone in pushing back. Paramus passed a similar resolution, and Hackensack is encouraging other affected towns to follow suit, sending its own resolution to federal, state, and county officials, airport leadership, and neighboring municipalities. That local momentum echoes a broader petition filed in January 2024 by Taxpayers for Aircraft Noise Solutions, which represents more than 90,000 residents across Hackensack and ten Pascack Valley municipalities and asked the FAA to have air traffic controllers actively assign the Route 17 approach rather than leaving it to voluntary pilot requests, according to Pascack Press. Mayors from Emerson, Hillsdale, Montvale, and other nearby towns backed that effort.
The Teterboro Aircraft Noise Abatement Advisory Committee, formed in 1987 to bring together municipal leaders, Port Authority management, FAA representatives, and aviation users, remains the main forum for these disputes, representing communities within five miles of the airport, according to the Borough of Moonachie. In July 2026, airspace consultant HMMH presented redesign options to the committee, including modifying the offset approach to add a straight-in final segment and reduce its 13-degree turn to make the path more palatable to pilots and controllers, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey confirmed. Four preliminary airspace concepts had already been submitted to the FAA for review that June.
Federal Bottlenecks Still Stand in the Way
Even as redesign talks continue, FAA representatives told the committee in July 2026 that expanding daytime use of the offset approach was temporarily on hold due to air traffic control equipment maintenance and an ongoing software transfer of Newark-area airspace management to Philadelphia TRACON, per Port Authority documentation. High traffic volume and controller workload during peak hours further restrict voluntary approvals of the route.
Those federal limits also shape what the Port Authority itself can do. The agency enforces a grandfathered 95 dB(A) departure noise limit on Runway 19 and a three-strike rule banning violating aircraft for two years, protections that predate the federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990, according to the Port Authority's TEB Airport Noise Office. But that same 1990 law generally bars local airport operators from imposing new mandatory flight path or curfew rules without federal sign-off, meaning Hackensack's resolution functions mainly as political pressure on the FAA rather than enforceable policy. Teterboro, which handled 143,097 business jet flights in 2024 and operates under a 100,000-pound aircraft weight limit that bars scheduled airliners, remains the busiest dedicated general aviation airport in the country, averaging roughly 400 daily flight movements.
What the noise and flight records show
Complaint totals and the number of people complaining are different measures. Teterboro Aircraft Noise Abatement Advisory Committee minutes recorded 1,690 airport-related noise complaints from 572 residents in the first nine months of 2016, including 141 complaints from Hackensack. That snapshot does not establish how complaints or aircraft operations changed over the past decade, and complaint totals do not independently measure noise exposure, according to the committee's October 2016 minutes. The FAA describes Day-Night Average Sound Level, or DNL, as a measure of cumulative noise exposure over an average annual day; it is distinct from documenting the sound of any particular overflight. An FAA noise-analysis appendix says aircraft noise can disrupt classroom activities generally, but does not document effects at Hackensack schools. Separately, the FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual says information about an expected approach helps pilots plan but is not an air traffic control clearance or commitment and may change.
For now, residents frustrated by the noise, ground vibrations, and exhaust emissions disrupting daily life across Hackensack and central Bergen County can report aircraft noise through Teterboro Airport's noise complaint portal or by calling 800-225-1071.
