I attended a meeting on Tuesday evening held by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assoc. (AOPA) that discussed the new proposed regs for the corridor. Two of the panel members had just gotten back from Washington where they were part of the committee that drafted the proposal.
A few items have come out of the investigation.
First, both aircraft did have some form of traffic avoidance equipment.
Second, Teterboro tower was not able to issue Class B clearances
The new proposal will now make both exclusions an SFAR area similar to Washington DC in that it will require special training to enter these areas. Aircraft entering these areas will have to have not only a transponder but also an operating comm radio (which is presently not required). Further more local traffic will be restricted to below 1000' MSL and transit traffic to 1000' MSL to 1299' MSL. Local traffic is defined presently as traffic that is either landing or departing the three local heliports and the 23rd St. dock. All other traffic is considered transit and must enter above the George Washington Bridge or below the Verazono Bridge and depart the river after either of these two fixes.
There will be 6 required reporting points that must be reported with aircraft type, color, position, altitude, direction and I can't remember the last item. Aircraft must stay on the right side of the river. TEB tower will now be able to issue Class B clearances. There will be a 'tunnel' for lack of a better word of class B airspace above the river from 1300" MSL to 2000" MSL for traffic that wants to fly the river but stay in Class B. There will be two altitudes one at 1500' MSL and one at 2000' MSL. One altitude for Southbound and one for Northbound and because I didn't right it down I can't remember which is which. Also the airspace around the Wall St. heliport will be moved to the East River common freq. to free up radio air time for the Hudson. Also any aircraft transiting the exclusions MUST have a current Terminal chart of Helicopter Route chart readily available in the aircraft. Further more the FAA will change the Terminal chart to include the exclusion areas in more detail. Presently the helicopter routes are shown on the back of the Terminal chart, but they only show lower Manhattan with little detail. This I believe will change to a larger map with greater detail.
The Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) was suppose to be issued yesterday. However, I didn't see it come out. It may have been because Congress was still beating up on the FAA yesterday about this issue. Not everyone was happy about the proposal, which is usual. A few segments of the industry may have been overlooked. This proposal is not the final rule and MAY change before it comes come out and most likely will. It did not separate traffic by aircraft type as the politicians wanted, so it is in my opinion a much fairer proposal than what we could have had.
AOPA Air Safety Foundation stated at the meeting that they will highly likely have an online training course for transiting this airspace in the near future.