Old Hand Takes the Yoke
A senior airport attendant, a part-time attendant, and a maintenance employee are manning the East Hampton Town Airport this week after the East Hampton Town Board fired the facility’s manager last Thursday.
Effective Nov. 12, Jemille Charlton will be relieved of the post. Jim Brundige, the former airport manager, will return on Tuesday to the position he left two years ago.
East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell on Friday declined to discuss Mr. Charlton’s departure other than to say he was “let go.”
Mr. Cantwell said Mr. Brundige was brought back because of “his availability and experience to act as interim airport manager.” His reappointment is provisional and runs through Dec. 31, 2017, while the town searches for a permanent airport manager. Mr. Brundige will earn an annual salary of $92,000. According to the 2016 East Hampton Town budget, Mr. Charlton was earning $64,260.
Mr. Charlton had been named to the post in September 2014 after having served as an attendant there for about a year. At that time, he was appointed as the replacement for Mr. Brundige, who had announced his retirement after a decade as airport manager.
Mr. Charlton, who completed a bachelor’s degree in aviation management at Dowling College while employed as the airport manager, is on paid administrative leave with the town through Nov. 12, while he is on active duty with the New York Air National Guard.
“I have, and always have had, the airport and our town’s best interest in mind. I hope and pray that my work has not been in vain,” Mr. Charlton said in a Facebook message to The Star on Saturday.
Mr. Brundige came to East Hampton after retiring from a 20-year post with United Airlines, where he served as a pilot and in a management position at the airline’s chief pilot’s office at Kennedy Airport. Before that, he flew jets for a worldwide corporation, and, in the Air Force, was a fighter jet and air-sea rescue helicopter pilot.
Though Mr. Brundige will officially take over the airport management duties on Tuesday, he said early this week that he had already contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to get up-to-date with airport issues related to that agency, and had spoken to Arthur Malman, the head of East Hampton Town’s airport management advisory committee, and with representatives of local pilots’ groups.
The former and future airport manager said he was pleased to see that a number of initiatives and projects at the airport are under way, from the removal of trees that jut into an F.A.A.-defined airport runway clear zone to the paving of taxiways and other safety efforts. “All of these things are going in the right direction,” Mr. Brundige said.
The East Hampton Town Airport came under fire in September from a group of citizens who had formed an autonomous committee on airport noise and visited the airport during Labor Day weekend. They alleged having witnessed unsafe practices there, including children who ran unaccompanied onto the tarmac and helicopters that were refueled at the terminal rather than away from it. In August, after an airplane made a rough landing at the airport that the Federal Aviation Administration was called in to investigate, the East Hampton Police and Fire Departments were not informed of the situation, which is standard protocol.