NEW YORK – Jim DiMatteo is the Race Director for the New York Red Bull Air Race on June 19/20. The former U.S. Navy “Top Gun” Captain has spent the last three years leading the planning and organizing for the race in New York. DiMatteo talks about the special challenges that were involved in getting the world’s fastest growing motorsport into the Big Apple.
 
How difficult was it to organize a Red Bull Air Race in New York?
“One of the reasons that New York has taken such a long time to put together is due to the fact that there are so many different stakeholders that have to give approval and ‘buy in’ to the whole thing. From an aviation perspective it’s a very sensitive area, we all know that. The world knows that. But 9/11 is not the only thing. There have also been other situations that occurred over the last few years, including the President’s 747 that flew by the Statue of Liberty (for a photo-op). That caused a huge uproar.”
 
You’ve spent nearly three years working on the race in New York – what took so long?
“The complexities of getting 16 agencies to all agree understandably just took a long time. The agencies included New York City, Jersey City, State of New Jersey, Liberty State Park, the Statute of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Department of Environmental Protection, the police departments, etc.”
 
What other hurdles were there to getting clearance for a race in the heart of the New York/New Jersey area?
“I prefer to call them challenges. As the Race Director, my focus is the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). We have three of the largest airports in the world all separated by about 10 or 15 miles and smack dab in the middle of it all is our ‘race box.’ It is the most crowded and congested air space on our planet and we’re right in the middle of it. To get the FAA to buy into this also was a very long drawn out process. What they required me to demonstrate all centered around public safety, how we design the course, how they fly in, how they fly out, the temporary flight restriction (TFR), etc. We’ve never had a TFR in the United States before for a Red Bull Air Race, but we have it in New York. To get everyone on the same page just took some time.”
 
How congested is the space and will the TFR apply to the international airports?
“In this region’s airspace there are 50 to 100 airplanes airborne at any one given time. There are a total of four airports in the area: Teterboro, Newark, La Guardia and JFK. These are massive international airports. There’s no way we can interrupt that so our ‘TFR’ does not come close to those airports. We’re closest to Newark airport. Our departure airport is Linden Airfield, which is about 6 miles south of Newark, near the runway center line. We’re well below their aircraft but you will see the 747s and A380s coming in right overhead.”
 
How far away from Linden Airfield is the race track?
“For safety and airspace reasons it’s probably going to take around five minutes flying to get to the track. We have to go down south and over Staten Island towards the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and then up the Hudson. It’s about 18 miles total.”
 
What was the reaction from authorities when first approached about a race in New York?
The typical initial reaction for the people who knew the Red Bull Air Race was: ‘Oh that’s a really cool thing but that’s not going to ever happen here’. And then there were other people who didn’t know anything about the race beforehand who said: ‘Oh that looks cool but it’s not gonna happen here’. Because, really, if you think about it you have not only the congested airspace but also the iconic monuments of Ellis Island and the Statute of Liberty. In addition you’re in this politically sensitive flight path. It’s just a ‘high vis’ issue. When you have ‘high vis’ issues like that, generally, when you ask regulatory people if you can do something their reaction initially is ‘No’. That being said, afterwards, just nibbling away at this big mountain, eventually they turn from saying ‘No’ to ‘Well, let me see’ to ‘This is possible’ to ‘Hey, you know what, I think we can do this’. It was that kind of process.”
 
How was the Red Bull Air Race able to turn that from a ‘No’ to a ‘We can do this’?
“I think it’s a credit to the Red Bull Air Race and a compliment to the professional way we, as a company, run our business. With these types of regulatory agencies, it’s all about credibility. We had to establish credibility with them, through not only personal interaction with briefings and presentations but also other groups inside the U.S. that we have worked with in the past calling on our behalf. There were people in San Diego and Detroit who said ‘Yes, we’ve worked with them, yes they’re very professional, yes, what they tell you they‘re going to do is actually what they do’.”
 
Did the Red Bull Air Race’s track record around the world, with 49 races in eight years, help?
“The reality is they don’t really care what you did overseas because different countries have different rules. They’ll say ‘It’s great you went into Budapest but we’re not going to let you fly under bridges here’.”
 
So the U.S. races in San Francisco, San Diego, Monument Valley and Detroit mattered most?
“Absolutely. The whole track record they were concerned with was: ‘What have you done in the United States? Who have you worked with? Let me call them.’ This has been our objective in the United States, to build our credibility at different locations year after year.”
 
Were there concerns about flying near national monuments in the New York area?
“Certainly. Flying a race in the proximity of an iconic symbol like the Statute of Liberty is a sensitive issue. I was able to use the comparison of aircraft carriers at the races in San Diego. If I got permitted to have foreign nationals flying within 100 feet of a nuclear aircraft carrier — which is a national asset for the United States — we could say that bodes pretty well to the credibility of what we can do as far as flying around the Statute of Liberty.”
 
Have local officials in New York seen other Red Bull Air Races? What are they looking for?
“Yes, some authorities came to see the race first hand. The FAA did not because they already knew of what we do. The decision matrix for cities like New York and in New Jersey is: ‘What kind of benefit will this bring the city and is it safe?’ We showed them an economic impact report, that this race brings tens of millions of dollars to their cities. They understand the positive impact on the economy. Everybody, even New York, is looking to increase tourism. The mayors of these cities like that. They like the positive financial impact the Red Bull Air Race brings their cities and they like the global awareness the race brings.”
 
It sounds like the local authorities eventually became enthusiastic about the race?
“Yes, definitely. Not only are they enthusiastic but what was impressive for me is that they’re New Yorkers and they get things done. They said that often: if they want to do something, they’re going to get it done. It was very impressive to see when their minds changed from ‘What is this? I don’t know if we should do this’ to ‘Yes, I like this, you’ve demonstrated the credibility that is required for me to make this decision’. Once they make this decision in their mind, then boom! They’re New Yorkers and they get it done.”
 
When was that moment?
“It was about a year and a half ago that I went from thinking ‘I don’t know if this ever going to happen’ to ‘Wow, these guys really want this to work’. Once the Mayor of New York and the Mayor of Jersey City and the FAA started giving me signals of ‘Yeah, this could really happen’, once we had this collective approval, that’s when the ball really started rolling.”
 
What role did New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg play?
Mayor Bloomberg happens to be a pilot. As a general aviation pilot, Mayor Bloomberg is very supportive of the aviation industry and loves aviation as a whole. I believe he feels this is a positive thing for the city and a positive thing for aviation. He’s a good advocate for aviation. Obviously, if the mayor of New York did not want something to happen then it doesn’t happen. We were fortunate to have this alignment. We worked with Evan Korn, the executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Citywide Event Coordination in New York Cityin addition to Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy of Jersey City.”
 
You’re from California. What have you now learned about New Yorkers?
“New Yorkers are understandably skeptical about these type of things but they love big things. Once they’re into it, they’re really into it. They rightfully want it to be the best Air Race in the world. They’re confident people and they think they have the best city in the world — and arguably they do. So they’re very confident. That’s what I liked. It was impressive that once they decided to do it, they were like: ‘Well, if we’re doing this, we gotta do it ‘New York-style’. It’s gotta be cool. It’s gotta be big. And that’s what it’s gonna be.”
 
And finally: what part of the race is in New York and what part is in New Jersey?
“The air space is divided right down the middle of the Hudson so we’re in New Jersey air space but the authority for the waterways is New York. So New York owns the water all the way up to the Jersey shore, but we’re flying in New Jersey air space. Our pylons are in New York and our air space is in New Jersey. As you can imagine, that was one of the regulatory challenges.”

Source: www.redbullairraces.com