New Jersey Lawmakers Urge DEP to Reconsider Hangar Demolition and Evictions at Aeroflex-Andover Airport
Why It MattersHangars at state-owned airports can vanish through lease expiry and compliance findings alone, leaving tenants, flight schools and maintenance shops with little protection and showing how fragile small-airport hangar capacity is.
What happened
State and New Jersey lawmakers are asking the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to reconsider a plan to demolish hangars at Aeroflex Airport in Andover, New Jersey, a move that would displace pilots and small businesses. Eviction notices have already been served requiring pilots and businesses to vacate the hangars by Dec. 31. The airport is owned by the DEP and used by the state Forest Fire Service.
State Sen. Parker Space, Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia and Assemblyman Michael Inganamort, all R-Sussex, have asked DEP officials to pause the planned evictions and hangar demolition. Rep. Josh Gottheimer toured the airport on Friday afternoon and called on DEP Commissioner Ed Potosnak to tour the airport to see conditions for himself and explain the need to close the hangars.
DEP spokesperson Raeanne F. Raccagno said the eviction notices were issued because the Aeroflex-Andover Airport hangar complex faces broad and serious structural, operational and compliance deficiencies that threaten tenant safety, and that all agreements regarding hangar occupancy have expired.
The airport has two runways. According to a state DOT airport directory, 47 small aircraft are housed there and the airport had 25,544 flights in 2023. It also hosts a flight school where Harrison Ford trained for his role as a pilot in the 1998 film Six Days, Seven Nights. The eviction notices would displace the Andover Flight Academy, the airport's aircraft maintenance shop and several other aircraft owners from their hangars. The flight school teaches military pilots how to land on short runways and in open fields.
Industry impact & what to watch
Small public-use airports owned by state agencies depend heavily on the agency's own decisions about hangar condition and lease terms. When occupancy agreements lapse, tenants hold little leverage, and an owner citing structural and compliance problems can clear a hangar complex on a fixed schedule. For based aircraft owners, flight schools and maintenance shops, losing hangar space at one field is hard to offset, because nearby alternatives are limited and a maintenance shop that closes takes local service capacity with it.
The Andover case also shows the pull between safety enforcement and aviation access at government-owned fields. The DEP frames the action as protecting tenants from deficient buildings; the lawmakers frame it as a threat to a working flight school and the businesses around it. Which framing prevails will shape how other publicly owned airfields treat aging hangars.
The date that settles the near-term question is Dec. 31, when the eviction notices take effect. Whether Commissioner Potosnak accepts the invitation to tour the airport, and whether the DEP agrees to the requested pause before that deadline, are the next decisions that would show if the plan moves forward as written.
