BARK Air and County end lawsuit
June 12, 2024 at 11:54 p.m.
Humans and their dogs will be able to fly on BARK Air out of the private Fixed Based Operator (FBO) side of Westchester County Airport (HPN) as long as no more than nine humans are on board BARK’s chartered Talon Air 14-passenger seat Gulfstream Aerospace GV jets.
That’s the net result of a stipulation filed June 10 in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, by BARK and Talon Air on the one hand and Westchester County on the other.
If the County finds BARK Air is selling more than nine seats—and thus is in violation of the County’s Terminal Use Protocol (TUP), the BARK-County relationship will deteriorate into the lawsuit phase once again.
BARK for its turn promises to file monthly reports to the County on how many passenger seats it sold on every flight.
The TUP requires that any air service selling more than nine seats to the public on any aircraft must use the main passenger terminal.
There’s wiggle room if some BARK passengers are determined to take more than one dog on a flight. BARK may sell a 10th seat or even more, but humans can’t be in them.
As County Attorney John Nonna told the Westmore News, the County is only concerned about the number of human passengers, not dogs.
Both sides also agreed in the stipulation that the agreement would apply to both sides until and unless the District Court, in the County’s lawsuit against Delux Air Charter (for selling more than nine seats on its HPN flights), makes “a final non-appealable court order regarding the TUP’s applicability to air carriers that are licensed under either Part 135 or Part 380 of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations.”
Currently BARK is flying out of HPN to both the Los Angeles area’s Van Nuys (VNY) airport and London, England’s Biggin Hill Airport (BQH).
The BARK Air website indicates they also have plans to fly from HPN to Paris, France soon.
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