Andrew Cuomo Price Taxpayers $650K in Personal Airplane Vacation

• Gov. Cuomo flew in a point out-owned personal aircraft more than 460 periods in a 5-year span, costing taxpayers almost $650,000.
• A previous woman aide explained the governor questioned her to participate in strip poker with him on the plane.
• Cuomo has denied that allegation.
• See much more stories on Insider’s business web page.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo usually employs a point out-owned plane and helicopter to reach the considerably corners of the state for formal business, costing taxpayers practically $650,000 from 2015 by April 2020, an Insider investigation found.

Cuomo faces various ongoing scandals and a months-extensive impeachment probe spurred by allegations of sexual misconduct from 10 women.

1 of the allegations in opposition to him associated the governor’s formal point out airplane, identified as King One particular. Former financial growth aide Lindsey Boylan wrote in an essay that through a flight in November 2017, Cuomo asked her to perform strip poker. Cuomo has denied that allegation, and his place of work disputed her declare that she was alone with the governor, a state trooper, and a press staffer.

Boylan, who is at present operating for Manhattan borough president, did not return Insider’s ask for for comment.

The governor also uses a private aircraft for non-governmental vacation that’s paid out for by in-form donations, a former aide familiar with his vacation styles and logistics told Insider.

Insider used a checklist of point out law enforcement planes and helicopters from the New York Point out Trooper’s site and tail wing numbers registered as New York State Police aircraft to discover the passenger aircraft product made use of by Cuomo.

By reviewing five a long time of the governor’s regular general public schedules, Insider recognized that Cuomo flew in this point out aircraft over 460 periods accruing some 400 hrs of whole flight time around 5 decades.

The Cuomo administration has not nonetheless responded to Insider in its Flexibility of Information Law request for money records detailing his air vacation bills. A Cuomo spokesperson referred Insider’s checklist of inquiries to New York Point out Law enforcement.

Nel Stubbs, Vice President at Conklin & de Decker, an plane marketplace intelligence and consulting organization, estimates that this aircraft design expenses $1,616 for each hour to work, according to her company’s database. This figure is calculated using believed gas price tag, plane servicing, landing expenses, and crew incidental bills not which include salary.

Flight crew income, coverage, or the value to manage the plane in its Albany hangar, on the other hand, are not integrated.

‘It is outrageous outdated. Terrifying to fly on it.’

The twin propeller aircraft made use of by Cuomo has experienced many safety scares, with the governor’s office environment pushing in new many years for an up-to-date fleet of aircrafts they share with New York State Law enforcement.

“It is mad outdated,” the former aide explained to Insider, recalling dicey flights that remaining newcomers on King One particular comprehensively spooked. “Terrifying to fly on it.”

Just one of the helicopters experienced to make an crisis landing in 2017 soon after the cockpit began filling with smoke, in accordance to area news stories at the time.

As a general observe, Cuomo employs the chopper for excursions downstate to New York City, Lengthy Island, or the Hudson Valley, according to the previous staffer. If an party is outside of these locations or inside of driving length in the Cash Region bordering Albany, the governor usually takes King 1.

On the other hand, the flight documents received by Insider display some flights as short as 15 minutes without a return excursion. King One’s return to the hangar from individuals excursions were being not factored into Insider’s price tag estimate analysis.

The time conserving of air vacation in a point out as big as New York is major, significantly when it arrives to the much flung metropolitan areas and towns across the Upstate location.

Cuomo’s flights from Albany to New York Town have been ordinarily close to 40 to 45 minutes, when driving a motorcade into the city would choose involving two and a 50 % to three hrs. For a vacation west to Buffalo, traveling will take a very little above an hour, whilst the just one way journey by auto would consider at the very least 4 several hours.

The governor’s travel from time to time came in bursts, these as on April 21, 2020, when he flew from Albany to Buffalo, then from Buffalo to Washington D.C., and then again from the nation’s money to Albany.

If the principal chopper recognised as Sikorsky is going through upkeep or repairs, an more mature helicopter called Bell 430 is utilized in its place, the previous aide mentioned.

“I swore never ever to fly on that helicopter again,” Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s best aide who has been implicated in allegedly manipulating facts on COVID-19 nursing home deaths, told the Wall Avenue Journal in 2017 when she was serving as his chief of workers. 

“Regretably, specified the demanding timetable we hold, it is really not genuinely an possibility.”