Mayor de Blasio seems to have gotten over his fear of flying.
Hizzoner spun up controversy by hopping into an NYPD helicopter so he could zip from private meetings in Brooklyn to an event in Queens — and also used a police chopper to whisk him and wife Chirlane to last month’s presidential debate on Long Island, The Post has learned. A spokesman refused to say what de Blasio was doing in his old Park Slope neighborhood on Friday that kept him so late he needed a chopper to land in the middle of the public oasis, then swoop away over rush-hour traffic.
But a source with knowledge of de Blasio’s daily routine said he’s been spending Fridays holding meetings and making fund-raising phone calls related to his re-election campaign at the Bar Toto restaurant and Colson Patisserie coffee shop near his old 11th Street home in Park Slope.
Dick Dadey, of the good-government group Citizens Union, said de Blasio’s campaign should pay the city for any flights that smack of politics.
“If a city helicopter was in any way used by his re-election campaign, his campaign should have to bear the cost,” Dadey said.
City Hall also said de Blasio wouldn’t reimburse taxpayers for the Friday chopper ride — to the official opening of a training center for union electricians — or the Sept. 26 trips he took to and from Nassau Community College for the first debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The mayor and First Lady Chirlane McCray — who have both campaigned for Clinton — were met on the ground by an NYPD security detail and chauffeured to nearby Hofstra University for the showdown, sources said.
The couple flew in one of the NYPD’s flagship Bell 429 choppers, sources said. The twin-engine whirlybird has a base price around $5.4 million and costs an estimated $463 to $667 an hour to operate, based on maintenance and fuel.
Police protocol also requires at least two members of the NYPD’s Aviation Unit on board the craft, sources said.
Last year, de Blasio said he didn’t like flying in choppers when it was suggested he take advantage of the NYPD’s fleet to break his habit of arriving late to events.
“It’s just not my thing. I prefer to be on the ground,” he told NY1 days after getting booed for his tardiness at the St. Patrick’s Parade in the Rockaways.
But he flew on a helicopter to the Rockaways in October 2015 and to Rikers Island last month— a trip that ended with a malfunction on landing that forced him to return to Manhattan aboard a different police chopper.
Asked about the more recent rides, De Blasio’s aides pointed to a 2009 advisory opinion from the city Conflicts of Interest Board that says elected officials assigned city-owned cars and security personnel can use them “for official or for personal purposes or for any combination of the two.”
City Hall said that determination also applied to NYPD helicopters because it’s titled “Use of City-owned Vehicles.”
The COIB opinion notes, however, that “even absent relevant legal obligations, elected officials are free to reimburse the city for non-city use of their city vehicles for example, to reimburse with campaign funds for political use.”