Kennedy Kaos

From the NY Times:

Kennedy Airport remained in disarray on Sunday, three days after New York City’s first major snowstorm of 2018 disrupted operations. Since the storm, a lingering, bone-chilling cold and a series of missteps have contributed to a logjam that has left thousands of travelers stranded and caused hundreds of flights to be canceled or diverted.

The disorder at J.F.K., one of the world’s busiest airports, rippled across the world, affecting passengers as far away as Beijing. Flights headed to New York were forced to turn back, and connecting flights that were only supposed to bring passengers to New York for a brief stay were grounded indefinitely.

On Sunday, just as there were signs that things were finally improving, a water main break in a terminal plunged the airport back into chaos. The flooding — three inches in parts of Terminal 4 — compounded the confusion that had gripped parts of Kennedy all weekend, as airlines tried to rebound from the cancellation of thousands of flights because of the storm. Officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Kennedy Airport, were still trying to sort out what had gone wrong on Saturday when they had to scramble on Sunday to cope with the burst pipe.

Kim says RKO plan is a no-go

From the Queens Chronicle:

According to Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing), the latest plan to develop the derelict RKO Keith’s Theatre in Flushing is extremely dangerous.

The lawmaker sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration earlier this week, saying the height of the tower planned by Xinyuan Real Estate would be a hazard, given the location’s proximity to LaGuardia Airport. The proposed building would be 210 feet above mean sea level, according to Kim.

“The FAA has concluded on several prior occasions ... that any height at this location exceeding 195 feet above mean sea level would result in a substantial adverse effect, and warrant a Determination of Hazard to Air Navigation,” the lawmaker said.

In the eight aeronautical obstruction evaluations made by the FAA for Xinyuan’s plan, the agency found that none were hazardous, Kim pointed out in the letter. He said that they “were still approved despite being for points that are 204 or 210 feet above mean sea level.”

Xinyuan did not return a request for comment about Kim’s letter prior to the Chronicle’s deadline. The FAA declined to comment.

“The proposed building in question will be directly in line with incoming flight paths. In December of 2004, a Boeing 757 mistook the hazard light on top of a building in the same neighborhood for the start of a runway,” Kim said. “If a 210 foot building is actually built at this location as a result of these eight obstruction evaluations, the lives of countless constituents in my district would be put at risk.”

At the end of the letter, the assemblyman urged the FAA to “re-evaluate” the obstruction evaluation studies conducted for the planned tower.

A detailed LaGuardia timeline

So here's a source I never expected to link to, but Conde Nast Traveler has an excellent breakdown of the plans for LaGuardia Airport, from Spring 2018 through 2022 and beyond.

Replacing Rikers

From Crains:

The most feasible location to boost flights is LaGuardia Airport, by building a new runway on Rikers Island in place of the jail complex that the city hopes to close within 10 years. The plan, a recommendation of the Rikers Commission, would involve laying another strip of tarmac on the reclaimed isle and connecting it to a new terminal next to the existing airport. Because Rikers is more than 400 acres, other infrastructure uses often loathed by residential neighborhoods could be sited there with 
little fuss. A waste treatment, composting or waste-to-energy plant could help the city make serious strides toward its environmental goals, Torres Springer said, and a solar energy farm could produce and store hundreds of megawatts of power.

From DNA Info:

A plan to close Rikers Island unveiled Thursday won't happen without the support of local city council members willing to clear the way for local jails in their districts, the mayor said on WNYC's Brian Lehrer's show.

The 85-year-old jail has been plagued by concerns for inmate mistreatment and deaths, security issues and mismanagement, won't close without new satellite jails, Mayor Bill de Blasio, said Thursday morning.

While de Blasio's ten-year-plan included a combination of criminal justice reforms to drive down the city's inmate population by making it easier to pay bail, investing more in mental health programs and decreasing crime rates, details of the satellite jails are conspicuously absent.

The mayor put the onus squarely on neighborhood NIMBYs.

"We're going keep driving [the inmate population] down with every tool we have, but we can't get off Rikers, unless there are specific places where the local leadership accept a jail facility," he said. "It just cannot happen without a vote of the City Council."

In March of 2016, DNAinfo exclusively reported that the city was quietly eyeing several sites for new satellite jails including locations in Hunts Point in the Bronx, in College Point in Queens, at 287 Maspeth Ave. on a vacant lot owned by National Grid in East Williamsburg, at 803 Forbell St. in East New York and at two sites on Staten Island.

Inside crash pads

From Brick Underground:

People outside of the airline industry aren’t very familiar with crash pads, so the easiest way to explain it is it's like a crowded college dorm. Usually someone who owns an apartment in Kew Gardens—a popular spot for flight attendants since it’s equidistant from JFK and La Guardia—will run a crash pad and rent out beds. Probably nine out of 10 flight attendants and pilots that I know live in a crash pad. More often than not, it’s a few bunk beds per room in a fully furnished apartment, with everyone paying between $200 and $400 per month.

Many flight attendants and pilots commute to New York from other cities and spend this extra money monthly so they don’t have to rent a hotel when they have back-to-back trips. Hotels are only paid for by the airline when you’re on a layover. If you choose to live in another city and commute to a major-city airport—like NYC, Chicago, or Atlanta, for instance—then any overnight accommodations are on you. Most flight attendants get paid by the hour and only get a small per diem (about $2 per hour) when you’re working. For me, that just barely covers food.

Crash pads are technically illegal, kind of like an Airbnb, but I’ve only heard of one crash pad being shut down. Most people pay their landlord month-to-month and are not on a lease, but there is a little more trust since we all were vetted by our companies to work for airlines and crash pads aren’t posted on Craigslist. They're discovered by word of mouth, and there is a screening and interview process to get a place in one. That said, we didn’t all trust each other. Sometimes there are locked bins provided at the crash pad, but most people just take their stuff with them just to be sure no one would steal them while they were gone.

Bird strikes went up after goose killings started

From the Daily News:

An Associated Press analysis of bird-killing programs at the New York City area's three major airports found that nearly 70,000 gulls, starling, geese and other birds have been slaughtered, mostly by shooting and trapping, since the 2009 accident, and it is not clear whether those killings have made the skies safer.

Federal data show that in the years after bird-killing programs LaGuardia and Newark airports ramped up in response to the gutsy landing, the number of recorded bird strikes involving those airports actually went up.

Combined, the two airports went from an average of 158 strikes per year in the five years before the accident to an average of 299 per year in the six years after it, though that could be due to more diligent reporting of such incidents.

Cuomo unveils plan for JFK overhaul

From AM-NY:

Governor Andrew Cuomo Wednesday unveiled a multi-billion dollar plan to rehabilitate Kennedy Airport as well as travel connections to the facility.

The three-pronged plan, completely reimagines the airport while also attempting to address access on roads and through mass transit.

The overhaul would come at the tune of about $10 billion, with around $7 billion coming from private investment.

It was put forth by Cuomo’s Airport Master Plan Advisory Panel, which is also overseeing the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport, as a way to accommodate projected passenger increases.

The proposal would expand the newer terminals to meet growing passenger demands. Older terminals would be redeveloped and relocated to increase connectivity. The roads in the airport facility itself would be reworked create a less-complex circular route.

By car, Cuomo’s administration wants to widen connector ramps of the Van Wyck Expressway and Grand Central Parkway at the Kew Gardens Interchange to reduce bottlenecking. It would also add an additional lane in each direction to the Van Wyck. This would cost anywhere between $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Cuomo said his administration was still deciding between two options to address mass transit access to the airport. One would focus solely on improving JFK AirTrain service and its links to the rest of the area’s transit network. This option would increase service frequency while also doubling the number of cars per train, from two to four. It would also bring a complete overhaul to the Jamaica transit hub to improve transferring to the AirTrain from the subway and LIRR.

Flushing plagued by excessive aircraft noise

From AM-NY:

Noise levels in the Flushing, Queens, neighborhood near LaGuardia Airport exceeded federal levels on one of every three days earlier this year, elected officials and community activists said Monday.

The maximum permissible Day/Night Noise Level — or DNL — of 65 decibels was exceeded on 32 out of the 92 days from March through May on a monitor on Franklin Avenue, state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Flushing) said at a news conference.

The Federal Aviation Administration measures on a scale that averages all community noise during a 24-hour period, with a tenfold penalty for noise occurring at night and early morning.

“With this data, we now see what we’ve always known: parts of Queens are subjected to higher levels of sound than others,” Stavisky said.

She said the current DNL standards date to the 1970s and are obsolete. She and others at the news conference said the FAA should reduce the maximum allowable DNL to 55, the standard at most airports overseas.

Homeless are sleeping all over LaGuardia Airport

From PIX11:

The homeless population has surged in New York City and now the problem has gone beyond crowded shelters and dirty streets.

More and more homeless are squatting at LaGuardia Airport.

"I think it's the responsibility of the city to make sure that they have actual shelters and can take care of people. They shouldn't be using public facilities like that," airline passenger Vassyl Lonchyna said. "And they shouldn't be cluttering this terminal,"

And while that passenger blamed the city for a poor response at LaGuardia, New York City doesn't actually have jurisdiction within the airport.

According to a spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, "The Port Authority has its own police department and funds a nonprofit to provide homelessness services."

Koo asks FAA to divert flight paths

From the Times Ledger:

City Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing) is calling on the Department of City Planning to work with the Federal Aviation Administration to consider reverting to LaGuardia Airport’s old flight paths if it cannot resolve the airplane noise issue.

Before 2012, flight paths were routed over Citi field, the tennis stadium and Flushing Meadows Corona Park but would be diverted over Flushing during the US Open. But in 2012, the FAA approved the Flushing flight path for general use.

In a response dated Dec. 2, to a draft document of the environmental impact statement for the proposed Flushing West waterfront development plan, Koo said low- flying planes and the noise have caused health concerns for residents in his district. He noted that the proposed development area would be directly under LGA’s current flight pattern.

Koo, who lives in downtown Flushing, said the FAA has not conducted a comprehensive review of the flight paths approved in 2012 and said he keeps his patio door closed because of the noise.

A new LaGuardia on the horizon

From the NY Times:

La Guardia Airport, whose dilapidated terminals and long, unenviable record of traveler delays have made it a target of jokes and complaints for decades, will be completely rebuilt by 2021, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced on Monday.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport in northern Queens, estimates the overhaul will cost about $4 billion, most of which will go toward tearing down the Central Terminal Building, rebuilding it in place and augmenting it with a grand entry way.

The project “replaces the airport in its entirety,” Mr. Cuomo said at a Midtown Manhattan luncheon for the Association for a Better New York. He said that airport officials and planners had concluded that there was no way to fix La Guardia, that it essentially had to be torn down and rebuilt. With no place to create a substitute anywhere near Manhattan, they decided it had to remain crammed between Flushing Bay and the Grand Central Parkway.

Travelers would also have better options to get to La Guardia; Mr. Cuomo said the plan called for a rail link between the airport and a subway station in the Willets Point section of Queens, as well as re-establishing ferry service to the airport.

Reconstruction of LaGuardia's central terminal announced

From DNA Info:

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey voted Thursday to move ahead with the first phase of a $3.6 billion project to replace the crumbling Central Terminal Building, known as Terminal B, with a new facility which will serve approximately 50 percent of all the passengers at the airport, officials announced.

The agency also selected the LaGuardia Gateway Partners to build the new terminal.
The Central Terminal Building, which first opened in 1964, will be demolished. The replacement will serve as LaGuardia's main entry.

The project also calls for linking the airport’s four terminals, which are currently disconnected, and a number of amenities such as a hotel and business center and a connection to the proposed AirTrain.

A master plan for the redevelopment will be unveiled in the coming weeks, officials said.

According to the Port Authority, construction will be funded by a public-private partnership.

LaGuardia hangars being demo'ed

From the Queens Gazette:

It’s a sight that has probably brought a smile to the face of Vice President Joe Biden. Demolition of the historic American and United Airlines hangars are in full swing as the transformation of La Guardia Airport has begun.

According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey the demolition of two of the six hangars, (numbers two and four), which began last week, are coming down at a cost of $22.9 million because they are very out of date and serve little function to the airport. They are also on land that could be used for airport redevelopment, namely the future Central Terminal Building. The current one is also slated for demolition.

At the time of their construction, the hangars were the largest of their kind built in the world. They are still operated by the original tenants, American Airlines and United Airlines, and are used for airfreight rather than as maintenance shops, which were their original purpose.

The facelift to the airport, which opened in December 1939, is expected to be finished by 2021.

More homeless sleeping at airports

From Bloomberg:

While the homeless population is bigger at the Port Authority bus terminal and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, a growing number are finding shelter at New York’s airports, according to Volunteers of America. Since 1986, the 118-year-old nonprofit has provided outreach to the homeless at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports under a contract with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.

Volunteers of America, which has offices at LaGuardia and JFK, counted a monthly average of 45 chronic homeless people at LaGuardia in 2014, an 80 percent increase over the average month in 2011. On the coldest nights, as many as 50 took refuge at LaGuardia in East Elmhurst, Queens. JFK’s chronic homeless increased to an average of 33 per month, double the number in 2011.

“It’s a public space,” said Carmen Keaton, Volunteers of America’s director of community case management and facility operations. “You have a place to bathe. You have a place to eat. You have a place to panhandle for money, and a warm facility.”

Security guards won’t eject the homeless from the central terminal so long as they’re peaceful and don’t create a nuisance, Keaton said. Many develop relationships with concession workers, who give them food and drinks, she said.

Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority, said such groups as Volunteers of America help relocate the homeless to shelters when possible.

Corona convention center will now just be a hotel

From the Times Ledger:

When the Fleet Financial Group purchased the DiBlasi Ford Dealership in Corona for $17 million in December 2013, it announced it would build the borough’s first convention center. The $200 million project called for a 106,000-square-foot-complex that would “rival the Javits Center” and include a 25-story hotel, residential apartments and plenty of retail space.

Fleet Financial Group has modified its plans considerably. Instead of the LaGuardia Convention Center, the company will build The Eastern Emerald Hotel at 112-21 Northern Blvd. across the Grand Central Parkway from Citi Field.

“The reason we scaled down is because we are trying to take more consideration about the existing traffic conditions in the area,” Fleet Financial Group President Richard Xia said. “It’s no longer a convention center, but a conference hotel that will still take advantage of the proximity to LaGuardia Airport and all the highways in the area.”

Xia could not go into any great detail on the specifics of The Eastern Emerald Hotel because “the project is still in its early design phase” and he did not have a timeline. “Right now we’re doing an environmental cleanup, contaminated soil remediation, and then we’ll go forward with the land use process.”

A conference hotel would serve the Asian business community in Flushing, but Xia has his eyes on an annual event that brings nearly a million visitors to the area each year.

“The US Open is huge and you have all these corporate sponsors who have no place large enough to suit their clients,” he said.

Xia is also counting on other business from the $3 billion mega-mall and housing complex that is planned for Willets Point.

LaGuardia revamp won't happen soon

From the Wall Street Journal:

A long-awaited project to overhaul a terminal at La Guardia Airport has been further delayed as its operator weighs contest submissions to redesign it and other aviation facilities.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the aging airport, won’t select a development team to remake its Central Terminal Building—Terminal B to travelers—while it awaits the outcome of a broader design competition for New York airports, said John Degnan, the authority’s chairman.

“We simply decided it would be prudent to see what the conceptual design is before proceeding with the process,” Mr. Degnan said in an interview.

That a construction project is being delayed by a redesign competition is the latest bump in the Port Authority’s multiyear effort to replace the terminal, which was built in 1964.

Plane noise may be mitigated for many

From The Forum:

More residents living near Kennedy and LaGuardia airports could be eligible for federal grants to pay for insulating houses from aircraft noise, if the Federal Aviation Administration adopts new standards.

Recent changes to FAA flight procedures require that aircrafts fly lower along more precise paths. Therefore, while actual noise generated by aircrafts has decreased, and the number of people subject to noise has decreased somewhat, lower altitudes and “focused” noise tends to make the situation much worse for those under the newer flight paths.

A proposal before Congress would lower the acceptable DNL value level from 65db(a) to 55db(a). DNL (Day-Night average sound Level) statistics factor in data collected during a 24-hour period, with nighttime hours being weighted and additional 10 dB in consideration of a sensitivity to noise during the nightime hours. This data is then generally averaged over a year-long period.

In response to growing concerns, Governor Cuomo last year directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to conduct what is commonly known as a Part 150 study, in order to define what steps might be taken in order to mitigate the problem. Created by the FAA in 1984, a Part 150 airport noise compatibility study is a set of regulations with two components: noise contour (exposure) maps demonstrating noise levels at airports and in nearby communities; and a noise compatibility program designed to provide solutions to the problem.

The Port Authority announced late last month that the contract for the Part 150 study on Kennedy and LaGuardia airports was awarded to consulting firm Environmental Science Associates. The project, expected to cost approximately $8 million combined for both Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, is to be funded mostly through flight fees and will run from October 2014 to August 2017.

In addition, the Port Authority has already implemented a “webtrak” portion of its website to allow residents to track flight patterns and monitor decibel levels in their communities, increased staffing to handle noise complaints, and committed to doubling the number of sound monitors around the two airports.

Ebola checks at airports

From Fox News:

Travelers arriving from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa will start to have their temperatures taken upon arrival at five U.S. airports, officials said Wednesday.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed that the five airports would be stepping up their procedures after he was asked at Wednesday's briefing about the fever screening.

"What we are essentially doing is adding another layer of security," Earnest said.

Earnest did not go into details about what the additional screenings would entail, but another official told the Associated Press that the new steps would include taking temperatures and would begin Saturday at New York's JFK International. Earnest said the other airports are Newark, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Atlanta.

Earnest said the five airports cover the destinations of 94 percent of the people who travel to the U.S. from the three heavily hit countries in West Africa -- Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. He estimated that about 150 people would be checked a day under the new procedures.

Killing wildlife hasn't made flying safer

From NJ.com:

When a flock of Canada geese collided with US Airways flight 1549, forcing Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger to ditch the plane in the Hudson River in 2009, the threat that wildlife poses to aviators exploded onto the national stage.

Since then, ridding New Jersey’s airport runways of animals has become daily business for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Since 2008, the agency has killed nearly 6,000 animals, mainly birds, that have congregated in areas it deemed to be a threat to aircraft safety at Newark Liberty International and Teterboro airports.

The problem is, these efforts are having no significant impact. The birds, it seems, don’t know that they are supposed to be scared away.

An analysis of Port Authority and Federal Aviation Administration data by The Star-Ledger shows that though the agency has expanded its wildlife management program considerably since 2009, wildlife collisions with aircraft at New Jersey airports have not declined.

Though most wildlife strikes do not cause any issue, several planes arriving or departing from New Jersey airports typically do sustain damage each year.

An aircraft at one of the Port Authority’s New Jersey airports collides with an animal, typically a bird, about once every two days — a figure that has remained virtually unchanged every year since 2008, the year before the Flight 1549 crash.

During that time, however, the number of animals — from European starlings to foxes to the threatened American kestrel — killed by the Port Authority has skyrocketed. In Newark, for example, just 10 animals were killed by the agency in 2008, while 1,267 were killed two years later.

Will Crowley's airplane noise law really change anything?

From the Queens Courier:

The skies over Queens and the rest of the country may soon be quieter.

Congressmember Joe Crowley gathered with state and local elected officials, advocates and community members Friday to announce the introduction of the Silent Skies Act bill that will work to alleviate airplane noise pollution in neighborhoods surrounding LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports.

The new legislation will require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to implement regulations by the end of 2015 demanding commercial aircrafts to go from Stage 3 noise standards to Stage 4 noise standards, reducing the sound by 10 decibels.

“Airports can never be perfect neighbors, but we can take steps to make them better neighbors,” said Crowley. “While commercial aircraft can never be truly silent, we can make sure they are less disruptive to the families who live nearby and improve the quality of life in our communities, not just here in Queens but throughout the country.”

Advocates for the reduction of airplane noise say the loud engines disrupt sleep, distract students and drown out the noise of everyday life.

Although the FAA issued regulations that required all new commercial aircraft designs to meet these new noise standards, the new introduced legislation would also have the FAA phase out older and louder aircraft.

The Silent Skies Act will now require the FAA to bring in quieter engines at a rate of 25 percent of an airline’s planes every five years, with all commercial airlines meeting the new noise standards by 2035.

Here's more.