Here's why you shouldn't lean on train doors. Two doors on a JFK Airport AirTrain fell off the shuttle — which had just undergone maintenance work — as it picked up its first load of passengers yesterday, according to the Post.
The holidays must be a lucrative time for drivers who lure passengers into their unlicensed taxis at airports, but the Port Authority is making it tough for them this year. Yesterday Queens DA Richard Brown announced [pdf] that a crackdown on unlicensed taxi drivers has resulted in 18 arrests at JFK and LaGuardia. The arrests come a month after Governor Paterson signed a bill increasing penalties for unlawfully soliciting ground transportation at an airport, making it a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $1,250.
One more incident like this and Delta is going to get a reputation. Just weeks after a mouse was found on board one of their planes, causing an evacuation and serious delay... it's happened again!
The animals scored another point against the humans at JFK this past Sunday. Reportedly a mouse (eek!) was running rampant around a Delta aircraft waiting to depart for London. Upon being spotted, the captain refused to operate the flight, "fearing the rodent might gnaw through some critical wiring and put the entire aircraft at risk high over the Atlantic." And now we have a new reason to fear flying.
If you hate waiting for a cab at the airport, then imagine how the cab drivers feel, waiting hours at a time in a holding pen before being allowed to pick up passengers at a terminal. Surely there is some way to match up the waiting passenger with the waiting taxi. No? Anyway, the Daily News reports that some drivers were paying their way to the front of the line. All whilst passengers just stood there like suckers, not bribing a soul in their own line.
The FBI's longest wanted fugitive was arrested at JFK yesterday, where he had arrived from Cuba after spending more than four decades outside the feds' grasp. Louis Armando Peña Soltren, 66, was arrested at the same airport where his crime originated: On November 24th, 1968 he left the airport with two accomplices on a Pan Am 707 bound for Puerto Rico. During the flight they forced their way into the plane's cabin and ordered the crew to fly to Havana, threatening them with guns and knives quaintly smuggled on board in a diaper bag.
Moammer Gadhafi called for the dissolution of the U.N. Security Council and investigations into the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King during an address at the United Nations today, offering bones to both right- and left-wing nuts all over the world.
Don't want to risk sleeping in JFK to wait for your flight? Screw the man, pilot your own damn flight. Last Sunday evening a "wingnut pilot" flew into JFK airport, where he briefly landed in the cargo area of a Brazilian airline and took off again before he could be arrested. One pilot waiting to get off the ground reported to a controller "Looks like some guy on a parachute -- pretty stupid." Steve Abraham of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association agreed, saying "If you're a paraglider or using a home-built airplane, you're pretty stupid flying near there." Gizmodo even got some audio of the pilot (sounding uncomfortably nonchalant) who first spotted him. NYPD helicopters were dispatched but could not find the contraption's pilot, but warned pilots to be on the look out for a "kite." Motorized paragliding (or "paramotoring") is a form of paragliding where the pilot wears a motor on his or her back, and requires no license or specific training. Maybe he was just trying to chase away the Jackrabbits.
We've confronted many an animal on the JFK Airport tarmacs: geese, dogs, turtles. But the area is filled with other adorable beasts just waiting to cause delays. Right now, it's looking like the next enemy could be... the jackrabbit. The City Birder got the inside scoop on the unofficial zoo from Robert Horvath, who's in charge of keeping the runways clear.
JFK is the third worst airport to try and catch some shut-eye in, according to a newly released survey of 6,200 travelers by travel website The Guide to Sleeping in Airports. The airport's ranking is blamed on coldness, frequent P.A. announcements, TV monitors blaring CNN, bright lights, and overabundance of seats with armrests. Here's one thwarted sleeper's rough experience: "Our flight left at 7 a.m. and since the subway had crazy transport times during non-peak times we decided to stay at JFK. We went upstairs to the red carpet area next to BWIA check in and this security guard 'Agapita' ... told us to move. Then we went downstairs and fell asleep lying on the cold floor. We awoke to this horrid clapping of Agapita saying, 'You cant sleep here! Move now before I throw you out!' It was horrible! She told us we couldn't be on the floor. My witty friend then asked if we could stand on the floor and she said 'NO' she was a pain to everyone there! Thanks Agapita!" According to the poll, the worst airport for sleeping is Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris; second worst is Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where Agapitushka, the notorious Siberian security guard, keeps all her comrades alert.
Traveler beware: JFK's longest, and busiest, runway (13R-31L) will close for four months next year! But before you start looking up recipes for Turtle Soup, the shelled ones who recently delayed flights aren't to blame. The closure is all part of a $204-million, three-year makeover, Newsday reports. Last year the runway handled more than 143,000 takeoffs and landings, and individual airlines are currently analyzing the effect the closure will have on flight schedules (a JetBlue spokeswoman said "It certainly does have an impact on operations."). The director of aviation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey explains, "The scope of the project is truly enormous. It provides for the replacement of almost three miles of asphalt pavement." You can read more here—and you've been warned, the closure will begin in March and run until July. Since delays have plagued JFK in the past, this probably won't help their track record.
Ew, the Daily News uses the word "randy" to do so, but aw they tell us that the nearly 80 turtles who crawled onto the runway at JFK yesterday were there to make baby turtles! They were rudely interrupted however, when the "Port Authority workers rushed to the shell-covered runway about 8:30 a.m. and scooped up 78 diamondback terrapins." (According to WCBS 2, a "chorus of pilots" had radioed the tower to chime in about the "massive numbers" of turtles.) The breeding turtles, which are about 8 inches long and weigh 2 to 3 pounds each, were put into a pickup truck and moved back to Jamaica Bay. One Port Authority spokesman said, "Everybody had a good attitude considering it was turtles going off to hatch more turtles." And if they weren't, then what.... they get the Canada Geese treatment?
Move over geese, according to the NYC Aviation website, JFK airport was overcome with turtles today, 78 diamondback terrapin turtles, each weighing 2-3 pounds, to be exact.
JetBlue's T5 still has that new terminal smell to it, and it just keeps getting better. On top being so pretty, the airline has now teamed up with some music and marketing folks to bring their Live from T5 event to travelers. The six-month, 12-date live music concert series at their JFK outpost "takes place on select Fridays throughout the year, will feature hand-picked emerging artists from around the U.S. as well as bands chosen based on public votes in a national online competition." The series kicks off tomorrow with Nicole Atkins, and other upcoming acts include Alberta Cross and Justin Townes Earle. Maybe on-air live performances are next?
A flight that had taken off from JFK heading for Tel Aviv was quickly diverted after a passenger charged at the cockpit trying to get in. The plane and its 206 passengers landed safely at Logan International Airport in Boston. 22-year-old Israel citizen Itay Atmor was charged with interfering with a flight after the incident which an official emphasized was "not an act of terrorism." A Massachusetts Port Authority spokesman told reporters, "He was making some noise and banging on doors, possibly the cockpit. But he was subdued by some passengers who wrestled him to the ground." Delta Flight 86 had left JFK at 7:55 p.m. and touched down at Logan around 10.
Robert McDonald, a 60-year-old Scottish man, faces a year in prison after acting out every delayed passenger's fantasy aboard a grounded Delta flight Sunday night. The plane had been stalled on the taxiway for two and a half hours due to inclement weather (after a layover between Edinburgh and Vegas), and it seems all that waiting put the zap on old McDonald's head. At some point around 7:45 p.m., he snapped and allegedly tried to make a break for it by popping open the emergency exit!
According to NYPD statistics, overall subway crime dropped by 3% in 2008, with murders down to two from four in 2007. There were an average 6.3 major felonies a day last year, compared with 7.4 in 2006 (there was an average of 17 in 1997). But robberies are on the rise: 823 occurred last year, up from 796 in '07. And there were three rapes reported last year, as opposed to just one in '07. Still, the NYPD's John Hall tells the Post crime is "so low that it's getting more and more difficult to keep it there," and attributes the stats to a crackdown on people walking between moving cars, which criminals do when trolling for victims.
Birds—they think they own the skies. Ever since the Wright Brothers they've been vying for supremacy up there, landing their first fatal blow in 1912 by downing a plane into the surf off Long Beach, California. Yesterday's emergency landing in the Hudson River was just the latest chapter in an ongoing pitched battle between bird and plane. Of course, from the point of view of the Canada geese believed to have been consumed by both engines of U.S. Airways Airbus A320, yesterday's strike must have seemed a bit of a Pyrrhic victory (though there's probably a sweet flock of virgin geese greeting them in the afterlife, hey-oh).
The T-shirt worn by Jet Blue passenger Raed Jarrar at JFK back in August 2006 sported the slogan of famous anti-Nazi group The White Rose, but the phrase "We Will Not Be Silent" was also written in Arabic, and that freaked everybody out. Well, not everybody, but one TSA official at JFK that day did inform Jarrar that his choice of T-shirt was akin to "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, 'I'm a robber.'" They made him put on another shirt before being allowed on the plane, and then seated him all the way in the back. Well, now it's payback time for Jarrar; according to the ACLU, the TSA and JetBlue agreed to settle his lawsuit for $240,000. In a statement, he says he hopes officials "will think twice before practicing illegal discrimination."
In a recent Zagat survey, 10,000 frequent fliers ranked LaGuardia the worst out of America's 27 biggest airports, the Daily News reports. JFK didn't fare much better either, coming in fourth from the bottom of the list. Zagat Buzz has more on the survey, which declared Tampa the best airport in the land. Speaking to the News on her way through LaGuardia, 40-year-old Jennifer Thayer of Colorado Springs griped that the airport "seems like it's out of the 1960s. There's not a whole lot of choices." Never mind how a place without choices resembles the swinging sixties; what bothers Thayer is that "they don't have those massage people." Not true! Tomorrow, Lather Spa is giving out free massages in Delta’s Crown Room Club. But too little, too late for Thayer; she's already back in Colorado, where they say the airports smell of sandalwood and ambrosia.
UPDATE: The American Airlines situation at JFK still seems to be a mess, with about 25 flights delayed due to a computer "glitch" in the software that controls the baggage sorting conveyor belt. As of 1 p.m., delays were ranging from an hour to an hour and a half, according to Reuters. In the meantime, one Gothamist reader took the time to vent with the image above.
Passengers who boarded a Delta flight to Las Vegas at JFK airport at 10:30 a.m. yesterday had plenty of time to catch up on their Sudoku, because they ended up being stuck on the plane for over 7 hours. The flight never left JFK due to scattered thunderstorms on Sunday. Passengers were placated with water and “warm Sprite,” according to one account, and were finally permitted off the plane sometime after 5:30 p.m. A Delta spokesman could not explain why passengers were not allowed to return to the gate, and promised to refund their money. Which is a nice gesture, since airline passengers still have no rights.
The tabloids have caught wind of a bird smuggling operation uncovered by customs officials at JFK airport: For years now people have been sneaking Guyanese finches called Towa Towas into New York. The birds are used by Brooklyn’s Guyanese community for singing competitions; people place bets on two birds, and a judge decides which one has the lovlier song. (Here’s YouTube video of a Towa Towa singing.)
Get this woman a reality TV show! Christina Szele of Woodside, Queens created such a disturbance during a Jet Blue flight from JFK airport to San Francisco that pilots diverted the plane and landed in Denver, where federal authorities took her into custody. According to an affidavit obtained by the Smoking Gun, things started to go sideways after a flight attendant noticed Szele waiting on line for the bathroom with a book of matches and a cigarette, which were promptly seized.
Stewart International Airport in Orange County, NY is losing one of its two major carriers--AirTran. The airline cited rising fuel costs, which are affecting all carriers negatively, as the reason for its ending of routes from Stewart. AirTran carried 315,000 passengers over the last year to Florida destinations and its Atlanta hub. In combination with Jet Blue, AirTran has been critical to the near-tripling of passengers at the airport in 2007.
The Port Authority has decided that the thousands of feral cats that roam JFK Airport's property are best dealt with by way of extermination.
Like Starbucks baristas before them, airline workers are going back to school...or at least mandatory training sessions. JFK airport is gearing up for a busy summer of travel, and they're preparing to meet delays and frustrated airline passengers head-on, and with a happy face.
An unidentified man was forcibly removed from a United Airlines at JFK before it took off last night because he wouldn’t sit down and stop praying. A San Francisco author named Ori Brafman, who was on the flight, told WNBC the Orthodox Jewish man ignored instructions from flight attendants to remain in his seat. During the minutes before take off, he walked to the back of the plane to pray, and when he continued to defy attendants' orders, they summoned airport security.
A two-alarm fire was ignited on the Van Wyck Expressway when a tanker crashed near North Conduit Avenue - and JFK Airport - around noon. The driver could not escape and died in the blaze.
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