Results tagged “federalaviationadministration”

After talk of flight caps to help ease airport congestion that leave many travelers very irritable, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced another policy to help ease airport woes. The DOT will let airports charge airlines based on the time of day and volume of traffic their planes are landing in. Previously, aircraft was only charged based on plane weight.

If you want to feel a little uncomfortable about how the Federal Aviation Administration is doing its job, read today's NY Times story about a near-miss at LaGuardia. Two weeks ago, a Comair Delta 50-seater and a Delta 737 were within a "few hundred feet" of colliding. A trainee had allowed the smaller plane to cross the runway, just as the 737 was descending to the very same one:

As the 737, Flight 1238, rolled down the runway at more than 150 miles per hour, an alarm flashed on a radar screen in the tower and someone realized a dire mistake had been made, according to details provided by officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the pilots’ and controllers’ unions. “No delay, no delay,” a controller shouted to the pilots of the regional jet, urging them to hurry across.

Continue reading "Planes Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close at Laguardia"

Officials from the city's Economic Development Corporation met in March with representatives from Tigerfish Aviation, an Australia-based seaplane manufacturer, to discuss how commercial seaplane service could work in the metropolitan region, and what kinds of planes could be employed.

Continue reading "Clear For Takeoff on the East River?"

The MTA will be paying for the additional police presence in the subways, according to Mayor Bloomberg. Police overtime to put one police officer on every train is costing the city $1.9 million a week, and Bloomberg said, "Let me give some credit to the MTA. They're willing to do this. They have some money. The governor has pushed them," even though he hasn't been happy about the MTA's footdragging on spending security funds. During his weekly radio talk, Mayor Bloomberg also said he "couldn't disagree more" with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision to focus on securing airline travel. Many of our commenters have questioned our anger at Chertoff's remarks, and there were quite a few valid points, but Gothamist thinks that this quote from the NY Times' Sewell Chan's Week in Review piece (which is a helpful overview of mass transit security) sums it up:

The United States mass transit system also lacks the aviation system's built-in security: limited accessibility, a ticketing system that requires identification and a single governing agency, the Federal Aviation Administration. By contrast, the Federal Transit Administration has little say over security policies. That's left to the country's 6,000 mass transit agencies.

Of course, whether or not the cities want the feds meddling more is another issue, but federal funding would be critical. Newsday looks at transit security across the country in Chicago (security cameras on buses), San Francisco (no more garbage cans underground), DC (chemical sensors), and Atlanta (bombproof trash cans ever since the 1996 Olympics) - and how NYC compares. And the police are now patrolling Amtrak train cars as well. Isn't Amtrak federally funded? We hope there are some federal funds coming to pay for the security!