A Korean Air Airbus A380 visits me at home
For nearly my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of one of the busiest airports in the country. Draw a straight line from my house and you end up on JFKs runway 22L in almost 2 miles. Arrivals glide across the sky mere seconds from landing, while departures roar directly overhead. When people ask me “why are you so into aviation?” my answer should be “the real question is what took me so long?”
JFK and airplanes are a daily fact of life in this area. Most people are so used to A380s at 500 feet over their backyard, they don’t even look up. For many years of my life, I was one of these people. DC8s, 727s, 707s, Concorde, all the classics you might now find in a museum were all right over my head, but I just never looked up.
LOT Polish Airlines started service to New York in 1973 using the Ilyushin IL-62. Check out those paintings. Photo from LOT.
Hopefully the title of this story makes total sense to you already. What the heck does LOT Polish Airlines celebrating 40 years of flying from Warsaw (WAW) to New York (JFK) have to do with James Bond? Oh just wait.
It was a big step for LOT to start their Warsaw to New York flights in 1973 using the Ilyushin IL-62. “Taking into consideration Poland’s political situation at that time, the launching of airline operations to the US in 1973 should be recognized as a breakthrough in Poland’s relations with the West,” said Sebastian Mikosz, President of LOT Polish Airlines. “We are proud of such a long tradition of this flight, being the most popular among our passengers. Thanks to the well timed and plentiful connections, our North Atlantic flights also generate a big flow of traffic via our Warsaw hub.”
A whole bunch of go-arounds turned the JFK airspace into a tangled web of flight paths
Shortly after noon today at New York’s JFK airport, a powerful thunderstorm cell with cloud tops of 40,000 feet passed over the field and subsequently turned the NY airspace into a tangled mess.
Lightning struck the field a first time, taking down the airport’s runway visual range (RVR) equipment, which is used to measure exactly how far a pilot in the center of the runway is able to see the center line markings. Lightning strikes happen and equipment failures occur all the time, butmoments later, lightning struck yet again, this time taking out the ILS glide slope for runway 4R, the active runway. At that moment, several international heavies were on final approach, forcing missed approaches and go-arounds.
Only 22 days, 4 hours, 59 minutes, 31 seconds until JFK T4 opens…. but who’s counting.
How does an airline spread the word about their new terminal opening soon? If you guessed “rent space in lower Manhattan, recreate the best features of the new terminal, and sell cheap lunches,” you are correct! If that isn’t what you guessed, let me tell you a little bit about how Delta is preparing New York for the new JFK Terminal 4.
On May 24th, Delta opens an expansion to terminal 4 at JFK, moving their operations out of terminal 3. For those of you who many not have flown Delta through JFK recently, terminal 3 has fallen on hard times, and is slated for total demolition in the near future. The experience there is anything but world class, and passengers actively avoid it. Terminal 4, on the other hand, is a 1.4 billion dollar investment at JFK, bringing high tech features, new dining and shopping options, and an overall better experience to New York.
American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER at a cloudy JFK.
AMERICAN AIRLINES BUSINESS CLASS REVIEW BASICS:
Airline: American Airlines
Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER (N719AN)
Departed: John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Arrived: London Heathrow Airport (LHR)
Stops: Non-stop flight
Class: Business Class
Seat: 9A to and 8J back
Length: About 6 hours
Cheers: Amazing new Business Class product that goes head-to-head with international carriers.
Jeers: Still some grumpy employees who need to smile more.
Overall: American is not just talking the talk; they are walking the walk — they just need to walk a bit farther.
