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AIRLINES BRACE FOR KENNEDY RUNWAY CLOSURE
(source: USA Today)
Airlines are girding for more delays at New York City's John F. Kennedy International starting March 1 when the already-congestion-plagued airport shuts down one of its four runways for construction.
The Federal Aviation Administration is forecasting delays equivalent to those seen during the clogged height of summer. The impact for the rest of the country is uncertain, but flight delays in New York can potentially ripple across the air-traffic system.
The longest of JFK's runways — a 14,572-foot strip of asphalt so long it serves as a backup landing site for the space shuttle — will be closed until July 1, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
It will be resurfaced in tougher concrete, taxiways will be reconstructed, and new lighting will be installed, said Susan Baer, aviation director for the Port Authority. The improvements should help reduce some delays at JFK in the future, she said.
Meanwhile, major airlines are cutting flights and building extra time into their schedules. The FAA will use new procedures to keep flights moving, said Michael Sammartino, the agency's director of system operations for air traffic.
"Everyone is concerned," Sammartino said. "Nobody is thinking this is going to be a cakewalk, but the preparedness has gone into it to allow for the best service for the customers."
Airline delays have fallen significantly in the past year, but New York's airports are still among the nation's most congested. Last August, JFK had the nation's third-worst record for delays, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. About 30% of flights arrived late, and 26% were late departing.
EVEN MORE ROOM AT THE INN
(source: The New York Times)
Though it may seem counterintuitive at a time when many hotels around the country are having trouble filling their rooms, nearly 100 hotels are scheduled to open in major American cities this year.
New York will have the most new hotels, 46, according to Smith Travel Research, a hotel research company in Hendersonville, Tenn., followed by Houston, with 30. New hotels are opening as well in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington.
For the time being, all the new hotels will add to what was already a buyer's market. Travel experts agreed that business and leisure travelers could generally expect a broader choice of rooms at better prices than a couple of years ago.
The lodging markets in New York and Houston were particularly ripe several years ago for hotel growth. In New York, occupancy levels were 85 percent from 2004 through 2008, and the average daily room rate rose 86 percent in those years, said Bjorn Hanson, a clinical associate professor at the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University. Developers, he said, believed that these conditions "created a safe, secure investment environment."
With hotel capacity in New York expected to rise more than 12 percent this year, Mr. Hanson predicted that consumers would be the immediate beneficiaries. "In general, new hotels will use discounting to try to gain initial market share," he said.
DULLES AIRPORT OFFERS PREVIEW OF NEW AEROTRAIN SYSTEM
(source: USA Today)
After nearly eight years of digging and more than a decade of planning, Washington Dulles International Airport will unveil a $1.5 billion train system Tuesday designed to help travelers reach their gates more quickly.
The new underground train system, called AeroTrain, will make its debut this week and replaces the airport's unique, bulky "mobile lounges" that have shuttled passengers from the terminal to the gates since the airport opened in 1962.
The new train system is designed in anticipation of expanding traffic at Dulles, a United hub and the largest of the three airports that serve the greater Washington region. The future planning is such that the train station serving the airport's "C" gates is built at the future site of those gates, slightly overshooting the building that serves the existing "C" gates. Passengers will use a moving walkway to backtrack to the existing "C" gates.
At $1.5 billion, the AeroTrain system is essentially the final piece of a $3 billion-plus capital improvement program at Dulles initiated a decade ago. It includes two new parking garages, a fourth runway, a new control tower and moving walkways that carry passengers from the terminal to the "A" and "B" gates if they opt not to use the trains.
Construction on the AeroTrain system began in 2002.
The new underground train network is nearly four miles long and runs 29 cars that travel up to 42 mph. The airport expects the average wait time to be less than two minutes, and it takes the train just more than a minute to travel between stations.
The train cars, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, run on rubber tires and are similar to systems used in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Use of mobile lounges will be cut roughly in half, and nearly half of the 100 or so mobile lounge drivers opted to take a buyout offered by the airports authority. The AeroTrain system is operated without drivers.
Taking so many mobile lounges out of service will also reduce congestion on taxiways, where the lounges often had to yield to aircraft in making their way from the terminal to the gates.
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