Results tagged “airports”

Unlicensed cab drivers are charging tourists $120 a pop for a ride from the airports to Manhattan, and Inside Edition is mad as hell about it. In one of their priceless hidden camera exposés, airing tonight at 6 p.m., the show's muckrakers put their lives on the line to show you what you hopefully already knew: shady individuals are preying on people at the airport.

The roundup of Canada geese around NYC airports is now nearly halfway complete with a total of 800 having been trapped and gassed. Operation "Goose-Be-Gone" has now removed geese from 15 of the 40 sites within 5 miles of Kennedy and LaGuardia Airports that is expected to kill around 2,000 birds. However one wildlife expert told the Queens Tribute that the city's removal program is only skimming the surface. Dr. Steven Graber said, “They’re definitely on the right track. They’re finally doing what they’ve been supposed to have been doing this entire time. However, they’re forgetting about 90 percent of the property and 90 percent of the problem.” A spokesman for the mayor's office disputed that saying, “In the City, there isn’t much open space that isn’t city owned." The Times had more pictures of the geese being rounded up earlier in the week at Randalls Island.

Mayor Bloomberg expressed further support for the city and Port Authority's joint plan to kill 2,000 geese during their molting season in order to prevent accidents like the one that left Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. On his radio show yesterday, Bloomberg said, "There are people who care very much about the geese. But in the end, safety of the public is No. 1. There is not a lot of cost involved in rounding up a couple thousand geese and letting them go to sleep with nice dreams. We're trying to strike a balance. In the safety of flying, the public trumps the rights of the geese...(This way is) less stressful way of eliminating geese. They actually use carbon dioxide, and they just sort of go to sleep." Geese in various city parks within five miles of local airports will begin getting rounded into portable pens where they're killed with cabon dioxide-filled chambers on Monday. Wayne Johnson, a "free-land activist," told the Post, "There's a ton of nonlethal alternatives," such as chemical repellents and goose-frightening pyrotechnics.

In other Flight 1549 news, the city and Port Authority are embarking on a plan to kill at least 2,000 pesky Canada geese living within 5 miles of airports. Mayor Bloomberg said, "The serious dangers that Canada geese pose to aviation became all too clear when geese struck US Airways Flight 1549. The incident served as a catalyst to strengthen our efforts in removing geese from - and discouraging them from nesting on - city property near our runways."

The TSA tends to get a bad rap and often ends up the recipient of frequent gripes, especially in the city whose airports lead to three-quarters of takeoff delays nationwide. Maybe it has something to do with the times when we hear that we're waiting in a line that winds down the escalator because they're confiscating cheese, yet having no trouble letting through a passenger with a Hezbollah flag featuring a man wielding an AK-47.

A new report from the business-oriented group Partnership For NYC says that local air traffic congestion cost our economy $2.6 billion last year. Delays that stem from the one-third of nationwide flights that go through New York end up having an impact in causing a delay in three-quarters of the nation's flights. Kathryn Wylde, the head of Partnership, thinks that it's time to modernize air-traffic control and routes that planes use nationwide—a move that would cost an estimated $22 billion. Doing so would allow planes to take full advantage of satellite-based air navigation and no longer only use long and straight arrival paths. She thinks that now is the perfect time with the downturn in the economy giving a breather to the heavy stress on air traffic "for all the wrong reasons," much like the lightening of congestion after 9/11. Wylde feels that the billions costing New York represent a much bigger cause for alarm saying, "Not having the air traffic control system is costing us $1.6, $1.7 billion a year. Put those numbers together (with other cities' costs) and $22 billion is going to look like chump change."

After two incidents where planes nearly hit each other at JFK Airport, the FAA is offering ways to increase runway safety. One is to use a system of warning lights (sort of like traffic lights) that will change color to let pilots know when runways can cross--the near hits at JFK occurred on its perpendicular runways--and will be installed at JFK and LaGuardia. The FAA is also offering a $100K salary incentive for veterans air traffic controllers to work at NYC-area airports.

A state law proposed to offer airline passengers trapped aboard grounded planes at New York airports a baseline of humane treatment (e.g. water, air, bathroom facilities) was struck down by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today. The New York Airline Passenger Bill of Rights was enacted after some high-profile incidents that had passengers stuck aboard delayed flights for hours, with overflowing toilets and no food or drink.

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.