Hurray: JetBlue gets its new terminal

Today, JetBlue welcomed its new home at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport. The airline moved from the old Terminal 6 to the new $743 million Terminal ($663 of which is covered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey), Terminal 5.  The first flight into the terminal arrived at 5:05 am which was greeted by “balloons and cheering JetBlue staff members“. Yesterday night the airline sent an update on Twitter – “Flt 194 LAS-JFK taxis to its gate: Our last flight into JFK’s T6. ”
(Translated, that was Flight 194, from Las Vegas to J.F.K., arriving at
Terminal 6.)

Highlights of the new terminal –

• 26 Gates (can handle 500 daily flights)
• 20-Lane security checkpoint
• Free Wireless Internet Access
• Children’s Play Area
• 1,500 space Parking Garage

For Architectural Details please read the Bloomberg Article. Some excerpts –

JetBlue Airways has invented a loyalty-inspiring bargain brand with smart customer service and meaningful design touches — like bigger seats — that actually improve today’s degraded flying experience. A few of those touches still can be found within Terminal 5, but that savvy goes missing in the architecture of the building itself by New York-based Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the U.S.

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Deja vu: Second near miss at New York’s JFK Airport

Couple of weeks back on July 5th 2008, it was Cayman Air’s Boeing 737 and LAN Chile’s Boeing 767. Last week it was like “Déjà vu” – On Friday July 11th 2008, after an aborted landing on another runway, Delta Airlines’ flight 123 (Boeing 767 flying from Shannon Ireland) crossed flight path of a Comair’s flight 1520 (Bombardier CRJ900) that was taking off. The airplanes came within 600 feet of each other vertically and half-mile horizontally. These distances are very small especially with respect to the typical airplane landing and take off speeds of 185+ miles per hour.

As a result – “The FAA moved quickly to change takeoff and landing procedures at JFK on
perpendicular runways — the kind of runways involved in both incidents.”

From Associated Press –

“Barrett Byrnes, who president of the controllers union at the JFK
tower, said controllers have long sought the procedure changes.

“The
FAA put out an order to JFK to no longer use that approach. That’s
exactly what we wanted to happen,” Byrnes said. “We’ve been trying to
change that for the last 12, 13 years. It’s been an accident waiting to
happen.””

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Near Collison over New York’s JFK Airport?

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that it is investigating a near collision that happened over the weekend over New York’s JFK Airport between a Cayman Airways Flight 792 (Boeing 737) and a Linea Aerea Nacional de Chile (LAN-Chile) Flight 533 (Boeing 767) that came within 100 feet vertically of each other.

From NTSB website –

“The Cayman Airways flight, on approach to runway 22L, was executing a
missed approach and conflicted with the Linea Aeroea Navional de Chile
flight that was departing runway 13R. Tower controllers intervened to
attempt to resolve the conflict, assigning both aircraft diverging
headings. The closest proximity of the two aircraft has not yet been
determined. At the time of the incident, the weather was VFR with 6
miles visibility and haze.”

Though FAA seems to be denying but investigating the report!

From MSNBC –

“”As of this time, we have no report of any such encounter,” FAA
spokeswoman Lynn Tierney said Monday. But as a precaution, “We are
pulling the tapes” to determine what, if anything, took place.”

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British Airways Launched Open Skies Airlines

British Airways is launching a subsidiary called “Open Skies Airline” that will be a transatlantic luxury-service airline. The airline is taking advantage of the transatlantic “open skies” agreement(or EU-US Open Skies Agreement between European Union and United States.

The first flight starts today, Thursday June 19th 2008 from Paris’ Orly airport to New York’s JFK airport. The aircraft flown will be a Boeing 757 with just 82 seats. “There will be 24 passengers in business class, where their seats will
convert into fully-flat beds, while the premium plus passengers will
have extra legroom. The economy section will consist of just 30 seats, allowing passengers more room and more service.” (from here). More on the seats configurations – Read here

BA is considering other European destinations like “Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Milan” for the subsidiary airline.

British Airways seems to be following the business model of all-business transatlantic flights of now-bankrupt airlines Silverjet, MAXjet and Eos.

Excerpts from RTE Business –

“The open skies deal between EU and the US came into effect at the
end of March 2008 after years of negotiation. Before, it would not have
been possible for BA or any other EU carrier to fly direct to America
from a destination outside their own country. The deal has also allowed any EU or US airline to use Heathrow Airport in west London for flights to America.“

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Virgin America: Still raising capacity?

In the times of ridiculously high oil prices and airlines losing millions every day, when all airlines are cutting down capacity and raising fares, there is one airline in US that is still bold enough to add more routes.

Virgin America, 75% owned by VAI parteners LLC and 25% owned by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, has announced a new service between New York’s JFK Airport and Las Vegas McCarran Airport. The service will start on September 4, 2008 and the fares will be priced at US $159 each way.

From M2 –

“Virgin America is also planning to fly from San
Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport
to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport later this year, subject to
government approval.

“

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