Director’s Chair

BY CAROL WARD

Above: Huntley Lawrence, acting chief operating officer and director of aviation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Editor’s Note: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is on a mission to revamp the major commercial airports under its jurisdiction to create world-class facilities. Each of the three main airports – John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and LaGuardia Airport (LGA) – is in the midst of a massive overhaul, and most of the transformations are happening with a publicprivate partnership approach.

Huntley Lawrence is the acting chief operating officer and director of aviation for the PANYNJ. He recently joined AXN’s Carol Ward for a conversation about the current state of travel and the plans underway to create airport facilities that rival those found throughout the world. This is an edited version of that interview. The full video interview can be found on the Airport Experience Hub at airportxhub.com.

WARD: Can you give me an overview of how the three major commercial airports are faring, from a passenger volume perspective, as the pandemic begins to ebb and travelers are slowly coming back?

LAWRENCE: We’re certainly continuing to see passenger totals increase with activity across the entire airport system. In mid-October, we’re somewhere around 65 to 70 percent of what we saw for this same period in 2019. It appears that Newark Airport is recovering a little quicker than our other airports, which makes sense, given how much JFK relies on international travel and how much LaGuardia relies on business travel. We are really pleased to see that we’ve received government approval for vaccinated individuals to arrive in the United States. We think this is going to be a game changer for international travel. We’re also seeing more and more in-person business conferences and meetings taking place, which we think suggests that the appetite for business travel is increasing as well.

We think the progress we’ve seen so far throughout the year should continue into 2022 with the belief that the international sector will accelerate in terms of recovery. I’ll certainly hasten to add that we’ve seen on previous multiple occasions that this virus is pernicious and persistent and is capable of adapting – it can certainly evade all of our efforts to be corralled. Any forecast of growth that we’re talking about in air travel must really be tempered with that caveat around what we believe today may change as soon as tomorrow.

WARD: Let’s talk about capital projects at the three major commercial airports. Can you give me an overview update on the major projects at Newark, LaGuardia and JFK?

LAWRENCE: I certainly can, but I want to give you a little bit of a perspective. When you think about airports in New York you don’t really think about those airports as being world class facilities. Our aspiration is to be a world class operator of world class airports. And that really is focused on three pillars: one is the capital improvements and investments that we’re talking about; the second component is a focus around customer experience; and the third is 21st century governance. We talk about governance, meaning relationships that you have with vendors, terminal operators and others that use your airport.

[Regarding] the capital projects that are underway, we can start at LaGuardia Airport. It’s taken more choreography than a Broadway musical, but there is still some work remaining on Terminal B. The terminal is substantially complete – about 90 percent done. Concourse A West is connected to an elevated pedestrian bridge and is planned to open in Q1 2022. The subsequent completion of additional items will take us to near a hundred percent by July 2022. LaGuardia’s Terminal C is about 60 percent done. The headhouse for the new terminal will open in 2022 with Concourses E, D and F opening in Q3 of 2024 and Q4 of 2024, respectively. We will see substantial completion of LaGuardia’s Terminal C in 2024. The two new terminals will be connected by a Central Hall and hopefully a future rail access that brings you to the center of the facility . Certainly, access to the airport is very important to us as we are developing world class airports.

Above, Right: JFK’s planned Terminal 1 Commercial Plaza and Terminal 6-7 Concessions are part of a multi-year, multi-terminal effort to transform the airport into a world-class facility.

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Right: The more than 1.3 million square feet of the new Terminal B at LaGuardia Airport will be flooded with natural light and feature exciting food, retail and beverage options for passengers.

Right, Below: Newark Terminal A, which is a replacement of an existing 28 gate terminal, is a new, 1 million square foot, 33-gate facility that is anticipated to open in the spring of 2022 with 22 gates, followed by a full opening, including the remaining gates, by the end of 2022.

We do have a project that has an approved [environmental impact study]. We are taking a look at alternatives for that project at the request of Governor Hochul. We’re certainly going to be working in close consultation with independent experts and stakeholders.

We are also building a consolidated rental car facility and public parking facility, both located in a single facility. We’re going to open with initially 2,700 parking spaces in the spring and we expect to be fully operational with the CONRAC facility by spring of 2023. We’ve also put in place a new roadway network that has seven of eight bridges completed to date as we are working on a new world-class frontage.

There is a lot happening at JFK. And very candidly, there is a very detailed vision study that was initiated by former Governor Cuomo that included a complete transformation of JFK Airport. We envision a new JFK Terminal 1. We envision the existing Terminal 2 will be demolished and Delta Air Lines, which occupies Terminal 2, will relocate into Terminal 4. We will invest in significant improvements in the redevelopment of Terminal 4, including the construction of an extended concourse and the relocation of some activity from the West Concourse to the East Concourse. On the north side we are going to be advancing a new Terminal Six. It will allow us to have a facility adjacent to the existing Terminal 5. Vantage [Airport Group], partnering with JetBlue Airways, will be operating new Terminal 6. We also will demolish Terminal 7, which is currently where British Airways is. British Airways will co-locate with American Airlines at Terminal 8, and we’ll spend about $344 million – or American will spend $344 million with British Airways – to modernize that terminal and accommodate the move for British Airways. JFK’s cargo redevelopment began earlier this year with Aeroterms’ new state-of-the-art facility breaking ground in the airport’s north area. Additional cargo opportunities are being planned on adjacent sites. The Port Authority is also coordinating with the New York state DOT on … significantly improving airport access.

Tied all together with this is a focus on improved electrical resiliency and sustainable energy and making sure that we have power through clean sources like solar – that’s a very important emphasis … across all airports. At Newark Airport we’re also looking to replace the train. We’re going to replace the existing outdated AirTrain with a world class rail trail transit system that offers 21st century customer experience for airport and visitors. We’ve got an active procurement process on the way for design build to operate and maintain effort.

WARD: Many of your projects are financed through public-private partnerships, which is certainly not unheard of in the U.S., but it’s somewhat atypical. Why do you take that approach?

LAWRENCE: Public-private partnerships have been part of the Port Authority’s DNA going back into the 1960s. The model really continues to work for many projects because it mitigates the risk and shifts the financial burden for us, while the private partners can benefit in the actual projects themselves. We work out a fair and a reasonable revenue stream and then the private sector – with our design guidance and criteria – can design quicker, build faster and help to take on certain risks such construction, staging and phasing, [which is helpful] especially when you’re operating a busy facility.

That said, even though we don’t run the vast majority of our terminals, we are no longer going to [cede] control of the customer experience in those terminals. What we realized is that for far too long that was the case and customers suffered from it. The experience was not what we wanted, and we contracted out that experience and didn’t take accountability and responsibility for it. I think that we’ve got a huge focus around customer experience and ASQ are pulling together quite a few bits of data to understand our customers better. We’re looking forward to seeing customers come back to our facilities while we also provide new and improved facilities and address some of the customer experience concerns for the past.

WARD: Keeping with the passenger experience, have the needs of the postpandemic traveler changed?

LAWRENCE: Our concessions programs are really evolving continuously to meet the demands of the changing traffic demographic. Think about what’s happening right now with leisure travel leading the recovery of traffic. It’s important for us to have services, shops, stores, restaurants that meet this travel demographic. We think that there’s going to be a continuous evolution in how we look at the concessions, not just here but across the industry. One thing we all have to think about is, what is the future of the way concessions agreements are structured? We’ve got minimum annual guarantees. We’ve got formulas that are based on the number of enplanements. Then we’ve got events like COVID-19, that some would argue are force majeure events. I think there is a lot of discussion that needs to take place. Many airports have started that conversation already. We are in the midst of it as well.

Mark Gale of Ft. Lauderdale Airport has been named Airport Director of the Year, Large Airports Division.

Mark, Thank you for your visionary leadership of FLL and your partnership approach with HMSHost.

STEVE JOHNSON | PRESIDENT & CEO, HMSHOST

MARK GALE | FT. LAUDERDALE AIRPORT