Author: Julia Lauria-Blum

On the clear Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, flight instructor Cornelia Fort was flying with a student pilot named Suomala. They had risen from the runway at Honolulu’s John Rodgers Airport to practice take-offs and landings before Suomala was to solo. To the west lay Pearl Harbor and its crowded, still dormant naval base. Just 22 years old and a pilot of less than two years, Cornelia was one of the United States’ most experienced aviators, earning her commercial and instructor’s licenses within a year. Leaving behind her family’s Nashville estate, she had been working for two months since…

While most high school aviation programs require students to go to a nearby airport to work on aircraft in a hangar, such is not the case at Aviation High School in Long Island City. When you walk into Aviation High School’s 10,000 square foot hangar, the voluminous space is abuzz with activity as students clad in white mechanic’s coveralls work at stations, on aircraft engines, simulators, propellers, and atop ladders on a variety of aircraft that are housed there. The enthusiasm that permeates the air is palpable, and it is evident why the school’s motto, Aviation High School – Where…

This October, the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 (ACAA) celebrated its 36th anniversary. The ACAA (Public Law 99–435) prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in commercial air transportation. Airlines are required to provide passengers with disabilities with many types of assistance, including wheelchair or other guided assistance to board, deplane, or connect to another flight, and seating accommodation assistance that meets passenger’s disability-related needs, as well as assistance with the loading and stowing of assistive devices. After a lengthy rulemaking process that included regulatory negotiations involving representatives of the disability community and the airline industry, the U.S. Department of…

On Wednesday, October 26, the Museum hosted a brief outdoor viewing to unveil the work done to restore the F-14D Tomcat currently stored in the museum’s restoration hangar. Before its move to the Museum in June 2022, the jet- Felix 101, F-14D BuNo 164603 has been parked outside the former Grumman Corporation offices in Bethpage, NY, since 2008 when Grumman’s successor, Northrop Grumman Corp., and the Grumman Retiree Club, created a monument. Said Cradle of Aviation Museum President Andy Parton, “It makes perfect sense for the plane to be at the Cradle. … We are the keeper of the legacy…

Last Sunday, I took part in the Making Strides for Breast Cancer walk at Jones Beach. As I strolled the boardwalk that morning alongside my husband and a friend, and the 65,000 others who attended this annual event, we walked the 5-mile loop from Field 4 to the West End of the Beach and back. The day couldn’t have been brighter, with a crystal-clear sky, temps in the low 60s, and a breeze blowing from the north at barely 3 mph. In the distance, I saw a circular pattern of jetliners arriving and departing JFK International Airport. It might have…

Seaplanes are powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. These aircraft are generally divided into two categories: floatplanes, which have one or more narrow floats (or pontoons) mounted under the fuselage to provide buoyancy without the fuselage contacting the water; and flying boats, which land using their fuselage (or hull) as its main source of buoyancy. Amphibious aircraft are in a sub-class of seaplanes that have retractable wheel gear that allows operation on both land and from the water via a ramp. Air service in a seaplane is unique in that it provides passengers the speed…

The 1,401 square mile expanse of Long Island, stretching 118 miles from New York City to Montauk Point is the largest island in the continental U.S.A. Today this densely populated land-mass located in the southeastern corner of New York State is home to some 7.6 million people. But at the dawn of the aviation age, with its proximity to Manhattan and its native grasslands and flat, wide-open landscape, Long Island was a natural airfield, providing the best platform for daring aviators from the world over, to begin or conclude their experimental flights. In 1909, one such aviator, Glenn Curtiss, arrived…

The Port Authority held its 2022 WE SOAR HIGHER Rewards & Recognition program for the second quarter on September 2, celebrating two exemplary employees at EWR for their outstanding customer service. The virtual event was organized by Renner Rachel (Supervisor, Customer Experience at Newark Liberty International Airport), who kicked off the ceremony by welcoming attendees from the EWR community and announced the Q2 winners, Juan Alsina of Hudson News and Auguste Noel of ERMC. In meeting the WE SOAR mission statement of ‘Delivering exceptional experiences together, we will soar to new heights and proudly become the global standard for seamless…

On August 13th, Honor Flight Long Island (HFLI) and the American Airpower Museum at Republic Airport in Farmingdale hosted a reunion of 37 Vietnam veterans and one WWII veteran who had taken an Honor Flight to Washington D.C. in June of 2022. Honor Flight Long Island’s mission is to honor as many Long Island veterans for their service and sacrifice to country by providing them with a daylong trip, at no cost to the veteran, to visit the war memorials designed and built in their honor at our nation’s Capital. Departing early from Islip MacArthur Airport, these veterans received an…

About six or seven years ago, while working for the Cradle of Aviation Museum as the curatorial assistant and collections registrar, curator Josh Stoff asked me to develop and implement an online digital archive of the Museum’s significant and extraordinary photo archive. With prints numbering in the tens of thousands and I essentially’ flying solo,’ save for the assistance of only one volunteer in the curatorial department, the project seemed absolutely insurmountable at the time. But fortunately, as I began to research a possible digital platform on which to place the archive, my one volunteer and ‘wingman,’ Joel Friedman, stepped…