Author: Julia Lauria-Blum

Airports are defined as any area of land or water used or intended for landing or takeoff of aircraft. This includes an area used or intended for airport buildings and facilities, as well as rights of way together with the buildings and facilities. The primary legal framework defining airports in the U.S. is found in Title 49 of the United States Code (49 USC 47102), categorizing airports by type of activity, including commercial service, primary, reliever, cargo service, and general aviation airports.  In defining these five categories, the FAA classifies Commercial Service Airports as publicly owned airports with at least 2,500…

On November 25, 1934, The New York Times headline read… ‘La Guardia Won’t Land in Newark and Insists Line Fly Him to City from Rival Field ‘ Once characterized by its impressive size and accommodations in its infancy, LaGuardia Airport was the first commercial airport to be built in New York City. Its construction was among the largest endeavors of the New Deal’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) and it included a landplane field and a seaplane division. At its opening in 1939, the then named New York Municipal-LaGuardia Field had six of the largest hangars in the world and featured…

Physical or digital archives are historical ‘memoirs’ of sorts. They are factual narratives that chronicle or document a specific time period, event, or theme. If you’ve ever sought out information on a particular topic, image, person, or event by searching for (or ‘googling’) it on the internet, the abundance of material that pops up on the screen can be astonishing in its scope and its depth, especially when researching a more obscure subject or lesser known history. How it physically gets up there on the computer or phone screen is a whole other story, and I can say from personal…

On January 24, Iris Cummings Critchell, the last living Olympian from the 1936 Berlin Games, died at 104 years of age. Iris competed at the 1936 Games as a 15-year-old in the 200 m. breaststroke. It was at these games that Adolf Hitler wanted to showcase the alleged superiority of Nazi Germany’s Aryan athletes. Upon her arrival in Berlin, Critchell said in a 1988 interview, ‘’Everywhere you went, there were the goose-stepping police and the guards. There was a sense of the impending future, a sense of the wish for dominance by the Germans and Hitler.”. However, Hitler was humiliated and…

Coping with a medical condition or serious illness can be an overwhelming experience for a patient, a loved one, or a caregiver. It becomes particularly formidable when an individual learns that essential medical care, trial, or treatment is located at a hospital or specialized medical center far from home. Adding to the challenges of logistics, are people who live in rural or isolated areas with limited travel options and those with limited financial resources. Under these circumstances, charitable non-emergency air medical transport presents as a vital and compassionate support for patients and their families. By providing an efficient, prompt, and…

In 2018, I took a first-time trip to Paris. While in Paris, I arranged an independent tour outside the city that I had always wanted to do: a privately guided day tour to the beaches at Normandy, where the D-Day landings took place on June 6, 1944. After a few days of taking in the city, I arranged a guided tour to Normandy with my husband Doug. On the morning of the tour, we met our guide near the Arc de Triomphe at dawn. After an informative 3-hour drive to the Normandy region, we stopped at Omaha Beach first, followed by…

As the Port Authority’s $30 billion airport redevelopment program moves forward across New York and New Jersey, a record 32.4 million passengers were welcomed across the agency’s commercial airports in the first quarter of 2024. From January through September 2024, about 109.7 million passengers used the agency’s commercial airports, with 11.9 million passengers welcomed during the month of September alone. With passenger records for travel set at John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International, and LaGuardia Airports, an enormous passenger demand arrives today following years of redevelopment at the agency’s three major airports, as their outdated terminals and footprints are…

One of the most famous ‘aviation firsts’ photographs of all time was taken by John Daniels of the Kill Devil Hill Lifesaving Station and made from a 5 x 7-inch glass-plate negative deposited in the Library of Congress in 1949.  A camera was set up on a tripod by Orville Wright, and it clearly captured the world’s first powered, manned, and sustained airplane flight at the exact moment of liftoff after Orville instructed Daniels how and when to snap the shutter. With Orville Wright at the controls, lying on the lower wing of the Wright Flyer with his hips in…

On December 7, 2024, the 83rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval Fleet at Pearl Harbor, a ceremony was held at the American Airpower Museum at Republic Airport remembering all who served and those who perished at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, ‘A date which will live in infamy’. The ‘’Dropping of the Roses’’ event featured a vintage World War II AT-6D Texan, which took off at 12:30 p.m. from Hangar 3 at the Museum and flew to the Statue of Liberty to drop off 83 American Beauty Roses (including one extra white rose for…

On Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, Metropolitan Airport News had the pleasure of being asked by The New Terminal One (NTO) and the John F. Kennedy International Airport Chamber of Commerce (JFK COC) to participate in an engaging and informative discussion about the progress being made at NTO.  The discussion took place during a luncheon held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, in Garden City, NY.  After being introduced by the JFK Chamber of Commerce President, Joseph Morra, I moderated a ‘fireside chat’ with keynote speaker Jennifer Aument, CEO of the NTO, before a completely sold-out audience of airport community members. Seated at the podium inside…