Author: Joseph Alba
Joseph Alba
Mr. Alba was previously Editor of the Airport Press for 12 years covering both local as well as global aviation news. Prior to this, Mr. Alba had Executive positions in Systems Engineering and Marketing with IBM World Trade, and had foreign assignments in the Far East and Latin America earning three Outstanding Achievement Awards. Mr. Alba also directed a new function dealing with Alternate Fuels for Public Service Electric & Gas company in New Jersey and founded a Natural Gas Vehicle Consortium consisting of car company executives and fleet owners, and NGV suppliers in New Jersey. Mr. Alba was a founding partner of ATA, an IT Consulting company which is still active in Central and South America. After leaving the armed forces, Mr. Alba’s initial employee was the U.S. Defense Department as an analyst.
The long term funding of FAA and the development and installation of the full suite of NextGen systems are at a nexis point. While these issues appear separate, they are really inter-twined since the dissatisfaction of lawmakers about NextGen progress is one of the causes of the short term funding. Both lawmakers and private citizens are at a loss and wondering why private firms like Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google develop and install millions of lines of code and modifications every year, and the FAA is unable to install a working comprehensive Air Traffic Control system for over three decades.…
Two barges abandoned in Flushing Bay were removed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but not before they unloaded tons of materials into Flushing bay. The materials that drifted towards LaGuardia Airport comprised of tons of lumber, Styrofoam and other hazardous material debris, much of it coming ashore in close proximity to tarmac areas. The perpetrators of this dumping are unknown, but the Port Authority had to respond quickly to the environmental and health problems caused by the dumping as well as the potential flight safety issues. Staff from LaGuardia Airport successfully navigated the perfect storm of challenges as…