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.
Long Island may not be the birthplace of aviation but it is certainly the birthplace of international air travel. On the morning of May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field airport and pointed his airplane towards Paris, making a successful transatlantic flight. Flying for 33 1/2 hours and covering approximately 3,600 miles, Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop from the United States to France. His feat opened up future international air travel between the U.S. and Europe, and now millions of people enjoy the same transatlantic air service Lindbergh did: cramped, hungry, and tired. Roosevelt…
Holmes Airport existed for about eight years, from 1929 to 1940, and was located in Jackson Heights, approximately a half mile southwest of the current site of LaGuardia Airport. In the years that Holmes Airport was operational, the airport on the current site of LaGuardia was called North Beach Airport, which eventually was the winner of the inter-airport competition for survival. Real estate developer E. H. Holmes built this small airport on 220 acres of undeveloped land in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. He organized & sold stock in Holmes Airport, Inc. E.H. Holmes felt that he had opposition.…
It will be a hundred years on October 7th that we celebrate the birth of KLM Royal Dutch Airline (KLM) and in order to understand the history of KLM, it is worthwhile to study the culture that gave impetus to its founding and development. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, legally Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. (literal translation: Royal Aviation Company, Inc.), is the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands. KLM is headquartered in Amstelveen, with its hub at nearby Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. KLM is the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name. It has a fascinating history of…
If the photo map of Glen Curtiss/North Beach Airport appears to be in a familiar place, you’re right. The airport is on the same land now occupied by LaGuardia Airport. When someone mentions Queens airports, our thoughts immediately go to JFK International, one of the best-known airports in the world and a popular gateway into New York City, and LaGuardia Airport, the older of the two, primarily servicing domestic flights. But few people are aware that at one time, Queens housed at least five airports, smaller in size, with two of them occupying the land area now the homes of…
Deliveries of appliances, furniture and other bulky items in the U.S. have been growing at a rapid clip, but Schneider National has stepped on the brakes. Declaring that the segment’s long-term prospects are not looking favorable, the trucking giant announced it would bring down the curtain on its First to Last Mile service launched three years ago to target this market. The operation, which involves 26 terminal locations, will be wound down before December 31. Schneider has struggled with this service, which produced $26m in losses in the first half of this year, and management projects another $9m shortfall for…
One New York airport is not among the worst in the country. In fact, it’s better than average—thanks to amenities that are tops in the nation, according to a new ranking. John F. Kennedy International Airport earned a surprising score in a new study by The Points Guy, a resource for travel news. JFK’s No. 1 ranking in amenities helped place it No. 22 overall among the nation’s 50 busiest airports. Other studies have routinely judged JFK among the worst among major U.S. airports, with nearby LaGuardia Airport typically ranked lower if not last. The study took 34 factors into…
In the middle of New York’s deep freeze on Thursday, January 31st, the JFK Air Cargo Association met at the Hilton Hotel at JFK Airport. The wall-to-wall crowd didn’t seem to mind the weather; they were more concerned about the somewhat confused state of the cargo environment. There are a number of issues that are not critical as a single issue, but when you bring the entire range of problems into the mix, you get people in the logistic business wondering what they need to do to keep their business flourishing. The most visible is the shutdown and Brandon Fried…
The Chronological Story of the Shutdown The shutdown started December 22nd and stemmed from an impasse over President Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall. In December 2018, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed an appropriations bill without wall funding, and the bill appeared likely to be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and President Trump. Trump then announced that he would not sign any appropriations bill that did not fund border wall construction. As a result, the House passed a stopgap bill with funding for the wall, but it lacked support in the…
Call me a dreamer, but I believe that we can do a lot better job at making JFK a world class airport. Like an aging movie star, the airport still has the name, and still has its true believers, but facts are facts and data is data and all of these point to a slowly deteriorating situation, specifically, in cargo. Our cargo business has suffered the past ten years where our import/export volumes in tonnage have slipped to an extent that many airports have passed us on the total tonnage figures. Chicago’s O’Hare has moved from #19 in 2007 to…
It’s only a beginning but an important beginning. New York City is finally making an investment into our ancient transport infrastructure with the announcement of Freight NYC. An investment that is modest compared with our total requirements, but a good start. Earlier this month, The Port Authority had also advanced a plan to remedy the problem with a project that will connect Port Newark with other facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan via barge and rail. And now, New York City’s mayor’s office is launching a $100 million plan to overhaul the city’s aging distribution system. The details of this plan…