NEW YORK -- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
hasn't always been up to the task in its management of LaGuardia, Kennedy and
Newark airports, said Huntley Lawrence, the agency's aviation director.
But that will change, starting now, he promised.
"Every day more and more customers arrive and every day
those same customers tell us they are not happy about something or a lot of
things, and guess what, I am not happy either," Lawrence said Thursday during
a speech at IATA's Aviation Day USA conference.
Lawrence, who took his current post at the port authority in
January 2017, cited as an example the problem of passengers suffering delays at
LaGuardia without seats to wait in.
"Let me assure you this will no longer fly with the
terminals we are building today," he said.
His remarks came as LaGuardia remains in the relatively
early stages of an $8 billion redevelopment and as the port authority prepares
to begin the construction phase of its $2.4 billion redevelopment of Newark's
Terminal A.
They also came immediately after IATA secretary general
Alexandre de Juniac announced that IATA is assisting with reviews of what led
to the meltdown at Kennedy Airport on the weekend of Jan. 4, when a major
snowstorm set off a chain of miscommunication involving the port authority,
Kennedy's contracted terminal managers and foreign airlines that resulted in
more than 140 diversions, more than 1,000 cancellations and operational chaos,
which included waits on the tarmac of several hours.
IATA will gather information from its members to aid in
investigations that are already underway on the matter by the FAA, the
Department of Transportation and by former secretary of transportation Ray
LaHood at the behest of the port authority.
"I won't pre-judge the results of these efforts,"
de Juniac said. "But one thing is already clear. We did not have enough
processes in place to ensure that all parties had timely access to the same
information on which effective and coordinated decisions could have been made."
Lawrence made it clear that it's not only the port authority
that must improve its work at the New York-area airports. He called on airlines
and other terminal operators to be more transparent about their use of landing
slots and gate space, and to more readily report maintenance problems to their
port authority.
Airlines, said de Juniac, should comply with that request.
"It's reasonable and feasible," he said.
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Correction:
IATA is assisting other inquiries into the Kennedy Airport incident, not doing its own.