AIRPORT REPORT: NEW YORK
Always growing
In one of her last interviews as aviation director, Susan Baer, talks to Joe Bates about her time at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the growth and future development plans of the Big Apple’s airport system.
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ne thing comes across in abundance in any conversation with Susan Baer – her infectious enthusiasm and determination to get things done. These attributes, and of course, her almost unparalleled knowledge of New York’s airport system – she is the only person to have run JFK, Newark-Liberty and LaGuardia – made her the natural successor to William (Bill) DeCota as aviation director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) back in 2009. And she certainly hasn’t disappointed in terms of getting things done, as under her stewardship, all three airports have undergone or are in the midst of significant infrastructure development projects. Indeed, Baer once famously said that if there wasn’t something going on at her airports in terms of building new facilities or revamping existing ones, she wouldn’t be doing her job properly! She explains: “People say to me that our airports are always under construction and ask when all this work is going to be done. I tell them that I hope never, because that means we’ve stopped and we’re not really meeting the needs of the future. “Airports are huge enterprises and consist of many facilities across vast sites. You’ve always got to be doing something, even if it’s just general maintenance and repair. Runways need redoing, from time to time taxiways have to be fixed and infrastructure needs to be replaced.” Baer believes projects such as the JetBlue Terminal (T5) at JFK and the Global Gateway facility at Newark have helped breathe new life into airports. “I like doing big projects. For example, at Newark I oversaw the $3.8 billion Global Gateway project from start to finish,” she says.
“We invested $2.8 billion in the project and built it fast to meet Continental’s very aggressive timeline. The airline itself contributed around $1 billion. When I look back, this is arguably the project I am most proud of leading.” She says that JFK has just been through a whole series of improvements over the last decade redoing all the roads, opening Terminal 1 in 2003, Terminal 5 in 2007, Terminal 8 in 2008 and, most recently, Delta’s new $1.2 billion concourse in Terminal 4. The 346,000-square-foot expansion of Concourse B, means that T4 now covers more than two million sq ft, allowing Delta to move out of 50-year old facilities in Terminal 3. The construction of a new regional jet concourse will follow in the second phase of the Delta development. Also planned for JFK is an extension to Terminal 5 (T5i) to allow JetBlue to handle international flights, while PANYNJ is investing $450 million on airfield enhancements that include widening a third runway to make it A380 compatible. However, by far and the away the biggest project on the horizon for PANYNJ for the next five years is a new Central Terminal Building for LaGuardia.
LaGuardia facelift
Baer says that while the existing central terminal was modernised in the 1990s, the airport’s main concourses are all from the 1960s era and are desperately in need of an upgrade. “Quite frankly, the concourses are terrible as they were built for the 1964 World’s Fair and have long outlived their usefulness,” she says candidly.
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AIRPORT WORLD/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2013