Hundreds of aviation professionals gathered for Aviation Day USA 2018 in New York City for an info-exchange on the industry. Keynote speakers included Port Authority Aviation Director Huntley Lawrence and IATA Director General Alexandre de Juniac and leading aviation individuals gathered to promote the advancement of aviation.
Topics included Brexit, Northeast Corridor traffic growth, innovative passenger facilitation, Trump’s impact on aviation, future of Supersonic, and biometrics. A separate hall housed several vendors of the aviation desiring to introduce their goods and services to all attending.
De Juniac covered a lot of ground that IATA performs on behalf of the world’s airlines in the pursuit of the Business of Freedom, that is, less government interference in commercial airline business. However the first order of his list of important factors business is to recognize the industry’s steadfast pursuit of safety. The other five areas of importance are: safety, partnerships, undue government fees and taxes interference, improving infrastructure and sustainability. Regarding infrastructure de Juniac referenced the lack of new airports and lack of infrastructure in our region. He also poked NY area airports and infrastructure as lacking.
Director Lawrence of the Port rebutted the comments on old airports and poor infrastructure. He reminded the audience that NY has an 10 billion capital budget which will bring entire new airport construction and modernization to JFK LGA and EWR with infrastructure improvements throughout the aviation system including new cargo facility at JKF which is public-private partnership project. He credited Governors of New York and New Jersey for their support and Governor Cuomo in particular for his Vision plan for NY airports.
Lawrence emphasized the importance of every person traveling as our customers”. Under his watch there will not be excuses for poor performance, he said. It is the mission of his agency to make sure that all its customers get top priority treatment while traveling saying “I need to insure that everything we deliver is first class and to partner with private sector to make this happen”.
One of the main panels was moderated by Richard Quest of CNN. As always he moderated with a combination of showmanship, probing questions and insight. Topics included pilot shortage, sustainability, ultra-cost airlines. Profitability,
According to Manoj Patel, Executive Director of Finance at Terminal One Group at JFK, “ This was a very good event with professionals well established to lead the industry. Great to see everyone looking to the future”.
Premier Sponsors included IATA, The Wings Club, Datalex, Heico, ICF, Passur, The Port Authority of NYNJ, and Go Beyond with media partners CNN and AeroLatin.
