Tips on easing your trip to or from New York City:
Flying
You want to fly into La Guardia, Kennedy or Newark, NJ. If you are buying your tickets online, most travel sites will let you punch in "NYC" as the airport code, letting you search all three airports at once, rather than typing LGA, JFK and EWR.
Salvaged JFK stained glass for sale at Olde Good Things
Sharp-eyed Tropolism points out the exciting news that the lamented JFK stained glass wasn't destroyed, but instead much was salvaged by Olde Good Things.
The company's website has an extensive feature about the salvage effort -- and how to buy sections for yourself.
In Manhattan, Olde Good Things is located at 124 West 24th St. in Chelsea.
Picture credit: (top)Brian Armitage, American Airlines’ Terminal 8 at JFK before the glass was gone.
(right) Olde Good Things website.
Waldorf's lost train off-limits, other tunnels offer tours
Matt Lauer of the "Today" show this morning got rare access into one of New York's City's best hidden spaces -- the abandoned rail platfrm under the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Most famously used by President Franklin Roosevelt to help hide the fact he was wheelchair-bound, the track allowed VIPs to enter Manhattan by train and take an elevator directly up to the luxury hotel without ever setting foot on the street.
In 2006, the Waldorf's general manager told NewYorkology that the hotel's entrance to the rail platform had been reconfigued and is no longer easy to access. He also debunked a few myths about who used the private entrance. Researchers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park also did some research on the matter for NewYorkology, making it clear that the abandoned rail car under the Waldorf isn't the polio-stricken president's famous Pullman car, the Ferdinand Magellan.
So unless you're Matt Lauer, you're probably not ever getting access to the train cars under the Waldorf. But you can get access to a couple other abandoned rail stations in NYC. The oldest option is in Brooklyn, directly under Atlantic Avenue as it leads out to the East River. Tours of the 1844 tunnel are offered about once a month by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. But be warned that you do enter the tunnel by crawling through a manhole in the middle of the street at the intersection of Atlantic and Court.
Your other option is to catch one of the rare tours the NY Transit Museum offers of the city's original subway station that opened in 1904 under City Hall in Lower Manhattan. The stunning station, with chandeliers, skylights and tiled, vaulted ceilings, is next open for tours on July 19.
Not quite as glamorous, but still cool, the old Knickerbocker Hotel on Times Square had its own stairs from the subway platform leading up to the hotel. See Forgotten NY for pictures. (In 2006, the Dubai royal family announced plans to convert the Knickerbocker back into a luxury hotel but the Post reported last week that instead they've decided to sell the landmark building which now houses offices and a Gap shop, streetview map.)
Also of note: Julia Solis' intriguing "New York Underground" recently came out in paperback.
Teterboro Airport ranked high in 'serious close calls'
If you're flying into New York City on a private jet, chances are good you'll be landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
But according to a report in The Record, chances aren't quite as good that the landing will go flawlessly.
From the newspaper's report:
The airport had the sixth-highest number of "serious" close calls from 2000 to 2007, topping much larger, sprawling installations in Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere that — unlike Teterboro — serve commercial airlines.
Teterboro and Newark Liberty International Airport each had three serious incidents where aircraft nearly collided with another plane, equipment or a pedestrian, a February Government Accountability Office report said.
Teterboro Airport, (map,) recorded 187,840 arrivals and departures in 2006, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.
Last week, the New York Times reported that runway incursions are almost always caused by human error, and that the Federal Aviation Administration and airports are working to improve saftey by identifying dangerous areas, adding lighting and signs, and training pilots.
Related: Two people were injured Sunday night when a Cessna flipped over while trying to land at the Westchester County Airport according to the Journal News. Westchester County Airport, located in White Plains, logged 179,000 out-bound flights in 2006.
Buh-bye: Eos Airline bankrupt, flies last flight today
Eos, the all-business class (and lower-cost) airline that flew between JFK and London's Stansted, is flying its final routes today.
"We will cease operations entirely after April 27, 2008," the company's website states today.
The company, which is not yet three years old, on Saturday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to its news release (in pdf format.)
“Unfortunately, just as we were working toward closing on an investment that would have carried us to corporate profitability in 2009, some issues arose that we could not overcome," Jack Williams, Eos’ CEO, says in the statement. "It is regrettable that, even though investors continue to be enthusiastic about our business model, and even though we had a term sheet in hand, we were unable to close on the financing we needed. That leaves us with insufficient cash on hand to continue operations."
But there are still a few premium-only airlines in the air. SilverJet , the low-fare business-class airline, goes from Newark to London's Luton Airport and on to Dubai.
L'Avion flies a low-fare business-class service between Newark and Paris' Orly Airport.
Coming soon: OpenSkies, the new premium-class British Airways spin-off, hopes to start service between New York's JFK and Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airports early this summer, the company's CEO told NewYorkology last month. Its retrofitted Boeing 757 will carry no more than 82 passengers in its business, premium and economy sections. The company plans to add a second Boeing 757 later this year and six more in 2009, according to an April 1 news release (in pdf format.)
Airport security sometimes feels like a cruel game. And now you can play at home: Airport Security, courtesy of Shockwave.
First choose your level of game play: fickle, arbitrary or knee-jerk.
Then, just like in real life, the rules change at random; sometimes goldfish bowls are proibited, sometimes bottles of water. Best of all: pants are frequently prohibited.
LaGuardia Airport in New York and Philadelphia International Airport are singled out as two of the airports you're most likely to be victimized by sticky-fingered TSA agents, according to veteran travel writer Christopher Elliott in his latest column for MSNBC.
The Transportation Security Administration -- or "Taking Something Always" as he calls it -- since 2001 has fired only about 200 employees accused of stealing, yet at least anecdotally the problem appears to be far worse, he concludes. According to the TSA claim form, the agency employs 45,000 screeners at more than 450 airports.
Videos: Pope Benedict departs Manhattan by helicopter; an empty Popemobile ventures into Red Hook, Brooklyn
One of the fabulous things about living in New York City is that you never know what you're gonna see. Like maybe you're driving through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and you happen to realize the Popemobile is in the next lane.
The video:
The Popemobile, in Red Hook, turns left under the Gowanus Expressway and you head off to dinner. (Map.)
And then the people who later sit at the next table say "We just saw the Popemobile, too. At Columbia and Atlantic." (Map.)
Then you get home an hour later and wonder why there are so many hovering NYPD helicopters over the edge of South Brooklyn. And then you notice tons of flashing police lights in Manhattan heading south on the FDR -- toward the Wall Street Heliport.
Then you see a pair of Marine One-looking helicopters head out over the East River, out into the New York harbor, in front of the Statue of Liberty and out to the Verrazano Bridge -- the same route the US Helicopter commuter service takes on weekdays to and from JFK Airport.
The video:
(Just now, as the YouTube clip is uploading, the live TV feed shows the pope has just arrived at JFK with Vice President Dick Cheney. OK, still waiting on YouTube, and NY1 has just noted that indeed, the pope departed via the Wall Street Heliport.)
Frontier in bankruptcy; American cancels more flights
Low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines -- which flies into New York's LaGuardia Airport -- said it's filed for bankruptcy but will continue all its scheduled flights as it reorganizes its finances.
The statement from Frontier:
On April 10, 2008, Frontier Airlines Holdings, Inc. filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, in the Southern District of New York. This action followed an unexpected attempt by Frontier's principal credit card processor to substantially increase a "hold-back" of customer receipts, which threatened to severely impact Frontier's liquidity.
Just last week, Frontier reported it carried 953,078 mainline passengers during March and hit a record load factor of 84.4 percent.
Meanwhile American Airlines -- which has flights at LaGuardia, JFK and Newark -- has today canceled an additional 570 flights nationwide due to re-inspections of the wheel-well wiring in its MD-80 planes, according to NY1. Update: NY1 now says 33 flights were canceled in the NYC area.
And in another bit of struggling airline news, Silverjet, the two-year-old business-class-only airline that flies between Newark and the Luton Airport near London, announced it's in takeover talks, Bloomberg reports.
Image source: Frontier's online shop, toy airplane.
BoltBus has started selling $1 tickets to Boston from Manhattan with service set to start April 24, according to the company's website.
So while that's not soon enough get Yankee fans to get to their boys play the Red Sox this weekend, it works for Beantown fans headed to the Yankees Stadium grudge match April 16 and 17.
BoltBus' Boston service will depart Manhattan five times daily from 34th and 8th, arriving at Boston's South Station.
The alert on the American Airlines website may downplay the chaos travelers are experiencing at airports across the country, including about 85 canceled flights at LaGuardia, JFK and Newark.
On Tuesday, AA started canceling several hundred flights for emergency inspections -- and more flights may be canceled tomorrow, NY1 said.
The "inspections are to ensure precise and complete compliance with the FAA's directive related to wiring in the aircraft's wheel wells," according to the airline.
Meanwhile, the New York on Tuesday finally got its "NY aviation czar" -- Marie Kennington-Gardiner of Staten Island -- who will be charged as the point-person to "address chronic aviation delays in the New York region," according to the news release from the U.S. Transportation Dept.
Kennington-Gardiner, who most recently worked on post-Sept. 11 transit issues for the Lower Manhattan Recovery Office, has also held management positions at FAA offices along the East Coast.
The (most recent) federal February data of on-time arrivals was again bleak for the three main airports serving New York City. February flights from all carries landing at JFK were on time only 66.5 percent of the time; Newark flights were on-time only 55.1 percent; and LaGuardia flights were on time a mere 52.9 percent.
That same report lets you drill down even further to see that the worst time to fly into the worst airport (LaGuardia) is from 4 p.m. through 11 p.m. when its on-time performance stays in the 40-percent range.
The best time to land in New York (at least according to the February data) was between 9 and 10 a.m. when on-time performance rises to 80.5 percent at JFK and even 81.7 percent at Newark.
On the top of the list of the country's most-delayed flights in February was American Airlines flight 346, with scheduled service from Chicago to LaGuardia at 7:30 p.m. -- late more than 80 percent of the time. But it won't be late today; it's among AA's cancellations.
