DIRECTOR’S CHAIR
CREATING GLOBAL POWERHOUSES Few U.S. Airports Shine on the World Stage; PANYNJ’s Lawrence Is Determined To Change That BY CAROL WARD
ditor’s Note: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is on a mission to revamp the major commercial airports under its jurisdiction to create world-class facilities. Each of the three main airports – John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and LaGuardia Airport (LGA) – is in the midst of a massive overhaul, and most of the transformations are happening with a publicprivate partnership approach. Huntley Lawrence is the acting chief operating officer and director of aviation for the PANYNJ. He recently joined AXN’s Carol Ward for a conversation about the current state of travel and the plans underway to create airport facilities that rival those found throughout the world. This is an edited version of that interview. The full video interview can be found on the Airport Experience Hub at airportxhub.com.
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Above: Huntley Lawrence, acting chief operating officer and director of aviation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
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WARD: Can you give me an overview of how the three major commercial airports are faring, from a passenger volume perspective, as the pandemic begins to ebb and travelers are slowly coming back? LAWRENCE: We’re certainly continuing to see passenger totals increase with activity across the entire airport system. In mid-October, we’re somewhere around 65 to 70 percent of what we saw for this same period in 2019. It appears that Newark Airport is recovering a little quicker than our other airports, which makes sense, given how much JFK relies on international travel and how much LaGuardia relies on business travel. We are really pleased to see that we’ve received government approval for vaccinated individuals to arrive in the United States. We think this is going to be a game changer for international travel. We’re also seeing more and more in-person business conferences and meetings taking place, which we think suggests that the appetite for business travel is increasing as well. We think the progress we’ve seen so far throughout the year should continue into 2022 with the belief that the international sector will accelerate in terms of recovery.
I’ll certainly hasten to add that we’ve seen on previous multiple occasions that this virus is pernicious and persistent and is capable of adapting – it can certainly evade all of our efforts to be corralled. Any forecast of growth that we’re talking about in air travel must really be tempered with that caveat around what we believe today may change as soon as tomorrow. WARD: Let’s talk about capital projects at the three major commercial airports. Can you give me an overview update on the major projects at Newark, LaGuardia and JFK? LAWRENCE: I certainly can, but I want to give you a little bit of a perspective. When you think about airports in New York you don’t really think about those airports as being world class facilities. Our aspiration is to be a world class operator of world class airports. And that really is focused on three pillars: one is the capital improvements and investments that we’re talking about; the second component is a focus around customer experience; and the third is 21st century governance. We talk about governance, meaning relationships that you have with vendors, terminal operators and others that use your airport.
