JFK Airport GM August Stakeholders Meeting
AIRPORT VOICE, SEPTEMBER 2019 3
Deputy Fire Chief Joshua Cole
gave a brief presentation describing
the make-up and mission of the Aircraft
Rescue and Fire fighting (ARFF)
unit stating there 72 ARFF officers, 12
ARFF Sergeants 6 responding apparatus.
Their prime responsibility is to
respond to aircraft emergencies with
their equipment housed at buildings
269 and 254 at opposite ends of airport.
They have 12,000 gallons of water on
hand and 15-17 officers on duty. They
respond to fire alerts, to emergencies,
to ground fires on AOA. Terminal one
Klaudia Fitzgerald congratulated the
unit for its recent the response time
to a car fire which she said may have
been very dangerous. and praised the
people for efficiency preventing loss of
life on that day.
Teresa Rizutto was happy to share
infomation on the new cashless parking
system being rolled out to the airport.
The Objectives of new parking
Public Access Control System
Control system introduces various
ways to pay the parking which include
payment card industry compliance
such as Apple & Google, pay with increased
security of cardholder data security
standards.
The system will offer automationlicense
plate recognition with EZ pass
information stored so there will not
longer be a need to collect a ticket.
This new process will provide seamless
process with nominal downtime
. The yellow and Red lots will begin
to migrate to the system from August
-initiate and completion blue and orange
Oct-Dec and Dec-Feb. for long
term and employee lots.
The AirTrain report was given by
Sanchita Banerjee-Jimenez with an
overview of the Airtrain on time and
customer service report. The score card
shows improvement across all levels
with greatly improved on-time performance
from 2018-2019. This year both
ridership and customer service satisfaction
are up. There was a question form
a Kaamco member about ridership being
affected during redevelopment construction.
Port replied that it is working
on these matters now. Jimenez also
said that Port is taking the Initiative in
case of AirTrain disruption with better
communications, more buses, and use
of Twitter to inform the riders of any operational
issue.
PAPD Inspector O’Connor reported
that the hustler activity has
vbeen reduced by 25% with fines
and jail time being increased by the
Queens Judicial system. He added that
the PAPD is having joint ops with the
Taxi and Limousine Commission in
the field yielding an increase in Hack
summons.
The closing of the A&R restaurant
at Bldg. 14 took many by surprise.
Laura Garland, Manager properties,
explained that the food space was being
renovated and that Port is looking for a
new vendor to take the space. She also
mentioned that there is a food truck in
from of Building 14 in the morning to
help provide breakfast for many employees.
The SIDA office is expected to
move back to Building 14 later in the
year and hopefully a new food service
establishment would be in place.
FAA’s Dave Siewert will be inspecting
the Inspecting the runway progress
with GM Everett and Aviation
Director Huntley Lawrence the day
after the meeting. He said that there
is excellent progress but did not offer
an opinion if the project would be competed
before its estimated time and
that the airport was ahead of the game
in severe weather days. He did ask for
some for some help in minimizing direct
calls to the tower on very busy
days and calls on any one particular
flight since he people are usually extremely
busy with operations in those
times. Siewert announced that Port
would hold a Runway Safety Action
Meeting October 22, 9-Noon to review
past incidents for discussion to find
ways to prevent these in the future.
The report ended by a remark about
the high number of drones affecting
air space around the airports. “ We
are getting quite a lot of drone activity.
“ Siewert said. The FAA headquarters
recently released new comments
about compliance which can be found
at www.faa.gov.
According to JFK Security, a new
ID Management Credentialing system
will be in place as time of this publication.
Deployed August 26, it will allow
for off-site paperless, applications.
The change will come in stages which
will improve core processing applications
and future additional functionality
such as BOR tracking. In addition
there is a name change from “Issuing
Officer” to “Authorized Signatories”.
Training and applications will
be available online and no need to visit
the office except to personally pick up
a SIDA badge or fingerprinting.
Ana Lemos from Kaamco, would
like Port to review the current time
card duration of one year to biannual
to make things easier for all badge
holders and companies. Port Security
responded that the one year is an accountability
rule and TSA rule, so
Port chooses one year to renew authorization.
That is the Security Office
standpoint but GM Everett said they
are always open to a discussion when
asked about changing the system.
CBP reports the Chase backlog is
much shorter due to the return of deployed
personnel from the Southern
border. Although CBP is making some
changes as well to tie in with TSA system.
Additional changes will allow approval
of the seal through the system
and make approval process simpler.
CBP Port Director Russo said that a record
number of passengers have come
through JFK internationally. He said
that the process time was faster and
said that efficient queuing is the key
and thanked the terminals for creating
a better queuing system. . He said that
within six weeks CBP will be getting
most of its people back from the Southwest
border. Russo reported that there
are between 90-100 new officers in the
pipeline and they should reach JFK in
the next 12 months and things will be
easier next year. Additionally, screening
improvements are in the works such
as Ebola screening given the increase
of cases in Africa. To maintain safety,
MOU’s are in place to share CCTV images
from Jetblue and T4.
TSA reported that they continue to
be busy. They expect days with over
100,000 people travelling through security
a day. They are in the process
of CT terminals at check-point and
should be in place last qtr. 2019.
Tony Vero, as of this writing will be
the new GM at LaGuardia Airport being
succeeded here by Teresa Rizzuto
as Deputy GM at JFK. Vero wrapped
up his last general meeting at JFK
with several comments. First he applauded
the Port’s efforts and success
going very well into the Annual Safety
Audit; he spoke about possible demand
pricing in the new cashless parking
program; told the group that there is a
broad look at how the airport will keep
the traffic flow moving as well as maintaining
efficiency of the Airtrain; discussed
the loss of parking spaces with
the redevelopment; mentioned the hurricane
season upon the area and Port
preparing with communications to
keep operations going as best as possible;
announced the new initiative
in the four driver hold lots with new
rest room trailers, prayer mediation
trailers, and improvements for drivers
because of the important role they
plan in ground transportation. Most
of these improvements should be in
place in September. He concluded by
mentioning the important event dates
of the 9-11 Memorial Service the Boy
Scouts luncheon in October and the
importance and availability of MWBE
opportunities at the JFK Redevelopment.
JFK General Manager Charles Everett
Deputy Fire Chief Joshua Cole.
Continued from page 1
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