Ribbon Cutting: On June 8, 1989 Donald Trump is flanked on the left by Trump Shuttle CEO Bruce Nobles, and on the right by the late Morris Sloane, Port Authority Director of Aviation, Planning and Operations, and David Plavin, Director of Aviation, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and we were there.

      These days, it seems everybody has a Donald Trump story.
      Here is mine.
      U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump grew up a few blocks from our home in Queens, New York. I recall holding the door at the nearby Key Food Supermarket for his mother a few times.
      When the Trump Shuttle opened after The Donald paid $365 million to take over Eastern Airlines Shuttle in 1989, Trump’s people asked me to cover the opening at the old Eastern-now-Trump Shuttle, which was located on the other side of the airport from the Marine Air Terminal (MAT) at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
      Prior to 911, our offices were located at the MAT. Our publication Air Cargo News FlyingTypers resided there for 25 years after we saved the building from obscurity and demolition.
      I told them I was not interested but then relented, assuming they needed the press numbers.
      I boarded the B727 after shaking hands with Mr. Trump. Trump Shuttle had spent $1 million per airplane on refurbishment efforts, which included thick maroon carpeting, maple-veneer paneling, beige leather seats, and even faux marble sinks and gold-colored fixtures in the lav.
      I immediately went to the back of the aircraft where the lav was located to see the Trump silver & gold and faux marble toilets.
      Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned. Lo and behold, it was Donald Trump, who said he also wanted to determine if the “marble counter tops in the lavs were for real.”
      That evening, the local NBC News station in New York carried a clip of my brief encounter with Donald Trump. It pictured the two of us with our heads in a dirty old B727 lav. There was no toilet paper, let alone marble!
      For some years later, I would peer out the window of our offices in the MAT, that served HQ for Pan Am and later the Delta Shuttle, and see Trump’s B727 and later B757 parked nearby on a part of the hardstand called “Five Towers.”
      Later, when The Donald called LaGuardia a “third world airport,” I could only imagine that he must have been referring to some other airport of which I had no knowledge. How he could denigrate the lovely and exquisite Marine Air Terminal—arguably one of the most beautiful airport buildings on earth—was beyond my comprehension.
      No one could look at or walk through the MAT and not appreciate its grand beauty. But then again, I’d never deign to stick gold fixtures in an airplane lav. There’s no accounting for taste, as they say.
Geoffrey