JFK IM Pei Masterpiece
To Be Torn Down
Historic Terminal To Be Destroyed—Port Authority Calls Aviation Landmark Obsolete

     Port Authority of New York & New Jersey ordered the destruction of the exquisitely designed and still beautiful Terminal Six at JFK, which opened on a 22-acre site at the gateway in 1970.
     The airline terminal was a national design competition winner and was the first in the world to employ the extensive use of glass window walls, a practice that is common in airport design today. Terminal Six was erected on the site of the old Idlewild (now JFK International) Airport Quonset huts, which had served the gateway as passenger terminals since the airport opened in 1948.
     IM Pei, (Pei Cobb Freed & Partners) designer of Terminal Six, had this to say at the opening:
     “In planning, form and structure it was designed to provide unique solutions to congestion, particularly vehicular traffic, which, by 1960, had already become the most critical problem to confront airport planning.
     “Unlike other terminals, where automobile circulation had traditionally been confined to the front of the building and baggage movement to the back, circulation was facilitated by divided roadways to the virtual elimination of surface congestion.
     “With a drop-off platform in front of the terminal and a pick-up platform at back, curbside access was effectively doubled. (Baggage movement was relocated underground).”

     The terminal itself was designed for simplicity, restraint and high visibility amid the airport's clutter of unrelated, assertive buildings.
     Using glass as a primary building material—again, a first in U.S. airport construction—the terminal consists of two rectangular pavilions for arrivals and departures, interconnected with two cylindrical satellites for boarding/deplaning. Double-height window walls hung from a space frame and supported by concrete columns surround the main (departures) pavilion outside the building.
     The open solution allowed for great internal flexibility and proved readily adaptable to modifications required by the introduction of 747 jumbo jets while the terminal was under construction.
     On April 29th the Port Authority, in a tersely written statement, lumped this beauty in with a bunch of old, unused, derelict buildings at the airport, marking it among places that should not continue to exist at JFK International Airport.
     Port Authority Chairman Anthony R. Coscia said:
     "Our airports must keep up with the times if we want to remain competitive for air passengers and cargo.
     “This demolition program will allow us to keep JFK modern and ensure that it remains a contributor to the region's economic growth for many years to come."
     Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward said:
     "Maintaining obsolete buildings that were built 60 years ago is not a prudent use of our limited resources.      Instead, this action will position the airport to expand to accommodate the future growth of our airline and cargo tenants.”
     Queens, New York (where JFK Airport is located) resident Ryan Witte, who has been studying the Fine and Applied Arts for nearly a quarter of a century and is a staff writer on Architecture and Design for @home magazine, says he likes to go out to JFK and study the buildings there.
     Witte, who also spends his time conducting guided tours of Rockefeller Center, Lincoln Center and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in Manhattan, says Terminal 6 at JFK is anything but an insignificant airport building; in fact, it is among the most important structures of its type anywhere.
     “Terminal Six, The I.M. Pei Building at JFK is such a perfectly rational and honest building.
     “So much going on at the time (when it was constructed in the 1960s) was hulking Brutalist architecture (which I love), overly complicated late-modernism, or underdeveloped Post-Modernism.
     “Terminal Six by contrast was such a simple idea executed so crisply and serenely.
     “It really is the work of a master.”

     PANY/NJ either does not get it or, even worse, does not care. The hope is that enough people will stand up in resolute defiance of these actions, and that they will not be able to get away with the wanton destruction of Terminal Six.
     This is not new for PANY/NJ, as it was something that was tried but ultimately failed with both the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport and Building One at Newark International Airport during the 1970’s.
     At that time this publication raised a campaign and wrote books that ultimately saved both buildings.
     Today MAT-LGA is home to Delta Shuttle and Building One at EWR is in fact utilized as the Port Authortiy Administration Building.      
     Now as history, as will happen, repeats itself—a great landmark of aviation is on the cusp of being torn down and needs your help.
     Your move.
Geoffrey Arend/Flossie Arend

Is Air India Jinxed?

     Is Air India jinxed?
     That is the question on everyone’s lips. Apparently, any activity that Air India touches is doomed to fizzle out in a short time.
     So it was with India Post, the Indian government’s postal department.
     Recently, India Post stopped its “night airmail service” from Nagpur’s Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport, which it had started with leased freighters from Air India.
     Industry experts are viewing the stoppage of services from Nagpur built at the country’s first multi-modal cargo hub as a major setback.
     Started back in August 2007 amidst much fanfare, India Post’s first Boeing 737-200’s flight for airmail service touched down at Guwahati’s Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Assam, in the north eastern corner of India.
     The flight made history: it was the first freighter of the Indian postal department, and it was also the first domestic cargo carrier of Air India after its merger with the government-owned domestic carrier, Indian (Airlines).
     Over the years, India Post has expanded its airmail services to cover the whole of the country.
     Using the Nagpur International Airport as its hub, four India Post freighters would land late every night at Nagpur, hailing from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and the Kolkata-Guwahati route.
     After exchanging postal cargo, the planes would fly back to their original station. In fact, India Post was reenacting an older history; in the 1950’s, Dakotas carried postal mail and parcels from four points of the country, meeting in Nagpur. From Nagpur, the mail was sent out by rail or road.
     When it launched the “airmail services,” India Post took a brave step by going for a direct confrontation with the private express carriers.
     With help from a giant like Air India, the move could have been successful, and the Department of Posts had chalked out big plans.
     Air India, however, spoiled the party.
     According to senior Air India officials, the reasons for the stoppage of “night air mail services” were termed as “operational,” but those in the know say that the main problem is the shortage of pilots.
     In a recent move, a number of pilots have been thrown out of their jobs as part of the phasing out of Boeing 747-400 and A-310 freighters (Air India has six Boeing 747-400 and two A-310 cargo carriers).
     The service contracts of 30 senior commanders were not renewed.
     In fact, Air Cargo News FlyingTypers has been informed by sources in Air India that the proposed cargo unit—about which this publication had reported some time ago—that was supposed to start operations as an independent unit, has been abandoned, once again due to a shortage of pilots.
     The end of the “airmail services” has put a question mark on the viability of the multi-modal hub at Nagpur.
     The cargo hub project, a pet project of Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel whose parliamentary constituency, Gondia, is next door has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
     First it was the tussle between the promoters of the hub, the Government of the state of Maharashtra where Nagpur is located, and the state-owned Airports Authority of India, the initial owners of the airport.
     Later on there were more problems, the foremost among them being the ceding of land by the Indian Air Force, which also owned part of the airport.
     Adding to Nagpur’s woes is the recent withdrawal of Duke Aviation.
     The company, which held a groundbreaking ceremony more than a year ago for a MRO near the airport, has put an end to all its plans for want of funds.
     Though Ajit Karnik, the promoter of the project, has gone on record saying that he is looking for new partners to fund the project, one doesn’t expect it to come soon.
     The one silver lining for Nagpur is that the Boeing’s planned MRO project is still on.
Tirthankar Ghosh

Antonov Gives Hamburg Big Lift

     Everybody is talking about the so-called “Dreamliner B787’ that U.S. manufacturer, Boeing, is getting ready to deliver to its customers. Although, pardon me Seattle! But the more adequate name for the craft would be “Nightmare Liner” due to the huge delay in construction and the many disappointed clients resulting from that delay.
     The brand name Dreamliner is not an original one. The original DREAMliner first took to the air two decades ago on December 21, 1988. It was Antonov’s huge AN-225 and it had a wing span of 88.4 meters and a length of 84 meters. It remains the world’s largest manufactured commercial aircraft and was nicknamed ‘Mriya,’ which is Ukrainian for ‘Dream.’
     This mammoth transporter was built to lift Buran, the Soviet space shuttle, via piggy-back up to the 10-km height necessary to launch it into orbit. Recently Mriya landed in Hamburg, Germany on a commercial mission. Once there, it was loaded with two laser-welding machines weighing 150 tons a piece for transport to Shijiazhuang in northern China, on behalf of agent Panalpina. Ocean transport would have taken too much time in getting the urgently needed goods to the consignee, agent Panalpina has stated.
     “The mission went very smoothly from beginning to end, with no delay or loading problems. I have to give credit to the many parties involved, from the ground handling personnel to the crane operators, the Antonov loading crew up to the local customs people here at our site,” lauded Hamburg Airport’s Managing Director, Michael Eggenschiler (right) when asked to remark on the collaboration. “This charter has sent a strong signal to the market that our airport is a good address for demanding missions like the one we’ve just conducted successfully.” He is convinced that the AN-225 flight was well noticed by both forwarders and shippers and could kick off future charter uplifts at his site.
     In addition, Eggenschwiler announced a double-digit growth of cargo volumes in the first quarter of 2010, after a steep decline in 2009 resulting from the global crisis. Exclaimed the manager during the annual press conference: “We are optimistic that this positive trend will continue in the months to come.”
     In fiscal 2009, HAM turned over 224 million Euros after 230 million Euros in 2008, and posted a net profit of 35 million Euros, which was 4 million less year-on-year. “In view of the unprecedented crisis to the aviation industry, this financial result is quite satisfying,” concluded the Switzerland-born manager.
Heiner Siegmund

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