The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will meet this week to vote on a US$30m expansion of Stewart International, a project aimed at increasing international arrivals at the facility 60 miles north of New York City. Passenger numbers at the airport, nestled in the mountains near Newburgh, rose more than 60% last year to almost 450,000 people, fuelled by an increase in budget flights to Europe, according to the Port Authority The expansion proposal includes a new dedicated arrivals area, known as a federal inspection station, for international passengers. Currently, the airport lacks a dedicated area to process overseas passengers. Meanwhile, domestic passengers must pick up luggage at their airline’s ticket counter. <br/>
general
Pratt & Whitney and Airbus are working on a mitigation plan to correct recently discovered issues with PW1100G-JM geared turbofan (GTF) high pressure compressor (HPC) parts that have led to several in-service incidents on Airbus A320neos and triggered an emergency order from EASA. The order, issued Feb 9 and based on an Airbus alert to operators, required operators to ensure no aircraft had two of the affected engines on one aircraft, and banned all extended range twin engine operations (ETOPS) flights using any affected engines, effective immediately. Pratt said the issue covers 43 engines on 32 aircraft, including 11 A320neos with 2 affected engines. Another 55 engines from the affected population have been delivered to Airbus, Pratt said. Deliveries of Pratt-powered A320neos have stopped. <br/>
President Trump proposed again Monday in his budget blueprint to raise TSA fees on airline tickets, which has been a non-starter in Congress. But TSA technology has been supported by lawmakers, and Trump proposed to invest US$71m in new equipment to make airport screening more effective and faster. Trump proposed to raise the TSA fees for each one-way ticket to US$6.60 from $5.60, for the year starting Oct 1. The fee would also rise from $6.60 to $8.25 per one-way trip in 2020. But airlines and travel advocates have opposed higher fees, and Congress refused to raise the fee when Trump proposed it last year. Meanwhile, TSA has been experimenting since June with Computed Tomography machines. Trump's budget singles out the 3-D scanners as part of new technology to thwart emerging threats to passenger flights. <br/>