My first job as a mechanic was with United at JFK. But we would regularly be sent over to LaGuardia to work on aircraft. It was 1964 and those were heady days in the borough of Queens. On the drive from JFK we would look over at the futuristic buildings rising on the grounds of the New York’s World’s Fair. Once on the ramp, we were greeted by the Jetson-looking air traffic control tower, which was also completed in 1964, just in time for the World’s Fair that year. Looking up from working on the ramp and seeing that tower made aviation’s future seem bright and hopeful to the young mechanic that I was.
I have to say I miss that old tower. Landing at LaGuardia is just not the same. On my near weekly trips to NY – I co-teach two courses at a wonderful aviation college right next door to LaGuardia, Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology – look at the new tower and just shake my head. Did they have to make it so austere?
Yes, of course, controller visibility from up there is so much better. And all the new construction at LGA had brought some disconcerting blind spots to the old tower so a taller tower was needed. But did they have to make it so ugly? Where the old tower looked to a light and bright future, the new tower looks more like a prison guard tower, clad in a dismal institutional blue-gray paint. It reminds me of security requirements and all the reasons why we hate to fly today.
