A BIG PICTURE APPROACH
Fueling master plan facilitates changing, streamlining the distribution easier at JFK
John Boyce, Contributing Editor
August 2000
As JFK International Airport looks to the future, it has created a fueling master plan that stretches to 2020. Gerard Biscardi, the general supervisor for aviation fueling for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who recently oversaw the development of the fueling master plan, figures getting a bad report card could be a good thing.
The most necessary - and realistic - phase of the master plan looked at traffic as it relates to fuel consumption out to 2005. Subsequent-ly, the Air Transport Associ-ation made an audit of JFK fuel systems and concluded that what the master plan called for in the next five years was, indeed, necessary, but it was needed sooner.
Biscardi requested the master plan because "we realized an opportunity to be more efficient. We just had an ATA audit and they found out we're working on the master plan and they don't even want to wait five years. That's good for me. I mean, getting a bad report card is sometimes good."
Design pre-dates commingling
The hydrant fuel system at JFK has been improved and updated over the
years, but it's still a 35-year-old system. It was not designed to handle
the current huge consumption peaks and 1.3 billion gallon annual uplift
- an uplift that shows no signs of decreasing and is, indeed, expected
to increase. It is a system that pre-dates the commingling of jet fuel.
"We've acknowledged (in the master plan) that the configuration of
the system at JFK will not meet future demands of the airport," Biscardi
says.
"It's not the capacity of the system, the system is tremendous, it's just not configured to meet the needs. When it was built, it was built to meet a certain need --- four varieties of fuels with nine different owners all segregated by ownership or type of fuel. Now we're commingled. We just lack flexibility (in the system).
"We've peaked out on a couple of days when we get these four million-plus (gallon) days. As a matter of fact, we're pumping out faster than we're bringing it into the satellite facility. We've had some tense moments.
"We've had no breakdowns; I mean we've had no fueling-related delays, but it could be done so much more efficiently."
TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS
As currently configured, JFK's fuel system comprises two fuel farms. The
bulk storage facility of 62 tanks amounting to 28 million gallons is on
the perimeter of the airport. The other is a satellite farm of forty 100,000
gallon tanks (four million gallons total) some 2.2 miles in from the bulk
farm.
Fuel is almost constantly flowing into the system, and moves from bulk storage to satellite and then onto the nine central terminals through 28 fuel systems or individual pipelines. Cargo aircraft and regional and commuter airlines are fueled with forty-five 10,000-gallon and ten 5,000-gallon refuelers.
The major problem, as Biscardi and the master planners see it, is the transmission of fuel from the bulk farm to the satellite facility. "That's our weakest link," Biscardi says.
"We're emptying out our satellite virtually quicker than we can fill it back up.
"Right now, we could be loaded with fuel - and this has actually happened - but a particular terminal could be hitting very hard and actually be running out of fuel and we would not be able to replenish that tank as fast as we're emptying it. Meanwhile, all the tanks surrounding it are full. Through some manifolding and some consolidation, we anticipate making the place much more efficient."
In simple terms, the master plan, recommends installing three large fuel pumping devices and some new 20-inch line at the bulk storage facility. The satellite tanks will be completely eliminated and be replaced by a master manifold that will send fuel to anywhere on the airport through the current 28 fuel systems.
"We will retain, for now, the 28 systems," Biscardi says, "but they will be fed, rather than by separate satellite (tanks), by just a master header, a large pipe that will represent all the fuel. So by just opening and closing valves we will duplicate that satellite fuel farm. Right now, all that satellite means to us is a bulge in the pipe, just a four million gallon bulge. It no longer serves the purpose it did before."
The new configuration will allow JFK to handle with ease the tremendous peak loads that occur, particularly with aircraft scheduled in such a way as to meet the airport curfews in other parts of the world.
"We have room for everything if we spread it over the whole day," Biscardi says. "We have plenty of fuel. The problem is that I need it all in about a six-hour time period. The system has to meet these tremendous demands.
"With the new system we'll be able to do that because we will be able to just pump. All the fuel will be coming from the large fuel farm and with the pumps being so large and all manifolded together we'll be able to send any volume of fuel as quick as the airplanes can take it."
By removing the satellite, Biscardi will also be freeing up about eight acres of prime real estate on the airport and be getting rid of a huge maintenance load.
A QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY
The removal of the satellite fuel farm is only one part of the estimated
$50 million fuel master plan at JFK. But it is one of the more significant
elements and points up the necessity of having a fuel master plan.
Biscardi is a self-described "nuts and bolts kind of person". He's seen fuel master plans come and he's seen fuel master plans go. However, he particularly sees the value of this current one because the work is absolutely necessary and and it needs to be presented in a credible way to make it palatable and salable to the people who are going to pay a large portion of the cost - the airlines.
Although Biscardi cautions that the plan needs some refining and the numbers need firming up before being presented to the airlines for final approval, he thinks that the final approval would be less likely without a formal, well-thought-out master plan.
"I'll tell you why they have to happen," Biscardi says of fuel master plans. "Folks that have been in this industry quite awhile know how their airport needs to work, how their facilities work. They can sense growth. You just have a sense of the trends.
"If you were to come into my office, I could tell you what we need to fix at Kennedy Airport. That would be nice, but it would be very expensive. "Very often, the folks that pay for this don't have the same technical reference as all of us in the industry. They are financial people and they are the ones who keep us in check and free up the funds."
Biscardi suggests that if you hire a credible agency to put ideas and knowledge of professionals into a reasonable plan, the financial people are much more likely to understand the necessity for the expense and consequently embrace it.
"The reason you plan," Biscardi says, "naturally, is to get out ahead of the total breakdown of the system." The airlines, he explains further, haven't seen the breakdown yet so they don't think of it in the same terms as do the people who deal with fuel all the time. Airlines tend to look at the ticket price, the price of putting a passenger onto the airplane. Improving the fuel system now tends to increase that ticket price.
Explains Biscardi, "I know that if we continue heading the way we're heading, there will come a day when this airport will not be able to fuel every airline and every aircraft on a particular day and somebody's going to get a delay. That's what a master plan makes clear, and if its done by a credible agency and it's reasonable, it makes the expense palatable."
Although the master plan was finally drawn up by JFK's consulting firms, Staunton and Chow Engineer-ing and Argus Engineering, the entire process included the airline fueling committee and an airline advisory group - the New York Airline Liaison office. "They worked through the development of the master plan," Biscardi says, "because fundamentally we want to make sure that it's done in a way not how an airport authority sees it but as how an airline needs it."
UPDATING OTHER SYSTEMS
While he sees the elimination of the satellite fuel farm as the key to
updating the entire fuel system at JFK, Biscardi has not been idle in
updating other portions of the system. He has overseen the consolidation
of the filtration system so that there are no longer filters "all
over the airport" and he took advantage of the coincidental construction
of a light rail system at the airport to get his refuelers off the public
roadways and under the taxiways.
"The trucks had to make this 14 mile round trip to the (cargo) airplanes and back through the public streets," Biscardi says. "They're out there with the buses and the taxicabs. It really wasn't efficient so we were looking at putting an aeronautical restricted service road to service the southwest area of the airport.
"The southwest had the potential of being a booming cargo sector of the airport but it wasn't served by any service roads so we embarked on a project to build the southwest area restricted road. It took some time to build. We had to build a bridge then we needed a tunnel to get all this cargo or restricted traffic over to the side of the airport where the terminals were.
"Coincidentally, JFK is building a light rail project that will connect every terminal with public transportation, heavy rail system, our remote parking lot, our consolidated car rentals, and on up to Jamaica, which is a link to Manhattan. So we piggybacked our project with their project and now I'm the proud owner of a tunnel under the taxiways which we are about to link up with our newly constructed bridge and our restricted service road system. That will now revitalize our southwest area as far as cargo is concerned."
Cutting four miles off the refuelers' trip and getting them away from public roadways is a major step but to further streamline the operation, Biscardi, should he get final approval for the removal of the satellite fuel farm, would like to cut the refuelers' trip a further four miles by having them load fuel at the satellite site. "Now," Biscardi says, "when and if we remove the satellite fuel farm, my plan is ... to put my truck loading facility where the satellite was."
A REMEDIATION AGREEMENT
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has avoided some of
the problems of remediating pollution by reaching a Global Remediation
Settlement with airport tenants at JFK International Airport.
Gerard Biscardi, the Authority's general supervisor for aviation fueling, explains that the Port Authority worked with an airline committee, peer review group, regulators, remediation technical groups, the ATA, and businesspeople to reach an agreement on how to pay for remediation and avoid litigious conflict over the issue.
"The Port Authority had already embarked on a clean-up program." Biscardi says, "However, under this settlement all remediation work related to aviation fueling was packaged as one all-encompassing remediation project.... We know what the damage is and we know what it's going to cost to clean it up.
"We didn't do a whole lot of finger pointing, we didn't go after oil companies and airlines that are no longer in business. Here, the beneficial users of the system - the folks that use it today - and the Port Authority are paying for the cleanup. Doing business at Kennedy costs less than half a cent per gallon."
However, Biscardi adds, in the future if parties responsible for pollution are identified, the Authority will seek reimbursement to offset the airlines' cost.
