In an announcement that sent waves of protest throughout the freight forwarding industry, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a plan in late October to move most of the air cargo operations out of New York City’s JFK International Airport and relocate them about 80 miles northwest to Stewart International (SWF) in the lower Hudson Valley.
Negative reaction to the proposal was swift. Brandon Fried, executive director of the Airforwarders Association (AfA), told Bloomberg that “there will be one big political fight to stop it.”
More than 600 forwarding companies and ground handling companies have operated at JFK since the 1960s and would probably not be willing to move to Newburgh, N.Y.-based facility, AfA said. In addition, more than half of the airfreight sent through JFK is carried in the belly cargo holds of passenger jets, which would be even less unlikely to transfer their flights to the spacious but less-convenient SWF, a former military facility.
Should the transfer of these services to SWF occur, “there will be a huge shift in the cargo transport in and out of the New York area, and it would result in a huge hit to the economy,” Fried said.
JFK currently handles 1.34 million tonnes of airfreight through its long-established cargo terminals, making it the sixth largest cargo airport, by volume, in the United States, according to Airports Council International.
Under Gov. Cuomo’s plan, the state would create “Start-Up NY,” a tax-free zone in the Orange County area that would provide incentives to manufacturers to move their operations to the region and transform SWF into a new airfreight hub. Already, major parcel carriers FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service have regular flights in and out of Stewart, as does the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Meanwhile, by moving the currently overcrowded cargo terminals out of JFK, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, would have more room to make planned expansions to passenger terminals and mass transit improvements, as part of an $8 billion plan to modernize JFK, LaGuardia (LGA) and Newark Liberty (EWR) airports over the next 10 years.
Though the Governor is launching Design competitions this year for revamping JFK and LGA, no specific timetable or completion date was set for the cargo transfer proposal.