Alison Stewart: Welcome back to All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, and unlike our last discussion, defying gravity is really not as simple as grabbing your broomstick. That's right. We're talking about air travel. Specifically, we're taking a look at how LaGuardia Airport in Queens went from being one of the world's worst air travel hubs to one of the best. Back in 2014, the situation at LaGuardia was bad enough to prompt then-Vice President Biden to say this.

Vice President Biden: It's unacceptable LaGuardia has the worst passenger service in the world. As I said, not because of the workers, because it doesn't have a structure. You wait too long, hallways don't make sense, you all know it.

Alison Stewart: But after a massive undertaking to completely redesign two of its three terminals, plus a smaller facelift to reimagine the art deco terminal at Terminal A, the renovation is complete. It took 8 years and $8 billion 7,000 workers, 72,000 tons of steel, and almost 600,000 tons of concrete. Joining me now to talk about the new documentary from PBS's Nova called Extreme Airport Engineering, which covers the ambitious project from start to finish, please welcome one of the film's writers and producer, Joby Lubman. Hi, Joby.

Joby Lubman: Hey, Alison. How you doing?

Alison Stewart: I am doing well. Before we get into the construction itself, can you explain how an air travel hub like LaGuardia fits into the local economy, and local culture of Queens, and then how does it fit into the global economy?

Joby Lubman: Well, it's a huge employer for the local area, and obviously, a massively important hub for getting people into New York City. It's incredibly close into Manhattan just across the river, right? I remember reading a story about Mayor LaGuardia back in the '30s, and he said he was flying. He had a ticket to New York, but he was flown to Newark, and he got out, and he said, "No, no, I'm getting back in. Take me to New York City." He's making a point that there was no municipal airport close to New York City. He had to go to Newark. I think that's in New Jersey, right?

LaGuardia Airport became crucial hub for getting people in and out of New York in the '30s and in the '40s. Unfortunately, of course, they added onto it, they developed it, but it just didn't keep up with modern times, as you guys probably know better than I do. It kind of fell by the wayside a little bit, became very much unloved. It never stopped being an important employer for the area. Important kind of cultural hub for Queens as it is today.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's talk about the major problems the old LaGuardia had. What were the problems with old LaGuardia that this massive project aimed to fix?

Joby Lubman: Well, like I say, since the '30s, when the airport really kind of found its feet on that little outcrop of land on the East River, the authorities had sort of added little bits on. They changed things around. They'd added new terminals here and there, but it wasn't really joined up. It eventually kind of came to have a very poor people flow. It was very congested. There was not enough seating, had really kind of antiquated heating and cooling. The roadways sort of landslide. They just got terribly clogged during busy periods. They just weren't up to the demand for air travel, modern air travel.

On the air side, the flights were just constantly delayed, mainly caused by the fact that the airport had single taxiways. Aircraft, they just couldn't push back from their gates as readily as they needed to because of congestion on the tarmac. If there's already a plane taxiing on that bit of bit of the airport, then they just couldn't push back, so they had to sit there when all of the passengers just sat there on the tarmac waiting to go. That can kind of compounded delays and gave it such a bad reputation.

Alison Stewart: Frequent flyers, we want to hear your takes on the new and improved LaGuardia Airport. What do you remember about the old days and what do you like better about the new hub? Or if you live nearby, call in and let us know how your neighborhood is impacted by being so close to one of the nation's busiest transportation hubs. Our phone lines, they are open. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can hit us up on our socials, @AllOfItWNYC. I'm talking with Joby Lubman. He is a writer and producer on Extreme Airport Engineering.

Okay, there's a woman in the film, and she's in a crowded terminal waiting area, and she says, "This is my first time in LaGuardia, and it's probably my last," because of really how uncomfortable and frustrating the experience was. From working on this film, what do we want our airports to provide instead of just being strictly utilitarian? What do they want? What do people want from their airports?

Joby Lubman: Well, I think traveling, I don't have to tell you, is an inherently tiring, stressful experience quite often. You want to be in some level of comfort. You don't want to be sweating and crushed up against people and delayed. Efficiency really is at the heart of what a modern airport needs to do. People are contributors describing these airports as people processing facilities. You want to get in and out of that place as quickly as possible. You're not going to the airport to hang out at the airport, are you? You're going in to get going.

You want to be in and out there fast and anywhere, anything that's facility that as pleasantly and as calmly as possible, that's what you want to do. I think, in part, that's really what they've tried to do with the new airport, minimize any pain associated with the airport experience.

Alison Stewart: LaGuardia has some unique challenges in geography. It comes right up against the Grand Central Parkway to the south and the East River and Flushing Bay hamming in from the north. Rick Cotton, the executive director of The Port Authority, called it a ballet on a postage stamp. How do the geographic realities force designers to get creative with how they'd carry out the project?

Joby Lubman: That's right. It's all of LaGuardia Airport would fit into Central Park with 150 acres to spare. This is really a little spit of land out on the limb. It was big enough back when they made it in the '30s. Mayor LaGuardia kind of had a conveyor belt across from Rikers Island, and he conveyed tons and tons of debris and rocks across and put it into this huge metal mesh to create this land reclamation on the river. That metal mesh, that kind of supports the whole airport that still gives magnetic interference, causes problems with the planes, believe it or not.

They made it as big as they could. As you say, is covered is water on three sides, highway on the back. They needed to find a way to maximize that space. Back in the '30s, they would have a linear design. Planes would just pull up opposite the terminal buildings. People would come out to the planes. Then they made this sort of finger design where they folded the edges of the concourses to allow more planes to park around the edges, but that created problems, especially after the '60s when planes got so much bigger, when more people wanted to travel.

Planes couldn't get inside those fingers and out of those fingers to the gates very easily. One of the ways that they are improving things at LaGuardia now is with a satellite design. Planes can park all the way around the edges. They have gates all the way around the edges of these satellites, concourses. The important thing is that the aircraft have multiple ways to get to the runway and they've introduced, crucially, dual taxiways. There's no longer this problem of having to wait for other aircraft to get out the way before they can push off from the gates.

It's kind of revolutionized the flow of aircraft at LaGuardia today. Getting there, of course, has been incredibly difficult. They had to rebuild the entire airport on top of the old airport, whilst keeping all of the flights running. To do that, the secret, if you like, is in the phasing plan. What they would do, they would build new capacity, a new concourse, for example, and only then tear down the old capacity. They were able to leapfrog the old capacity by keeping the new capacity up and running. New gates coming all the time. Incredible.

They also moved everything back by 600 feet towards the highway, which freed up 40 acres airside, which allowed them to make these dual taxiways. They built an extra concourse all the way out to the water's edge on site.

Alison Stewart: Let me ask you a question about that, though. With climate change, considering the future and what the future holds, how have they dealt with the idea that it could flood? I mean, they talked about Superstorm Sandy. How do they take climate change into existence given it's so surrounded by water.

Joby Lubman: Right. Well, yes, you have that example in 2012, right? Superstorm Sandy actually flooded LaGuardia Airport, which was really another reason why they had to completely revamp all of the drainage system and the pump houses. The pump houses back then, all the machinery was at knee level. That got flooded and just backed up all the water and so it couldn't pump out the water that came over the storm wall. The new airport not only has a vast new drainage system with pump machinery that's higher up, so it doesn't get so easily flooded.

They also had to build the concourse that was right out on the bay, actually on kind of stilts up on pillars, columns. The bottom floor, the ground floor could not be, is just open, allowing flood water to flow through, so it shouldn't destroy that concourse when flooding does happen. Another crucial thing they had to do was obviously this airport's right out on the river. There's only 10-- The water table is just 10 feet below the foundation. Any flooding is going to lift up those buildings and destroy them, crack all the concrete, make the new buildings completely uninhabitable.

What they had to do was they had to drill down, smash down these huge piles, these steel piles, filled them with concrete, reinforced, driven right down into the bedrock to sort of anchor the new airport buildings into the bedrock so that whenever that water table was rising and will rise in the future, those buildings aren't going to get lifted up in any way. You imagine, these buildings, they're basically like bathtubs kind of sunk into the reclaimed land. You put water up around those bathtubs, they're just going to float up.

They've had to anchor those with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these massive, deep steel piles right down deep into the bedrock.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about the revamped, revitalized, and thoroughly modern LaGuardia Airport in Queens with Joby Lubman, a writer and producer behind the new Nova special on PBS called Extreme Airport Engineering. We'll take your calls after the break. This is All Of It. You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Joby Lubman. He's a writer and producer behind the new Nova special called Extreme Airport Engineering. Joby, let's take some calls. Let's talk to Manish, who is calling from Garden City. Hi, Manish.

Manish: Hi, Alison. It's Manish. I've listened to your show since the beginning, so a pleasure speaking with you. I fly a lot for work, and I've traveled in and out of LaGuardia for years. It used to be a very miserable airport and you only cared about your destination. During the construction, it was even worse. I've actually watched the documentary with my boys since they flew out of LaGuardia as well. It's been really cool for them to see what's happened, but the airport is beautiful. The inside of it is amazing. It makes you want to actually hang out.

All the restaurants, all the open space, walking to your terminal, you can see the outside, you can see the bay. It's almost like a Zen garden kind of thing. Even driving past the airport at night on the Grand Central, it is a very beautiful airport. I realized it was 8 billion to cost, and you could see it was money well spent. The one thing I would look forward to seeing is a public transportation linkage, the way JFK has one. I think everything that they've done with the airport is beautiful.

Alison Stewart: Thanks so much, Manish. We really appreciate it. Let's talk to Sarah, who has a different opinion. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi. I've been listening to Mr. Lubman's talking about all the things they did, the ingenious design for the planes and the climate, and the previous callers talking about how much he enjoys hanging out at the airport. For someone who just wants to get on a plane, the layout is horrendous. You go through security, you start to walk, and you walk and you walk, and you walk past shops and you walk past restaurants.

It must be a minimum of 20 minutes and possibly half a mile or longer, and you're dragging your carry-on suitcase and you keep thinking because there's a sign that you're around the corner, it takes forever to get to the actual plane. From what has been described previously, the satellites, the concourses, they were all done to make the planes have an easier time, but there was nothing done to help a passenger move quickly from when she or he goes through security to that actual plane.

Alison Stewart: Thank you, Sarah. Joby, do you have a response to that?

Joby Lubman: Yes, that sounds like a lot of airports I know. Yes, I'd say that's probably quite common for all major airports. I think that speaks to the scale of these app that these airports have to be now and the distances that are required to get people to their planes. I'll be interested to know if they had where Sarah was headed, the gate Sarah was headed, if they had those moving walkways. I know they install quite a lot of those. Obviously, that sounds like Sarah didn't have a lot of fun there.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Let's talk to, on the phone, we have Michael Cimpher. He was a director of photography and was on the ground at LaGuardia to oversee filming of the construction while it was underway. Michael, can you hear us?

Michael Cimpher: Yes. Hello. Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: I can hear you. I hear you great. What kind of conversations did you have about visually telling the story of this massive project?

Michael Cimpher: I mean, you're just trying to get the scale of this and all the moving parts of everything that was trying to happen while running the airport at the same time. There's these huge beats that had to happen at a certain time. We're just trying to get that in picture for the documentary.

Alison Stewart: What were some of the logistical hurdles that you had shooting while this was all going on?

Michael Cimpher: We had to deal with the snowstorms and power, and then trying to make sure that we tell everything the way it's actually forming. When they're cleaning out the runways, we had to get cameras on that at 4:00 in the morning and follow the crews and then being out with the iron workers who were amazing and the super freezing cold. There's just a lot of people that really cared about this and just being sure that we were there to make it happen.

Alison Stewart: Michael, thanks for the call. We're interested, Joby. I was interested in how many-- There were a lot of moments when things could have gone wrong. Can you give us an example of when things really, really hinged on something being built? If it wasn't going to work out, the rest of the shoot wouldn't work out.

Joby Lubman: I mentioned earlier about this. Well, they were all kind of focused on this phasing plan which is almost an IKEA kind of way to put it together. It has what's called a critical path. For example, we filmed truss going up which was going to form part of this, the oculus, this huge kind of part of the grand entrance to Terminal C. They had to build this before the roadways could continue for the arrivals and departures roadways. You know weather's like in New York City. It's changing constantly. They had this storm coming in.

They had to change their plans to get these 80 ton trusses up to finish this part of the roof so that they could continue with the roadways. That's one example. If certain things aren't done, they can't move on to the next. That's going to cause delays for their schedule. Then you had snowstorms like Michael said. That was crazy. I think that was the worst snowstorm you guys had for five years back in the winter of 2020. That could have caused them big problems. That shut down the airport completely.

I think there was hundreds of flights got canceled, and of course, there was some real danger of the snowplows hitting stuff because the airport was just changing day by day. The boundaries of the airport, the construction sites were changing day by day, where the plow drivers thought the airport boundaries were, might have changed. There was a danger, I remember, of them kind of hitting things and having to be incredibly careful while they were clearing snow.

Alison Stewart: This is interesting text. "I was at LaGuardia the night of March 1992, when there was a terrible crash that left a plane in Flushing Bay. Especially after the horrible crash in DC last week, the positioning of airports right along the water, which is common for the east coast, makes me super nervous. I would love if the speaker could speak to this aspect of LaGuardia. Thanks."

Joby Lubman: For example, well, you guys will remember very clearly, I'm sure, the miracle on the Hudson when an aircraft taken off from LaGuardia got hit by a flock of birds and ended up ditching into The Hudson. Luckily, everyone was okay. I think that's an example of the flocks of seabirds in that case, kind of interfering with aircraft. Now, the new LaGuardia, from what they've we saw, during the construction, there's a huge potential problem of garbage being kind of left around, food for the 7,000 workers building the airport being left around and attracting birds.

They had to be incredibly careful. Incredibly conscious of attracting too many seabirds to the area. They had to go around and carefully remove any nests they found underneath the runways which jut out into the bay.

Alison Stewart: Was anything done to the airport to make it safer?

Joby Lubman: I'm not sure in terms of bird strikes.

Alison Stewart: Or just in general.

Joby Lubman: In general. For instance, a great deal of the restrictions they have are around the sight lines for the air traffic control tower. They had to build these air traffic control tower. Sorry. They had to design the airport with these kind of inclined surfaces on the building. It's quite distinctive if you take a look. That's so that the air traffic control tower can see every gate, can see every movement any aircraft is making. That's one of the things.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I think the double runways for planes, they can see a lot clearer. See it all. We should watch Nova, Extreme Airport Engineering. Joby Lubman was my guest. Thank you so much for being with us.

Joby Lubman: Thanks, Alison. Take care.

Alison Stewart: There's more All Of It on the way. Stay with us.