Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

12 Days of Gratitude at PHX Airport + PHL’s Socks

Phoenix Sky Harbor Interational Airport (PHX) is bringing back its 12 Days of Gratitude campaign.

Beginning December 4, there will be activities taking place both pre- and post-security in both terminals. Passengers will have the opportunity to win prizes, take their photos with the Airport’s mascot, Amelia the Airplane and with the Navigator Buddies, participate in art activities, write notes of gratitude, and show off their airport trivia knowledge for prizes.

Keep an eye out for the PHX Polar Prize Patrol. They’ll be handing out PHX travel items and goodies to lucky passengers. And, throughout the 12-day event, airport staff and the PHX Navigators will be handing out chocolate coins and thank you cards to passengers.

Here’s a link to the day-by-day rundown of scheduled events for the 12 Days of Gratitude at PHX Airport.

PHL Airport has a Treat for Your Feet

The shopping team at Stuck at The Airport does a lot of its holiday gift buying at airports.

Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) is doing its part this year by offering complimentary professional gift-wrapping service through December 24 and by offering a free pair of Philly skyline socks to anyone who presents same-day shopping receipts totalling $75 or more. Take advantage of both offers at the gift wrapping botoh in the connector between Terminals B and C.


 

Aliens at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport?

A new exhibition from the Phoenix Airport Museum at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) is inspired by a potato-shaped, metal-rich asteroid named Psyche that sits between Mars and Jupiter.

On October 12, 2023, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft of the same name on a mission to Psyche.

The Psyche spacecraft should arrive at the Psyche asteroid sometime in 2029 and then orbit it for at least 26 months.

Courtesy NASA

Through early 2024, the Phoenix Airport Museum is presenting an exhibition inspired by the Psyche mission.

Psyche: Mission to a Metal World, presents a diverse range of artwork by students involved in Arizona State University’s Psyche-Inspired internship program.

Each year, the program accepts 16 undergraduate students from any university in the U.S. And through creative works, the students interpret the mission’s data, predict outcomes, and even develop science-fiction-based scenarios.

This new exhibit includes paintings, sculptures, animations, and more from the Psyche Inspired program.

Highlights include an animated, stop-motion “interview” with the Psyche satellite, a 6-foot-tall personified “asteroid robot” and vivid illustrations anticipating the asteroid’s surface. Visitors can also learn fun facts about Psyche and the NASA mission to visit it.

Look for this out-of-this-world exhibition, on display at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Terminal 3, level 2 near the security checkpoint through early 2024.

Exhibit images courtesy Phoenix Airport Museum

These airports are adding childcare centers

Airports wooing employees with onsite childcare

(Our story about childcare centers opening at airports first appeared on NBC News)

Trudi Shertzer can’t wait to bring her 8-month-old to work every day.

An operations duty manager at Pittsburgh International Airport, she is counting the days until she can drop off her son at a 61-slot child care center opening there next month — the only such facility housed in a U.S. airport terminal.

“I’m just waiting for them to give us the list of stuff I need to start packing up for my son Hunter,” said Shertzer, whose husband, Ben, works as a wildlife manager at the airport. “This will be so convenient. With the facility right here, we’ll be able to pop in and check on him, which will give us peace of mind.”

While the airport authority’s 475 employees get first dibs on enrollment, the child care center is also open to kids of other staffers at PIT’s 6,000-person campus, including concessionaires, cleaners and construction workers.

The Pittsburgh facility comes as the airline industry continues its hiring push to meet resurgent travel demand in a still-tight labor market.

(PIT Airport day care. Courtesy NBC News)

At least three other U.S. airports are working on new child care plans of their own. They will join the growing ranks of employees trying to expand access to a service that remains a costly barrier for many caregivers in their prime working years.

(Trudi Shertzer at PIT Airport, courtesy NBC News)

Shertzer said a babysitter has been looking after Hunter while she and her husband are at work, and enrolling him in the on-site center will offer “significant savings” to the family’s bottom line.

Allegheny County Airport Authority, with operates PIT, has set the facility’s tuition at about 10% below area market rates and made sure it qualifies for state subsidies, CEO Christina Cassotis said. The hope is that employees in lower-paying, hard-to-fill jobs like those at the airport’s food, beverage or retail shops will also be able to enroll their children.

“We are trying to build in ‘sticky’ and foundational benefits so that people feel like we’re investing in them as people,” she said, “as opposed to just someone needed to fill a job.”

The center, operated by the national daycare company La Petite Academy, will have its own entrance in a surplus part of a terminal once used by US Airways. Hours will initially be weekdays from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., but Cassotis eventually wants it operating 24/7 to accommodate later shifts.

“Child care has always been a challenge for working parents,” said Annie Russo, chief political and congressional strategy officer for Airports Council International-North America. But she said airports present an added challenge because many are far from urban centers and services.

“Having child care centers on or near airport property could solve that logistical problem for working parents and help airports recruit and retain employees, especially women,” she said.

A survey this spring of 10,000 U.S. mothers by well-being brand Motherly found 43% of women who changed or left jobs over the prior year cited staying at home with children or a lack of child care for their decision. Fifty-two percent of at-home moms said it would take affordable child care to lure them back.

Many caregivers have already returned to the workforce since the pandemic, as competition for labor drove up wages and inflation squeezed household finances over the past year. After Covid-19 disrupted child care and schooling for more than two-thirds of U.S. parents, the labor force participation rate for mothers with young children snapped back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

But child care issues have remained enough of a workforce headwind to draw attention from the Biden administration, which issued over 50 directives to federal agencies in April aimed at reducing costs and improving access. In a visit to PIT this month, first lady Jill Biden praised on-site child care as allowing workers to “pursue the careers they want without having to worry about finding care for their kids.”

Some airport directors had discussed expanding their child care offerings before the pandemic, but “it has now become a larger focus,” said ACI-NA’s Russo.

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which in the 1960s offered an in-terminal nursery so parents could dine or shop kid-free before boarding flights, is now in the final design phase of a child care facility for employees.

“Businesses at Sky Harbor continue to have challenges hiring and retaining staff,” said Matthew Heil, deputy aviation director for the city of Phoenix. Developing on-site child care, coupled with a $4 million pool of city and federal funds to help workers find care locally, “allows us to support those people with children in a direct way,” he said.

Denver International Airport is currently conducting a child care needs assessment, Deputy Chief of Staff Andrea Albo said. Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, which is home to cargo hubs for DHL and Amazon, is looking into developing on-site or nearby child care facilities, too.

“When my children were young, I was blessed to have stable, safe, dependable child care, and I know what a difference it can make,” airport CEO Candace McGraw said. “I’d like to see that happen at CVG.”

KinderCare said several major carriers, including American Airlines, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines, provide tuition credits at its facilities. Delta Air Lines said it offers up to 25 days a year of subsidized child care for situations like school closures and family emergencies. But many airport workers have few such benefits, and while some U.S. airports have experimented with child care services for decades, only a handful of programs still exist.

Miami International Airport opened a child care center near its main terminal in 1987 with room for more than 100 employees’ children, but it closed in the early 2000s. There are no plans to bring it back, partly owing to space constraints, a spokesman said. Boston Logan International Airport and New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport had similar programs at earlier periods, but spokespeople said there are no plans to reintroduce them.

San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport still support nearby child care centers for employees’ kids.

Since 1993, SFO has been subsidizing extended-hour child care at a Palcare-run center in a county-owned building about 3½ miles from the airport; 36 of its roughly 110 slots are filled by children of SFO staffers. The current $7 million five-year agreement provides tuition subsidies for the kids of low- and middle-income airport workers, plus two meals per day for all enrollees. It also includes additional funds to handle enrollment growth.

Last October, the operator of LAX reopened the First Flight Child Development Center, which offers child care at discounted rates to on-site workers, after a pandemic closure. First opened in 1998, the center is located a few blocks north of the airport and run by La Petite Academy, which will also manage PIT’s.

Sean Sondreal, chief business development officer of the Learning Care Group, La Petite’s parent company, said, “We hope to work with many more air transportation organizations to plan and execute on their vision for creating greater opportunities for an ever-evolving workforce.”

First Flight — whose subsidized rates range from $240 to $404 a week for LAX workers’ kids — is “a great recruitment tool,” said Becca Doten, chief airport affairs officer for Los Angeles World Airports, whose child has attended it.

“Many people are re-evaluating what they want from their workplaces and, post-pandemic, seeking better work-life balance,” Doten said. “As they choose new places to work, we know how important it is that we can offer a safe place for their children.”

Kristen Owens, a consultant for a project management contractor at LAX, has been bringing her son, Jack, 1, to First Flight since he was 4 months old.

“This day care costs a little more than half of what other daycares in the area are asking,” she said. “If I was not an employee of the airport and had to go to a different center, it would be so much more expensive and so much less convenient.”

Owens added, “This is definitely a benefit that makes me want to stay.

See Route 66 photos at Phoenix Sky Harbor Int’l Airport

(Photo by Terrence Moore)

It’s road trip season. And Route 66 – the Mother Road – running from Chicago to Los Angeles, is the iconic and most historic road trip highway.

First opened in 1926, Route 66 later took a back seat to interstate and superhighways that provided a faster and more efficient way to get from here to there.

But the historic road still calls to people like Tucson photographer Terrence Moore, who first traveled Route 66 when he was nine years old when his family was moving from Minnesota to California.

A new exhibition at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), hosted by the Phoenix Airport Museum, presents Moore’s images from his many travels along this classic highway as a professional photographer for more than 50 years.

Stories from the Mother Road” includes photographs of curio shops, vintage motels, neon signs, and quirky roadside attractions from a bygone era on Route 66.

“Much of my life was formed by the open road; which includes Route 66 as well as many other U.S. highways that all inspire adventure,” said Moore. “The feeling of rolling down the highway brings excitement, curiosity, and discovery that I am itching to share through my pictures.”

PHX visitors don’t need a plane ticket to view the exhibition, which is located pre-security in Phoenix Sky Harbor’s Terminal 4, level 3 through April 2024.

Better yet: snap a photo with the large-scale cutout image of a 1941 Ford Super Deluxe Woody Station Wagon, share it with the Phoenix Airport Museum (Airport.Museum@phoenix.gov), and receive a gift.

Celebrate Art and Science at PHX Airport Event

The Phoenix Airport Museum at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) is hosting a “Night at the Museum” event on Friday, March 24.

The program runs from 4-7 pm (not overnight) and celebrates the Museum’s current Artist and Researcher exhibition presenting art inspired by science.

Alexandra BowersDeciphering The Nature of Cardiokines

For the exhibition, nine local artists were paired with local researchers to create artwork based on their different areas of study.

The teams worked side-by-side in labs, classrooms, and art studios to create works that are visual representations of the scientific progress happening in Phoenix and other places in Arizona.

During the “Night at the Museum’ event, the public will be able to meet the researchers and artists, view
the collaborative artworks, and participate in an augmented reality experience that allows viewers to walk through sections of the brain.

The event is open to the public and will take place in the PHX Terminal 4, level 3 gallery.