Let’s start with a joke, in the form of a press release from the Port Authority of New York, which controls New York City airports.
The Port Authority is committed to providing the highest standard of service to all travelers, and the series of events following the winter storm this month were completely unacceptable.
Forgive my cynicism, but New York City airports are akin to the choice expletive the President used in a recent cabinet meeting.
So when the Port Authority says–
We are committed to understanding where and why failures occurred, and making whatever changes are necessary to assure these failures never happen again.
I’m not sold.
In addition the “bomb cyclone” storm, did you know a water pipe burst at JFK last week leaving the customs facility and baggage area in the main international terminal (4) flooded by three inches water?
Enter former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He will be leading an investigation into the breakdowns that led to mess that JFK has still not recovered from. 5,000 bags are still sitting in the flooded terminal. His investigation will cover “all phases” of the incident.
Here’s why I am so cynical. The problem is not something that can be fixed through better management. Rather, it is a far deeper structural problem.
JFK is falling apart. It’s an old airport in a confined space that has far outgrown itself. Think about the zoo I described in T4 before a recent flight. I’m told this is just daily life at JFK. And how can an investigation stop a pipe from exploding? They should probably all be replaced…but that requires a huge investment. Where’s the money when the city has so many other needs?
> Read More: Mayhem at JFK: Terminal 4 Security Line
CONCLUSION
Maybe I should just hush up and see if the LaHood investigation can yield any fruit. But you can understand why I have my doubts…
All smoke and mirrors. I flew out of JFK when it was Idlewild airport, back in the 60s. It was a dump back then and not much has changed to say it’s improved. The ‘investigation’ is smoke and mirrors. Donald Trump back in the campaign labeled NYC’s airports as third world. He was right, and everyone knew it. I have avoided the NYC area airports for years. I’m glad to see the slowly growing number of smaller U.S. airports getting international TATL service, e.g. Indianapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake, Pittsburgh (again, yay!). I’d rather transit SLC or Pittsburgh even if it adds time to my flight to Europe.
I know that you travel a lot and that you were sure to point out in the previous JFK post that you’ve been to 130 countries. However, your reaction to the airport that I travel through the most seems out of line with that, and especially for Terminal 4. The lines can be long, but I’ve had much worse many other places in the world.
For the most part I breeze through Terminal 4 and don’t recognize your description of it. Are you sure you weren’t at LAX, for instance? Or maybe even MIA? There are long lists of international airports that are far worse than JFK. You come off as an inexperienced traveler the way you describe it (like the bad restaurant reviews on Yelp where the server didn’t fill a water glass all the way). Surely that speaks poorly of your brand.
Pipes burst. ATL had a fire that shutdown most of the airport while I was traveling this holiday. Things happen. But, this isn’t as bad as being in Ushuaia and going to the airport for several days in a row to wait for hours to see if your flight will depart or traveling through some carribbean countries where customs inspections happen in the open on the sidewalk, at a French or German airport where there’s an announced work stoppage, at an airport testing random inclusion into the PreCheck line, or many of the other places that I think you give far too much credit.
I know you’ve been to some really weird places with very odd situations and rules, but it doesn’t sound like it when you write stuff like this. This sounds more like the report of a once-a-year traveler making inappropriate decisions but I know you aren’t that person.
Thanks for your comment. Of course there are far worse airports than JFK T4. I just really dislike it and have never waited so long for security in all my travels. I’m curious where you have had worse security lines? I’ve never waited as long in MIA or LAX.
New York City area in general is falling apart. Public employee unions in the NYC area are the worst. Overpaid, lazy, can’t be fired, entitled. The cost of living in the NYC area is very high and low standard of living … grimmy, unhappy people everywhere, unpleasant. And after the taxes (high property taxes and NYC city income tax) your paycheck is not much which causes the unhappyness. This is why all over the US you find people who used to live in the NYC area. Compounding this are a lot of immigrants that come to NYC as nice people but quickly pick up the NYC attitude.
There are so many posts on boardingarea about awful service in NYC area hotels. Still have no idea why tourists visit NYC. Maybe it is those stupid caps and t-shirts all over the world people wear that say New York on them that people think NYC is cool. BARF!
Fughedaboudit !
While I don’t disagree with your assessment, do you have any viable ideas or solutions? I don’t. The best I can come up with would be an entirely new airport with a high speed rail link to NYC. While this would be insanely expensive, it would be a true solution, with none of this lipstick on a pig stuff that PANYNJ has been pulling for decades.
Agree. Without a huge amount of money, the status quo will continue. But your solution is the right one if money/space were not so prohibitive.
I have two opinions. First off, “Third world airports” are usually pretty nice. For every dreadful LOS and FIH, you’ve got EBB, BJM, ADD, REP, DEL, and GUA that make for a pleasant travel experience. I’ve never really liked using “third world airport” as an insult. It isn’t accurate.
Second… I feel like there was a time when TBIT was starting to be such an awful experience that airlines were considering shifting their ops elsewhere (SFO, LAS, etc…), but a little bit of work, and aside from landside transfers, LAX has really become a much more comfortable global hub.
There’s no reason New York shouldn’t have a great airport. It a sad aloha to the United States.
Your first point is well-taken.
I also 100% agree on how LAX has transformed itself into a leading airport, but I do point out that security lines are still horrible there as well..and poorly managed. If my secret entrance is closed, I go through T4 then walk over. That’s the nice thing about LAX: TBIT + T4-8 are all connected on the secure side. That would make life a lot easier at JFK.
http://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2017/05/05/best-kept-secret-lax/
What’s to investigate? JFK is a mismanaged airport run by the corrupt inefficient unaccountable Port Authority of NYNJ. Mike Smithers nailed it. Until the PANYN doesn’t have an unlimited amount of money to spend on labor costs, it will never change.
It costs$20 to drive across a bridge that was built and paid for five decades ago. Think about that for a minute.
Ps I flew in/out of NYC 70 times in 2017.
T4 is a brand new terminal that was completed just a few years ago, and aside from the fact security is a zoo and the walk to the far gates is a bit much, it’s pretty damn nice. I can think of a -lot- worse airports {LAX, FLL, MIA, EWR, CDG, TXL…}
Also, it’s not entirely correct to talk of JFK as a single airport, as it’s more like 6 airports, and the experience in each terminal is drastically different, ranging from excellent (T5) to pitiful (T7).
That’s interesting. I actually like T7 a lot more than T4. We agree T5 is great.
@Sign me up – labor costs have nothing to do with the problems at New York City airports. Furthermore, the tolls for the bridges are there in order to discourage people from driving into Manhattan – for the simple reason that the traffic is terrible. The city cannot handle commuters arriving by car, because there are millions of people living in a confined space. Take the subway, walk, ubers etc – there are many options. One day, we’ll hopefully manage to ban all cars that are not buses, cabs or trucks making deliveries – until then, we’ll just have to keep raising prices. And it’s time that the bridges without tolls get tolls too so there are no loopholes.
If you want a more reliable airport that is closer to Manhattan, you might want to try Newark. It’s crappy and old, but not as far away as JFK and mostly nicer.
You asked where is the money when the city has so many other needs, except that the airport is a self funded system. The Port approves capital projects which are funded fully via airline rates and charges. So regardless of what other concerns the city has for their scare tax resources, the Port and the airlines at JFK can agree to a capital improvement program similar to what’s happening at LGA. I’m sure there would also be plenty of private equity partners lining up to fund a P3 deal if given the chance. JFK’s issues are fundamentally rooted in broken PANYNJ beuracracy… and maybe the airlines themselves. I laughed at UA pulling out of JFK but maybe they saw the writing on the wall and figured steering their own ship at EWR was the lesser of evils.
For those of us who live on Long Island Newark is doable with a 2+ hour drive through Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island (on a good day without construction, holiday travel or bad weather). Okay, I gave up on driving to Newark, I now take the Long Island wreck road and then the NJTransit. But now the NJTransit is so “risky” (reliability) that I’m rethinking Newark by car. Why Newark if I live on Long Island ? Well I’m retired from UAL and need to use Newark when I want to use my travel benefits internationally. Seriously, I sometimes fly from LGA to another United gateway (like Washington or Chicago) to travel internationally (or head west if I’m going to Asia) – THAT.is how much I hate getting to/from Newark. The whole system rots and I don’t think rebuilding JFK and LGA will make an improvement. Management and the quality of life that is hired in/around New York is ………..(I’m at a loss for words).
Hello,
Pl skip that annoying popup you show every time.
Thanks
I don’t think the physical condition of JFK is as much an issue as the management of it. As you’ve noted in comments above not all the terminals are in bad shape and the roadways were redone a few years ago. The Airtrain is the most unreliable piece of transit known to man (seriously some part of it seems to always be down) but at least you have that connection to other terminal and the subway system.
The problem at JFK is management. Let’s look at the T5 skybridge as an example. T5 isn’t that old yet a couple of years ago the moving sidewalks all died because the PA did not maintain them. JetBlue eventually took control of the skybridge and these moving sidewalks were in such bad shape that the best solution was a months long campaign to replace them. That’s not a case of worn out infrastructure it’s a case of poor management. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look at what happened in the wake of the storm where you had multi hour tarmac delays because of how the various terminals are managed and the failure of the PA to step in until it was far too late. (TPG had a great post about this).
Then their is the FAA who can’t manage the airspace or tarmac worth a damm. SFO has a near identical runway configuration and manages on most days to use all 4. JFK at best uses 3 of 4. JFK is slot controlled and yet even on clear sky days with 3 runway ops frequently goes into holding for “volume”.
The ground side isn’t much better. Twice I’ve personally had the misfortune of having to watch an utterly inept ground controller gridlock the airport needlessly. And Pilots hate landing on 22L (or 22 late as we call it) because JFK just can’t manage getting arrivals across 22R in between departures. I’ve spent 20-30 minutes on multiple occasions waiting to cross because of their ineptitude.
I repeat the physical plant at JFK isn’t the issue. It’s the various government agencies that manage and control that plant that are the problem.
First sentence = nail on head. For any of us who have worked at JFK or LGA, there isn’t any airline staff in sight who wouldn’t agree that NYC airports are the armpit of the earth. The PANYNJ should have been looking at this and starting to fix one, two or all three airports at least 30-35 years ago. If they weren’t so full of lying, corrupt individuals, this may have been a reality. Guaranteed whatever improvements they make in the future, the quality of life around the airports and the people that work in them will bring them down to another cesspool in a few short years. Biggest city in the world, full of tourists coming and going for decades and there is not one of these airports worth passing through. Disgusting.
The money doesn’t come from the city. It comes from Port Authority, a bistate agency controlled by the governors of New York and New Jersey. There is a $10 billion plan in the works to modernize JFK.
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-rfp-planning-and-engineering-firm-implement-jfk-airport-vision-plan