Been thinking about gargantuan projects abuilding at John F. Kennedy International Airport and already completed at LaGuardia Airport in New York City and have concluded that, while well-intentioned, the JFK opus misses the real point about the airport that serves the comings and goings of people that are mostly international fliers to and from the greatest city in the world.
     The main roadway in and out of the airport namely The Van Wyck Expressway is an absolute horror show, day and night 24/7 jammed up and jelly tight with traffic of all kinds!
     However you are telling it, and the accolades here are like a windfall, until the JFK egress is improved, these terminals as they are described, beautiful as they may be are also the "terminal ending" point of however your trip went.
     The road to New York City, to and from JFK is often a trip through hell. With its Airtrain to nowhere brooding above it, airport builders apparently are not rethinking the Van Wyck at all.
     JFK sits amidst one of the largest bird sanctuaries anywhere and lots of waterfront.
     The idea of service via ferry boats or some kind of water entrance connection to and from the city and JFK has been floated for years.
     When, or if ever, will someone dust off those plans and maybe consider them in a new light?
     The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey operates JFK airport and also nearby La Guardia where an USD$8 billion-dollar extravaganza of concrete and glass was recently completed.
     Now sweet little LaGuardia bulges all the way out to the edges of nearby Grand Central Parkway.
     Add the USD$8 billion dollar costs at LGA to a reported USD$19 billion improvement price tag at JFK and the combined total is USD$27 billion.
     A lot of tax payer money.
    At LaGuardia, builders have jammed parking and terminals amidst a cacophony of infrastructure on a less than 700-acre footprint, runways and all.
     The entire LaGuardia facility—parking garages, twisty, turning concrete roadways and even the Airport Control Tower, plus passenger terminal and LGA’s two runways can fit into less space than the inner roadway Central Terminal area of JFK.
     I am still confounded that the parking, ticketing and reception areas for LaGuardia were not moved to nearby College Point and connected to the airport by light-rail? (many airports at major metropolitan airports around the country have done just that, successfully).
     Old Flushing Airport, which could have served as the terminus sits unused, in the marshland of College Point, behind what appears to be an empty building that once housed The New York Times Newspaper.
     As mentioned above, at JFK USD$19 billion on the table to improve the passenger experience on the ground is still without a solution for how to accelerate the comings and goings to and from the airport.
     But hold on a second . . . am sure there are legions of dedicated, gainfully employed people at work a-building here.
     But giving credit where due—offer us a sympathy break with all the back-slapping awards for excellence sure to come from people in awe of what USD$27 billion gets you these days.
     What these two airports have achieved is the best The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey can do and we wish everybody here well.
     For air cargo at JFK, kudos to a facility that debuted and was celebrated in the local JFK newspaper as a “USD$270M high-tech cargo facility, first major upgrade (for air cargo) at the airport in over 25 years.”
     With a tip of the hat to those who have put it on the line for JFK air cargo with great new buildings filled with high-tech systems, this yeoman effort at JFK, the first in a quarter of a century, ‘not for nothing’, as we say in New York is kind of an ignominious first, when you think about it.
     Consider for a moment, that once upon a time, all the way from Idlewild morphing to JFK International, the big airport on the south shore handled more international cargo, than any U.S. gateway and looking further back, maybe more than all the airports in America put together!
     It’s not unfair to look at The Port Authority’s performance for air cargo during the past quarter century and wonder as Casey Stengel, the first New York Mets Baseball Team Manager did, after his team lost 120 out of 162 games in 1962:
     “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

     Elsewhere at JFK, IM Pei's National Airlines Building 6, the Sundrome, a living, breathing work of art, which served in its last days as New York City home for the airline that made history, Pan American World Airways, was thoughtlessly demolished to expand the current JetBlue Terminal 5 for parking and an international facility.
     Talked to IM, then in his late 90s (he lived to be 102) and asked for help to save his JFK Sundrome masterpiece, but he just said:
     “What can I do?”
     Thought of throwing myself in front of the bulldozer, but right away reason prevailed.
     What a turn of events . . . On August 11, the Port Authority announced a collaboration with four premier New York City cultural institutions — the American Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art to house artwork in the now designated Terminal 6 (T6), International Arrivals Building, a USD$4.2 billion project at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), to be built and operated by JFK Millenium Partners (JMP).
     According to the Port Authority, “The overall JFK T6 art program, of which the cultural collaboration is just one component, ranges from sculptural installations to immersive visual art. The terminal's dedicated art collection aims to capture the diversity, energy, and identity of New York City while creating moments of connection and inspiration for travelers.”
     When you think about it, the building(s) underway now at JFK eventually may be considered masterpieces themselves, just as the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Terminal, which was saved, once The Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia became the first building of the New York/New Jersey airport complex to be designated a historic landmark. Building One at Newark Airport (today the manager’s office) has also been designated a landmark, due in no small measure to our efforts and our “Great Airports, Newark” history book.
     Today TWA is fondly recalled and highly regarded as a hotel located at Jet Blue.
     Never say never, we say!
     Because we love JFK airport, both past and present, we wonder when and whether somebody will reform the roadway.
     It’s past time to ease the travel experience to and from JFK airport, with better conditions for the customers, the tradesman, air cargo shipper and local residents along the way.
     Too long driving through the JFK airport access roads feels like being squeezed out of an almost empty tube of toothpaste.
Geoffrey Arend

     Geoffrey began writing about Idlewild before it was branded JFK in 1963.
     He worked at JFK covering the Press Room in the IAB as part of Jim Cahill's Aviation News in 1971.
     In 1975, he with his wife, Sabiha, founded Air Cargo News at JFK in the basement of Paul and Howard Abrams’ Jade East Motel located on South Conduit Road.
     In 1980, at The National Historic Trust in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of Transportation The Hon. Elizabeth Hanford Dole presented the highest honor of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the FAA, and The National Historic Trust to Geoffrey for his efforts, in saving LaGuardia Airport's Marine Air Terminal, which today in 2025 is a protected National Historic Landmark.
     This year Geoffrey received the coveted Airforwarders Association (AfA) Jim Foster Award for 50 years of coverage of the global air cargo industry. AfA is the largest organized group in the U.S. for the freight forwarders.