Fantastic article in USA Today this week about JFK airport, highlighting what’s gone wrong. (Short answer: a whole lot) JFK is the epicenter of the well-documented delays this summer, a change from previous years when the blame fell to Newark or LGA. Increased air traffic in the metro area and the huge bump in flights by Delta and JetBlue, which didn’t even exist ten years ago, are the main culprits, but internecine squabbles between the FAA and the Port Authority aren’t helping matters. Imagine a line at the DMV that’s one million planes long to get an idea of how efficiently things are handled.
I had first hand experience with the, ahem, “duster-shuck” that is JFK airport on Sunday, when it took three hours from the moment my plane touched down at JFK to get to my apartment—and that doesn’t even include an hour delay just waiting for a traffic-based ground hold to end so I could depart. And the problems I had are representative: upon arrival, there are no open gates, forcing planes to park at shuttle passengers to the terminal. Subsequently, bags take ages to arrive--of course, there are more checked bags than ever thanks to the TSA liquids nonsense--and, well, I’m not sure if I can blame the Port Authority for an hour-long wait at a taxi rank, but I’ll try. There is not enough infrastructure to support the volume of planes and passengers. Essentially, the whole experience is just like trying to get to the airport on the Van Wyck.
JetBlue is taking an interesting approach to the delays, pushing for fewer flights out of the airport at peak times. They were also very savvy about how to handle the mess when I arrived, trying to get passengers to connecting flights first before deplaning everyone, which, thanks to a lack of gates, required a stair car and a Heathrow-esque bus ride to the terminal. Still, many of the problems are out of their hands, which must cause endless agita at corporate HQ. In the meantime, you can find me somewhere around 20th in line for takeoff.
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