JFK is a broken airport.
Flying into JFK on a Sunday night, from anywhere, is up there on the scale of terrible ideas with using Crisco as sunscreen and keeping Jason Giambi on the bench in the 10th, but that’s no excuse. Returning from Europe the other week, I sat for two hours after we landed—on time even after a go-around—just waiting for a gate to open up. Forget traffic on the apron and taxiways, we were at Terminal 1! There were no gates for our Lufthansa 747.
All I could think of was the Air France flight that waited five hours at this same terminal for a gate. After the first hour, I was as close as I ever have been to air rage, which meant that I made German jokes and sighed heavily. Inappropriate, but I was in a middle seat for about ten hours at that point, people. And normally the Germans are so good at planning!
I believe regional jets are the problem the New York Metro airports. Are they a great alternative to the turboprops that airlines used to fly on certain routes? Absolutely. Are those the routes that airlines are using them on? Nope.
You can end up flying two-hour plus jaunts on those babies, on popular routes, like to Chicago or Boston. Without a shuttle bus solution to get passengers to the gate as in Frankfurt, a formula for pushing the use of big planes, or at least giving them priority, should be employed.
In the meantime, I’ll walk to the friggin’ terminal. Just let me off.
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