I'm somewhat fond of T6. The idea of two terminal buildings (arrivals/departures) was quite good. Unfortunately the land-side building was a much better building architecturally than the air-side. Those tall glass windows would have been awesome at the gates. The round rotundas as the gates could have been stunning if they were 2-stories tall and 2x as large than the cramped spaces they are. It also didn't help that the buildings were beat-to-hell and poorly maintained. It felt like a 3rd world country airport, esp. the ramps to baggage claim + baggage claim. I would have liked to seen what the original drawings/photos of the building showed. The airside building had skylights, but primarily over the food service counters and also lacked windows to the runways unless you were in the rotundas.
Originally Posted by
sbm12
They announced recently (I think in the Q3 earnings call) that they couldn't find anyone who wanted to buy the building so they were going to knock it down since that was cheaper.
I'm kind of surprised they wasn't a market for this. There's almost always a need for more gate space somewhere. At the very least, I would have thought they would have cut it apart and haul the trailers out like they do regular trailer homes. Plenty of aluminum there that has to be worth something. Copper's worth quite a bit as well and there's plenty of copper wiring in there.
Originally Posted by
JetBlueFA
$8 million to tear it down, so my sources have told me. They also said that the company basically wrote off the cost of the destruction. I don't know how true it is so take it with a grain of salt. I'm about 90% positive it was $8 million to tear it down but if we wrote it off or not, i can't attest to.
$8M !?!?!!? Those buildings couldn't have even been worth $8M when they were built. I know union labor is substantially more expensive, but it can't be THAT much more.
Any word on what from T6/T6' was kept/moved to T5? I was told by a B6'er awhile back that they were hoping to take the seating with them and jetways from the trailer park.
Also, what did they do with the "Trumpet" part of the original T5 gates they kept? The Google Maps image shows it attached awkwardly to the end of T5 (not sure why they saved it).
Originally Posted by
Globehopper
The trick is to think of the combined footprint of T2 and T3 and how to construct a new terminal with a more rational pax circulation. I've seen past plans (conceptual ones) whereby T3 is connected into T4, with the T4 western pier further extended towards Jamaica Bay--thus creating a mega T2/3/4.
I concur. For kicks, I Google Map'd a few airports, scaled them all to the same and set them side-by-side. In some ways, they have managed to fit quite a few gates in a small area of space. BUT at the same time there's terrible wastes of space all over the apron.
For comparison,all scaled to 500ft/1":
JFK Airport,
ORD Airport,
DFW Airport,
LAX Airport
Quite an interesting comparison when you view them side-by-side. The first observation I have is that the gate density of JFK is terrible -- too much space, not enough gates. LAX does a good job of absolutely squeezing every last bit of space out of the gate areas. I'm also kind of intrigued by ORD's remote terminal with no direct surface connection to the main terminal. I'm thinking this might be useful to squeak out a few extra gates from JFK.
The close runway and taxiway kill quite a bit of potential space near the existing T1-3. It'd be nice to pull those terminals closer to the center, but with the AirTrain sitting there, that's impractical.
LAX also shows you could easily demolish JFK T2 and fit 2x-3x the # of gates there, more if you considered ditching T3 as part of the process and used as much as you could without impeding T4.
T4's a terrible waste of space for the limited # of gates it has. Granted, it sees mostly trans-con flights with larger planes, but it's angled A concourse really kills a lot of space that could be better used for T4 and T5 expansion.
Ideally... a T7 + T6 demo would really open up large amounts of land for gates. T7 is a huge waste of space, esp. it's W side. I'd probably allocate some land for future T5 expansion here as well.