nrr

I once arrived at a high 30 gate from ZRH, the signage in the passageway to CBP noted 20 minutes on foot--but I didn't have to deal with a triple helix.

Duke787

Haven't you just answered your OP now? This is why the triple helix...for arriving international passengers to be dumped out on the arrivals level instead of having to come out and then go up an escalator/stairs immediately...

N590UA

I'm a bit of a love / hate with T-4. On one hand, T-4 is especially annoying with some of the long and slow TSA lines but it has probably one of my favorite Delta Sky Club's with the outdoor rooftop deck. The long walk to the far gates is tough to deal with if you're in a rush. but I do like the downward ramp "zig-zag" design of the boarding gates. Honestly, if I'm in the far areas of UA's Terminal C at EWR, it can take me just as long to get out of the terminal. At least T-4 has some nice dining and shopping options and is very clean.

Agree that DL should've done something with T-2 and T-3 when they had the chance. I'm still in shock that the WorldPort building got demolished but T-2 and all of it's grossness still exists.

nrr

In Atlantic City there are "pushers" who (for a fee)) use non-motorized chairs to expedite movement on the boardwalk--this might work in T4.

bennos

IIRC there was an early proposal to connect T2 and T4 with moving walkways (presumably the bus bridge turned out much cheaper). It would have been nice to keep the WorldPort (which was already connected to T2) as a check-in/lounge/concession area, though obviously that would have been more expensive than just demolishing it for a hard stand, and as it wouldn't have been near any gates, it's not clear what the value would be other than historical. Maybe they could have put a hotel on top, like T5.

cmd320

Honestly, of all the terminals at JFK I think T5 has come out the best overall. T8 is alright, but ever there you suffer from having a long a** walk if you end up departing from/arriving at the wrong gate. It seems like most of the times I've used T8 in the past I've always had to run, be it from the street to the gate, from and international arrival to a domestic connection, from T8 to T4. Not sure if that has to do with the terminal itself, AA's poor on-time performance, or a mixture of both. T5 always seems to be the best experience with being able to get from the street to the gate quickly, having the TWA Hotel connected internally, and not being so vast that you're walking for miles.

bgriff

T4 was originally designed as an international terminal, so the expectation was that the only passengers using the ramps would be going down, and then all arriving passengers would be going straight into international arrivals. Later adding Delta domestic flights into the terminal made that design choice unfortunate in retrospect.

A lot of other international airports have international arriving passengers take an escalator up or down a level, which then also requires an elevator at every gate or every few gates for accessibility and creates challenges if equipment breaks down. Clearly the designers of JFK T4 figured they'd save a bunch of money on that equipment with the ramp setup, which already had some tradeoffs even when it was an international terminal (arguably walking down the ramp is more annoying than the typical escalator setup), but got worse once it started to be used for a lot of domestic flights. There are some other obvious cost savings design choices in T4 as well -- note that most gates, even those that serve mostly widebodies, only have a single jet bridge, whereas most airport terminals serving widebodies would typically have 2 jet bridges. (The gates at T4 that have 2 jet bridges are the A380-compatible gates--B29, A6 and A7--which is again a thrifty move since A380 gates elsewhere typically have 3 jet bridges.)

cmd320

Honestly, when flying EK/EY/SQ etc. I don't really have a problem with T4. Flying out of A6/7 really isn't bad at all through security to the lounge and then a short walk to the plane. It's really just the B/Delta gates that are an unpleasant experience.

bgriff

A6/A7 aren't a bad walk, but ... there's also only 6 gates on that side of the airport. (No A1.) So of course it's a shorter walk, A6 is equivalent to departing from B26 or so. That said, it has also been announced that they're going to extend the A pier out as part of Delta moving fully into T4 and knocking down T2, so the A pier will get more annoying, although there isn't room for it to get as long as the B pier is.

ijgordon

Literally every time I've flown VS the past few years, my flight (and usually only my VS flight that evening) departs from a mid-B gate (close to the SkyClub). So annoying. No way am I skipping the Clubhouse for the SC, so a long walk it is!

N590UA

Are you referring to current T2 connecting to T4 or the ex-Pan Am WorldPort connecting to T4? (sorry, I forget if both buildings were known as just T2 at one point.)

IIRC, T2 and T3 were already connected with moving walkways before they demolished it. They were old, but definitely efficient. Couldn't DL just have kept T3 around and just built a walkway from the edge of the old Pan Am Terminal to T4? Or was that what you were referring to above?

Keeping the Worldport around as a hotel would've been amazing - but there were so many leaks in the terminal roof that a renovation project likely would've cost some serious money. It's sad because we're stuck with T2 with it's fast food stench around the gate areas and a huge gap between T2 and T4 where the WorldPort used to be. That gap between T2 and T4 is now a parking lot for DL aircraft off duty. I still never understood the logic of keeping T2 around VS. the WorldPort. Especially since the WorldPort was closer to T4, though it seemed like DL and/or the PANYNJ neglected maintenance at that building for years as well.

IMHO, most of this thread is complaining about long walks within modern terminals at JFK. Can we all agree that we can put up with this over how JFK was in the late 1990s with it's charmingly old infrastructure and no AirTrain haha?

bgriff

The tear down of T3 (WorldPort) vs T2 was at least partially driven by the dysfunctionality of T3 in its later days (more due the expansions that had been built onto the back of the building rather than the original WorldPort itself) — it had a terrible layout with a driveway inside the building and a few different disconnected entrances and exits, and an inefficient layout throughout the interior of the building. T2 leaves a lot to be desired, but at least it is reasonably functional as a standard rectangular terminal building and has a much better layout in terms of check in, security, and lounge.

T3 also used to be Delta’s international terminal and had (awful) international arrivals facilities, and expanding into T4 was a way to replace those facilities. I guess you could have kept T3 as a domestic terminal, but for that purpose, even as bad as T2 is, T3 was a lot worse.

N590UA

IIRC, doesn't current T2 have (or had at one point) have a drop off driveway inside the building as well?

I would've loved to see T3 instead of T2 as the domestic terminal for DL. As I said above, current T2 reeks of fast food in the terminal but is also a total zoo in the gate areas, and has a lousy intercom system for departure announcements. Whenever I leave there, I always sit by the gate near a speaker because boarding announcements at different gates seem to talk over each other (and/or you can't hear them).

The SC in T2 I guess is fine but staff are pretty bossy in my experience and not friendly. I think I was at the SC once inside the WorldPort in 2009 flying LAX-JFK-BOS and I recall it being pretty cool. At least in T3 there was space between the gate areas in the expansions outside the WorldPort and in its later days seemed pretty quiet overall.

I'll give T2 credit in one regard, I can get out of the terminal in 5 minutes or less. That's impossible to do in T4.

bgriff

Pretty sure there was never a driveway inside T2, don’t know where you’d put it. You’re probably remembering T3, which had several (international arrivals pick-ups was an internal driveway, as was one departures drop-off area; there was also a second departures drop off out front for people arriving by AirTrain). I remember getting from international arrivals to the AirTrain required walking up hill along a narrow sidewalk to make your way out of the bowels of the building.

And T3 had some separation between some gates, I guess is one nice thing you could say about it (though not universally — the front section, the original WorldPort, had 6 or so gates in an open area similar to T2). IIRC the club lounge situation was 3 separate lounges (which had once been a Crown Room Club, a Business Class lounge, and a First Class lounge when Delta had those 3 different products), which I guess were fine enough by the standards of Delta lounges at the time, but it was a complicated setup — each of the lounges kept different hours and I remember frequently having to go to the next one for early and late departures.

allseas1586

For a domestic arrival, I'd take T2 any day. Even for a departure for easy access to the gate.