Flew out of NJ last week Wednesday for a quick morning flight to Bermuda. Outside of the confusing TSA Pre-Check from Premier Check In it was a breeze. Much better experience than Terminal C and a nice touch with the kids playground at the end to exhaust my kid into sleeping for 3 hours :)

it is.

How many laps of the track did you make them run??? :)

Baggage claim is a mess
 

What is going on with bags at terminal a? Took 90 minutes for bags to arrive today. Last flight they were delivering on a different carousel than posted on screens and 60 min. Flight in feb was also 60 min and different carousel than what was said on board and in the app/text.

are we all just chalking it up to “hey it’s port authority?”

Definitely put an AirTag in any checked luggage. My golf bag had me doing multiple walking round trips to know if it was coming out of the oversized area or the main carousel. Also lets me know when approximately it's gonna be on its way.
90 mins sounds like a lot, though

It's likely that the baggage handlers just happened to go on their morning coffee break as the plane landed.


Slightly longer-than-usual lunch break.


That one's easy: smoko!

It looks like the old Terminal A banjos are completely demolished. It’s not apparent that anything new is going to be built in the area right off - is the plan just to pave it over for now until the Port Authority figures out the plan for Terminal B?

A bunch of the area that the old A banjos were in is to be used as a ramp area / access t:o the new A. I wouldn't expect any construction there until a new B is put in. I don't think plans for that are coming any time soon

EWR Vision plan here: Possible EWR B.
Conceptual plan with no time line in the plan packet.
Some observations from the concept drawing:
B would be built in stages and possibly consume the parking lot and hotel as they are today. It will be enormous.
Will also take up much of the space emptied by the demo of old A.
No obvious changes to C in this plan.
A and B to be connected in some way.

Looking at that makes me wonder what a new C design would be at minimum gate-neutral and HOW they would demolish and build without losing gates. Old B to new B, I can see how that would work, but C isn's obvious to me.

The next large capital project should be the new Airtrain. It's going to go over budget by a lot, and will be delayed into 2030s - we are talking about Port Authority after all.

Even if the next B becomes the biggest terminal in the world (it won't), are there plans for corresponding runway capacity increase? Its existing 2 main runways can only handle finite number of takeoffs and landings before taxiways become a parking lot. Forget about even minor weather event.

(Yes, EWR has a 3rd runway, but that one is distance challenged, especially for takeoffs)

They are talking about building the north concourse first and in the parking lot before demo. We will see if that's workable.
Looking at the conceptual drawing, I would think the south concourse would be a better place to start since it shouldn't affect A or C, but I don't think anything has been decided.

AirTrain replacement is coming before new B, and is already underway.

The issues with 11/29 aren't only with length, at least for arrivals (I've seen everything that flies into EWR will land there, up to and including the LH 748), but rather the fact that arrivals on 29 can only be in VFR conditions and creates conflicts with traffic throughout the region, including JFK, LGA, TEB and MMU. 11 has an ILS but it's not often used by larger aircraft since strong winds out of the east are rare, making that configuration less relevant.

29 is most useful on clear days in fall/winter when there are strong winds out of the west, and operations in south flow enable the Stadium Visual approach to 29. In those cases conflicts are reduced and arrival rate isn't dramatically disrupted.

I once took off on 11 on a 752 EWR-DEN in 2010 or so. That was fun... kind of a unicorn for me.