I am always fascinated by New York’s JFK International Airport. It’s one of the rare examples in the US — the only example? — that has multiple private operators running different terminals. And in the past, that has made for some very strange bedfellows. But the airport’s $19 billion plan to remake itself is finally showing how most airline locations are starting to fall into place. The recent addition of United to Terminal 6 as part of its JetBlue deal just cements it even further.
In the end, JFK will effectively have three terminal fiefdoms spread across five actual terminals: Terminal 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8. Yes, the numbering could use some work, but in reality, this is creating a few different clusters for the various airline groups and their key partners which will give JFK a coherence it hasn’t ever really had.
Terminals 1 and 4 will both share duty as the terminals for Delta and its friends. It will also have a sizable presence of cats and dogs. Meanwhile, Terminals 5 and 6 becomes the JetBlue + United and friends operation. And then Terminal 8 is American and friends. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. But let’s talk through some of this in more detail. First, I’ve created this map:
Terminals 1 and 4
In the past, Terminal 4 and Terminal 1 were the big international carrier operations. It is where the cats and dogs lived. It was Terminals 2 and 3 that made up Delta’s operation, inherited from Pan Am. But T4 was extended to a 300-mile long concourse along with another shorter one, and both T2 and T3 were demolished. Now, the existing T1 is in the process of being rebuilt in multiple phases so they can keep the existing T1 running.
Delta’s entire operation is in T4, mostly on the long B concourse but also at the ground-level gates that were added at the end of the A concourse relatively recently. It has many of its equity partners there with it. Meanwhile, Air France and Korean have long been in Terminal 1, and they will continue to be there. KLM will actually move over from T4 to join Air France when the new building is ready.
There are still plenty of cats and dogs in T1, including several Star Alliance carriers. The way I drew this had Delta partners on one side of the terminal and the others on the other side, but I don’t know that to be true. They will all be mixed in somewhere.
But it is true that in T4, most of the non-Delta aligned flights operate from the A gates, further away from the bulk of Delta’s operation.
Even if some of Delta’s most important partners are in T1, it won’t be too far away. I’d place a bet that we’ll see the return of the JFK Jitney that used to transport people between Delta flights in T2 and T4.
Terminals 5 and 6
Today, Terminal 5 is JetBlue’s entirely. (Yeah, ok, Cape Air parks there too.) But Terminal 6 is being built on the footprint of the old Sundrome which served as JetBlue’s original terminal as well as on top of the still semi-functioning Terminal 7. The facilities will be easily connected, and JetBlue will use some gates in T6.
Now that JetBlue and United are tying up, when United returns to JFK it will use Terminal 6. This is already where Lufthansa Group, Air Canada, and ANA have committed to operate when it opens starting next year. It’s a perfect match.
There are some cats and dogs here, including Frontier and some other international carriers with very limited frequencies, but this really is about JetBlue, United, and partners more than anything else.
Terminal 8
American built its big, fancy Terminal 8 when it still had hope of being a major player in New York. Now it has mostly given up that dream, instead deciding to fill T8 with its partners. It now hosts all of American’s joint venture partners except for Aer Lingus (in T6, presumably because it saw a rainbow end there and is looking for a pot of gold). It also includes key partners Alaska/Hawaiian, China Southern, and Qatar.
Most of these airlines are exiles from Terminal 7 as that building marches toward being shut down. That was BA’s terminal for ages, and Alaska had used it in recent years as well (since around the time United left). T7’s days are numered, so a small retrofit to T8 was a great investment to consolidate everyone in one terminal.
Still TBD
The image I put above is about commitments. Obviously, T6 isn’t open today, so these airlines aren’t all operating there. But this shows where everyone is committed to be eventually. Then there are the ones in black boxes.
There are several airlines that are currently in T1 but do not show as having committed as tenants of the new T1. This doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but it just hasn’t happened yet… or at least hasn’t been made public.
Were I a betting man, I’d say ITA will move over to T6 now that it is a part of the Lufthansa Group empire. And Flair may also want to move somewhere since I don’t believe the new T1 will be friendly to airlines that don’t need to use customs facilities.
Meanwhile, there are three airlines which are still operating in T7 that don’t seem to have new homes yet. The biggest of these is Icelandair. There is always Sun Country… and HiSky, which nobody has ever heard of until right now. It’s a Romanian airline which flies to… wait for it… Romania. They’re all going to have to find new homes at some point.
The Weird Outliers
In the end, this creates three solid clusters with most of the cats and dogs going into Terminals 1 and 4, though there will be some in every terminal. That’s not a surprise thanks to the unique nature of operations at JFK from so many different global airlines.
But there are some airlines that seemed hell-bent on ruining this grand plan. They are just located in the wrong place. Actually, there are two in particular that I find very confusing.
1) Air New Zealand is in Terminal 1. It is a joint venture partner with United, but to be fair, there will be absolutely no connecting traffic between the two airlines at JFK. So while it is confusing to see two JV partners so far apart, it has no real impact.
2) Aer Lingus is in Terminal 6. This feels like a legacy move since it used to operate from JetBlue’s T5 and had become close with that airline. But Aer Lingus is owned by IAG — the same company that owns British Airways, Iberia, and LEVEL — and it is part of the joint venture with American. You would think it would move over to T8 at some point, but then again, Aer Lingus seems like the kind of airline that might go rogue.
Considering the seemingly arbitrary way that airlines ended up finding their homes at JFK over the years, this is about as coherent as one would ever dare hope.
31 comments on “With JetBlue’s Partnership with United, JFK’s Terminal Fiefdoms Become More Clear”
Don’t forget the TWA hotel near T6 as part of that complex. Also, T7 only had a dozen gates & T6 was a replacement for them.
When United operated from T6 in past years, they had use of three gates for their transcans & the rest were used by JetBlue before T5 ever opened.
Amen to the TWA hotel. Worth a stay. It’s tricked out in the old red/white TWA livery, has a Constellation airplane for a bar, and it’s right in the Jetsons terminal. Another comment: Air France used to park Concorde right at gate A1 in Term 1. Thus it was a gleaming sight, the first thing you saw upon entering the airport — oh, well, this old man is past his prime and riding off into the sunset. Two more comments, please: The little airtrain circle route FINALLY got built about 40 years late; a cute thing is that it drives inside T4. The NYC subway FINALLY made it out to JFK about 50 years too late; my uncle from Kansas decided to try it out, on a lark. They only had to connect once or twice at some ridiculous station with lots of exterior steps. COOL, don’t you think?
You are correct about the AirTrain (which was out of service this past weekend, and was problematic), but the NYC subway stations (Jamaica and Howard Beach) have been there forever….Just w/o the AirTrain connection
Last I checked, Aer Lingus is still a United partner. T6 is lookkng cozy for them. How many star alliance passengers will arrive in JFK to hop on a United ps flight to LAX or SFO, or the other way around? Most of them would have options to fly to those airports directly in the first place. Obviously, it will be a different story if United merge with JetBlue or JetBlue joins Star Alliance.
Wany – Sure, but Aer Lingus is a part of the joint venture with American. It should not be routing anyone on United via JFK or it’s just giving money away.
Does Aer Lingus get very many customers connecting to JetBlue codeshare flights these days? If not, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t just move to T8 and the cats & dogs at T8 move to T6 when it’s finished.
Royal Jordanian is part of OneWorld so they will presumably stay in T8 to give/receive feed from AA/AS. Ethiopian logically should move to T6 as they could get/provide feed to both UA and AC.
Isn’t there supposed to be an air-side connector between T1 (when construction is complete) & T4?
I believe so.
I wouldn’t say Royal Jordanian is in the cats & dogs category for T8, it is a codeshare partner with AA and an OW airline. What is bizarre is Cathay Pacific moving to T6 and investing in a new lounge there.
Cathay is a bit odd, but they probably have close to zero oneworld connecting traffic at JFK. Looks to me like DCA and ORD (and the mighty Worcester, which is going away) are the only AA connecting cities out of JFK that make any geographic sense for which CX doesn’t have nonstop service, but even those two are both served perfectly well via ORD or DFW. And CX has never been very close with its oneworld partners.
A lot of destinations in the east are served equally well by connections through JFK or ORD where the actual flight times and distances are comparable given the flight lengths, and the connection times matter more. In that regard, the 3x daily to JFK gives more options and should be decent for connections.
That being said, CX/B6 shows up in search results more than CX/AA combinations through JFK and BOS.
DVN – I’m only including joint venture, equity, and special agreement partners, because alliance members are a dime a dozen. But sure, if you’re Royal Jordanian, you have to go somewhere so you might as well be where your alliance members are. (But Ethiopian apparently disagrees…)
In the same vein, I’d think Royal Air Maroc as a Oneworld partner would be in T8. Though as someone said, the number of possible connections on AA (or AS for that matter) is limited.
I wonder if we’ll see JFK adopt a more standardized gate numbering scheme once this takes shape. Today all the terminals basically do their own thing and Gate 10 could be in either T1, T5, T7, or T8.
SEASFO – That is reportedly the plan https://thepointsguy.com/news/jfk-airport-new-gate-numbers/
Not sure why they don’t letter the terminals.
Terminal 8 becomes A (for AA)
Terminal 6 becomes B
Terminal 5 becomes C
Terminal 4 becomes D (for DL)
Terminal 1 becomes E
And it would be clockwise ?????
now that you mention it, U.S. terminals are often* numbered/lettered counterclockwise. ORD is 1-2-3-5, BOS is A-B-C-E, DCA is A-B-C-D-E, even LAX is 1… 9 (or something). Because we drive on the left, pax are more likely to hop out on the curb to the right.
*Always? I don’t feel like figuring this out.
*Usually* terminal lettering/numbering follows the road driving direction, which terminal the driver encounters first will be “A”. Or 1.
So counter-clockwise is the norm for lettering or numbering.
I think the confusion is overstated. The terminals are still in order as you go through the airport counter clockwise even though numbers are skipped and of course there are signs.
Pretty sure T4 is a 500-mile concourse, and not 300 as you’ve said. Other than that, great article! Nothing makes the blood run colder than seeing you’re departing from B55.
Which is 20 mins – minimum, for speed walkers, that is, closer to 30 for most others – schlep AFTER one clears security, which itself can take 30-45 mins to clear even with Clear & PreCheck at peak times (unless one has super high status at the airline they’re flying, are in D1, etc.).
But, at least they haven’t ripped out the “moving sidewalks” there, like United did at Newark Terminal C.
And if one has reduced mobility, then it’s up to one hour stuck waiting for a wheelchair attendant to arrive at a remote penalty box before the nightmare of clearing security & schlepping to their gate begins.
Ugh! Unless something’s changed since late 2023 (when we had enough bad PaxEx there & began avoiding flights at that awful terminal) T4 by far is the absolute worst terminal at JFK for most flyers, what with its endless walks to/from/between gates; overworked, surly employees; obscenely overpriced concessions; and a dirty, increasingly dilapidated headhouse (again, maybe that’s changed since late 2023 – here’s hoping so).
Sidenote: Delta at Newark Terminal A is much better & is actually pleasant for those that can take advantage of its limited, domestic ops there, while LGA is also nice – except for the potentially endless walks to/from/between gates & obscenely overpriced concessions there.
At least that was the plan as T1 expands over the footprint of what was T2 & T4 expands towards what was T3.
ELAL is not so much a cat and dog now that it is moving to be part of SkyTeam and already partners with Delta. It also codeshares with JetBlue.
HiSky became more popular recently as one of the more reliable ways of getting to Israel as they are much slower to cancel than the LH group. I guess being a more eastern European country they are less affected by the media propaganda on behalf of Hamas in the Western world.
Who cares? The best thing that can happen to this airport is a nuclear strike.
Wow. ..it only took 75 years to untangle the JFK web. Were the terminals modeled after the way railroads built terminals to fit their brand and needs in a given market?
Eric – Yes, they were owned and built by the airline originally, a different model than most airports in the US. For example, Terminal 7 was BA’s but they have since left and turned it over to a management partner. I think Terminal 4 was the only one not owned by airlines originally since it was the International Arrivals Building before it was rebuilt in 2001. Originally, the design was:
*Terminal 1 – Eastern
*Terminal 2 – Northwest (with Braniff and Northeast)
*Terminal 3 – Pan Am
*Terminal 5 – TWA
*Terminal 8 – American
*Terminal 9 – United
Then in later years, two more were built:
*Terminal 6 – National
*Terminal 7 – BOAC (later British Airways)
Over time, what happened was:
*Terminal 1 was razed and rebuilt in 1998
*Terminal 2 last until just a few years ago when Delta consolidated in T4, it was razed just a couple years ago
*Terminal 3 was razed in 2013
^the new T1 will take up the footprint of all 3 of these terminals
*Terminal 4 (IAB) was razed in 2000 and rebuilt and expanded into today’s T4
*Terminal 5 was razed in 2005 except for the iconic TWA headhouse which became the hotel, JetBlue’s T5 opened in 2008
*Terminal 6 was razed in 2011
*Terminal 7 is on its last days and will be gone by next year
^the new T6 will take up the footprint of both terminals
*Terminal 8 was razed in 2007
*Terminal 9 was razed in 2008
^the new T8 was built on the footprint of both these terminals
Having spent two+ years doing detailed financial analysis/paralegal work for British Airways’ Terminal 7; then new/OG Terminal One (or “TOGA,” or Terminal One Group Association, LP [a joint venture of Air France, Japan Air Lines, Korean Airlines & Lufthansa]); and HMS Services (then known as “Host Marriott Services”) and its respective concessions at Terminals 7 (BA, UA & others);1 (TOGA/AF, JL, KE, LH & others); and HMS, which had concessions at then Delta Terminals 2 & 3 (in addition to Terminals 1 & 7), the ultimate ownership of all facilities at JFK & LGA Airports is the City of New York.
The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) leases the facilities from NY City & operates/manages the airports for the city, with the various airlines/private corporate entities sub-leasing the the passenger terminals, cargo facilities, hangars, catering facilities & basically everything within the airports’ property from PANYNJ & are the mangers/operators (via long-term sub-leases) of their respective facilities, but not the owners.
Yes, the airlines & other facilities’ operators will often bemoan the notoriously tedious & slow bureaucratic process it takes to gain approvals just to tear down a small wall partition within the structure or basically any physical alteration of the facility, but what they gain in exchange are *massive* breaks/exemptions on NY State/City sales taxes worth hundreds of millions of dollars (for the largest entities) for ordinary repairs & maintenance of those facilities, including the seemingly endless conveyor belts embedded within each terminal, plumbing, roof repairs, lighting fixtures, check-in counters, etc., that are NOT “major capital improvements” and/or an array of tax exemptions/(way) below market interest rate financing from various state, city (usually both) “economic development” agencies that most private businesses/real estate developers could only dream of having!
Yes, except for the original “cats & dogs” terminal, then better known as the IAB, or International Arrivals Building, which is where the current JFK T4 now is.
Back in the day, today’s OG Terminal One used to be the OG Eastern Airlines terminal; the former T2 was Delta & Northwest (plus some cats & dogs, including Northeast [Yellowbird], which Delta bought in 1972); T3 was the iconic Pan Am Worldport; T4 was, as noted the OG IAB; T5 was TWA’s home; T6 was OG National Airlines’ “Sundrome” [designed by famed architect I.M. Pei]; OG T7 was built & operated by British Airways until it moved to AA’s T8 in December 2022; AA’s current T8 occupies its former home & a separate terminal used by United, both of which were demolished to make way for the current T8.
Parking used to be ground level only, except for the Pan Am Worldport, which was planespotter heaven with its rooftop parking deck!
The roadway was a giant loop that could, and often did, take an hour or more to travel from one end to the other on the busiest days.
During the last major JFK revamp around the turn of the century, the separate terminal ramps & AirTrain were introduced, replacing the then notoriously traffic choked loop roadway.
And IIRC, what’s old is what’s new, as I think a roadway allowing private passenger vehicles (and not just buses/public transit & “authorized vehicles”) linking all of the terminals is also part of the envisioned “master plan” for “New JFK Airport.”
Now, if only the gate numbers could be harmonized & the terminal numbers streamlined to “1, 2, 3, 4, 5” we might actually come close to having an airport befitting a global gateway city!
I HATE this airport. It is so poorly designed. I really wish they could build something like what is in Atlanta or Denver here. This is a place to avoid at all costs unless you are actually going to NYC from beyond the LGA perimeter.
I feel T6 is the other half of the deal between United and JetBlue at JFK.
UA gets its two gates for transcon service, and JetBlue joins the Star Alliance based on UA’s recommendation (UA has veto power as a founding member). JetBlue will provide the domestic leg for the T6 Star airlines (Luft Group, Air Canada, and ANA). IIRC, Lufthansa (another founding member of Star) was consulted prior to the UA & B6 match up.
Eventually, T5 & T6 become the Star Alliance fortress at JFK similar to Delta (Skyteam) at T4 and AA (One World) at T8.
Also, this leads to other opportunities for B6 at BOS, SJU, & FLL as a Star member.
In addition, this enhances the value of TrueBlue.