Not quite an airport fit for a president! (John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK))

Member Name: lilmissmup

Product:	John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Date:	12/05/09 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 8 Terminals, Most airlines land here.

Disadvantages: Could do with more runways.

As some of you may have guessed I have been to New York City very recently and I landed at and departed from JFK.

This was not a personal choice, I wanted to fly from Gatwick as its on a train route from my town and there is only one flight a day from Gatwick to NYC and it just happens to land at JFK.

JFK was opened in 1948 for commercial flights and was originally called New York International Airport. During its first calender year 222,620 passengers traveled through the airport.

In 1963 the airport was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport as a tribute to the assassinated president.

In 2007 the airports passengers had increased to 47,716,941.

JFK is one of the busiest airports in the world and has 8 terminals to justify this.

We flew into Terminal 7 and found the process of getting through immigration and customs fairly easy. There was a queue and a panic of people filling in the visa waiver forms (believe it or not the fact that you have to do it online now means nothing, you have to fill the forms in on the plane too!) but there were 2 members of staff moving people through the lines very smoothly, we queued for no more than 20 minutes and we actually had a really pleasant immigration officer, a few people had told me they were right bar stewards at JFK but he wasn't, we answered the questions, were finger printed and photographed and off we went to customs to be questioned on our jobs, had our bags stared at and then they let us through too so we were out of there in about 30 minutes as our bags came really quickly.

The only negative I had about the arrival was getting out of the airport to NYC was our method of transport, as obvious tourists we were hoarded onto a bus which was fairly cheap but when we got into the city were told the guy had put us on the wrong bus and so we still had to get a taxi so the cost turned out to be the same as getting a taxi in the first place and would have cut an hour off our journey as the bus stopped at all the other terminals so just a warning,either book a pre booked car or get a taxi!

Our return flight was also from Terminal 7 (all BA flights are) and we had a fairly pleasant experience too, we checked in at an automatic kiosk, handed in our baggage and went through security all of which took about 15 minutes.

What I did find is that the terminal was very small with not a great choice of shops, there was a McDonalds, another restaurant and bar and a healthy food bar and a luggage shop and a book shop and that was all.

There is also not a lot of seating at the gate area so a lot of people were standing around.

My main bug bear is when we got on the plane, we had to sit on the plane for 2 hours as even though JFK is one of the busiest airports in the world it also only has 2 runways, one in and one out and unfortunately there had been 2 emergency landings and at least 60 planes were queued in front of us to take off.

I don't understand how an airport so busy can only have 2 runways but I guess its down to planning or space, just would be nice if it had more due to its passenger size!

I can't really fault JFK too much, it was an ok experience and wouldn't be bothered about landing here again but its not as great as it sounds it will be!

Summary: Its an airport, it did its job!