JFK facelift sees terminal boredom face its demise

For 42 years, terminal 4E at JFK international airport, formerly known as Idlewild, was the point of departure for travellers between New York and Shannon and Dublin. As regulars on the route know well, Aer Lingus was at the very end of the low, shabby building - one of nine terminals strung along a circular roadway. Now this familiar departure point is no more. The terminal is being knocked down and Aer Lingus has moved, along with other international airlines, to a $1.4 billion (€1.6 billion) state-of-the-art structure designed as a dazzling new gateway to the United States. Called Terminal 4, it was officially opened yesterday, though it has been in operation since May 9th. The only major glitch occurred on the first day when trouble with baggage handling meant a two-hour wait for passengers who had disembarked from flight EI105 from Dublin, and from three other international flights, said Mr Jack Foley, Aer Lingus executive vice-president for North America. Otherwise the early reviews are favourable. "It has made a big difference moving from a building set up for the 1960s into something set up for the future," Mr Foley said. "There is much more check-in space and facilities, and the lines will be shorter." The motto for the new terminal is customer service, said Mr Neil Levin, executive director of the Port Authority, which operates the airport. This has been achieved through the privatisation of the venture, which is managed by a consortium comprising Schiphol, USA, a subsidiary of the Amsterdam airport management company; LCOR, a US property company; and investment bankers Lehman Brothers.

The old Aer Lingus terminal was one of the last dedicated facilities for international airlines. In the new building, airlines share space and Aer Lingus has put on extra staff as the new situation has been a "little disconcerting" for customers, Mr Foley said. He added that a lot of construction work was still under way and an inter-terminal railway that will go through Terminal 4 will not be completed for 18 months. The architects, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, have stressed that Terminal 4 will be user-friendly, compared to the gloomy and dilapidated old terminals. "We Americans have gotten used to spending our time at the airport in the gate area," said Ms Marilyn Taylor, a partner with the firm. "But this space borrows from Schiphol's European experience and invites people to be comfortable in retail areas and spend some time there."

It means that passengers no longer wait for flights at windowless departure gates but in an airy shopping mall, with a view of planes coming and going. They can indulge in the American passion for shopping as they wait for flights that increasingly suffer delays because of the density of modern US air travel. For incoming travellers, the first impression of the United States will no longer be that of sterile institutional corridors and of a hanger-like immigration hall but of walkways with interactive art and an airy customs area with 28 large basreliefs depicting New York scenes. JFK became an anachronism in world travel because it was one of the first major passenger airports in the world and lagged behind magnificent new airport buildings completed recently in cities like Beijing, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. What began as a few crude huts in the 1940s will now become a "21st century airport and a symbol of what is to come", according to Mr Levin.