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JetBlue's T5 At JFK Survives Its First Brush With Winter Weather

December 22, 2008 at 1:30 PM | by | Comments (2)

While Ellen Wernecke was dealing with the five stages of flight delays at LGA recently, our occasional correspondent JetSetCD was enjoying the new T5 at JFK, built by an airline that knows something about awful winter weather.

As New York City buttoned up on Friday for its first snowstorm of the season, I headed straight into the belly of the beast. Although I've been to JetBlue's new Terminal 5 at JFK twice before on trial runs, I'd yet to actually fly out of it under full operation. With strong winds and heavy snow forecast for the day, I decided to forget about the possibility of delay for my flight and instead focus on watching the new, innovative terminal stretch its legs.

Despite the flood of New Yorkers headed out of town on the Friday before Christmas, the wait at security was non-existent and I quickly found myself snuggling in with the WiFi warriors in the food court. When JetBlue described this concourse as inspired by Union Square in New York, they must've meant something more like Whole Foods; there is a deli-style buffet with an abundance of fresh salad choices, barrels of bags of apple chips versus potato chips, fresh fruit to cure your travel scurvy and the best looking donuts I've ever sunk my teeth into. (The perfect frosting alone was award-winning food porn.)

As the late morning shifted into early afternoon and the driving snow accumulated on the runways, the departures board turned rainbow with delayed and canceled flights. As my shuttle to Chicago suffered only a 45-minute wait, I had a little leisure to check up on other less fortunate flights to places like Buffalo and Rochester. Now I understand the reason for the multiple customer service desks throughout the terminal; guests on canceled flights didn't even have to backtrack as far as the food court in order to rebook or get info on their route. This made for some quiet times in the terminal even though I could totally imagine LaGuardia freaking out on the other side of Queens.

Parents with young children headed to the play areas, business travelers and those about to face their family for the holidays filled the wine bars and us always wired fliers cozied up to the touchscreen ordering stations for some healthy Twittering and tuna sandwiches. Nowhere did I witness people passed out on the floor or across chairs, and no one had to resort to sitting on the floor. Thanks to the abundance of diversions and convenient guest services, Friday at T5 was a truly positive beginning to the Christmas/New Year travel rush, crazy snowstorm be damned. Now if they'd just open up the old TWA building designed by Eero Saarinen, I wouldn't mind being delayed ever again.

Related Stories:
· More of JetSetCD's T5 Photos [Flickr]
· The Five Stages of Flight Delays [Jaunted]
· Winter Storms in the US Leave Snarled Flights and Snarling Passengers [Jaunted]

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Sunday

Wow, that sounds happy and cheery. Sunday was a decidedly different experience, as every single gate was packed at 11:30 pm on a Sunday evening in T5. My flight was delayed 3 hours for some unknown reason (weather was fine), and I actually thought people were in super good spirits and were acting holiday-cheery/were feelin' the camaraderie because they were laughing and cheering every time a boarding was announced -- but that wasn't what was happening. Apparently people were cheering because of the Giants game. Whatever. Also, I ate dried Apples and the computerized order-taking system at that quick-service food court (with the Boar's Head Deli and whatnot) confused and upset people.
Jenna on December 22, 2008 at 3:03 PM #Permalink

apples

I had the dried apples too! They are everywhere in many flavors in that food court. I totes ordered the tuna sandwich from the touchscreen order system - didn't see any weirdness with it on Friday.
JetSetCD on December 22, 2008 at 7:45 PM #Permalink

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