Vice President Joe Biden caused a stir in Queens and beyond with his pronouncement a few months ago that LaGuardia is a Third World airport. But he must not be a frequent traveler to Kennedy Airport, which sometimes welcomes arriving passengers with the kind of service expected in a developing nation.
When a recent flight from the flashy British Airways terminal at Heathrow in London landed at JFK, Kennedy rolled out all the stops for the crush of foreign visitors. The passengers were herded down a flight of stairs into a very long hallway, which turned out to be the entrance to the baggage section. Hundreds of weary travelers were required to stand in line waiting for immigration officials to process them for at least 30 minutes.
An airport official passing through the crowded hallway remarked that some of the immigration officers had not showed up for work. Whether true or not, it was not the kind of scene that made returning New Yorkers proud. In fact, this version of the Big Apple’s welcome mat was downright embarrassing.
The contrast to the sleek operations at the British Airways terminal, where passengers are whisked through some of the tightest security on the planet and then directed to their gates via rapid escalators or modern elevators, was stark.
Both Delta and JetBlue have opened modern terminals at JFK in recent years, but the overall image of the airport is still unavoidable: Kennedy is a dowager in dire need of a face-lift.
Biden’s assessment of JFK’s neighbor to the north may have inspired Gov. Cuomo to announce the state would assume control of a $3.6 billion project to redevelop LaGuardia and construction at Kennedy from the Port Authority. The move was widely applauded by frustrated New Yorkers, who know all too well that first impressions count.
The governor must use his power to see that the modernization of Queens’ two airports continues. And the pressure should be intensified on the Port Authority, which operates both airports, to spend a bigger chunk of the revenue they generate on redesigning this gateway to New York City.
The city that has been romanticized in film and glorified in novels loses some of its aura when the visitor lands in Queens at an airport that belongs on the Turner Classics Movie channel. Has filmmaker Woody Allen, who has an enduring love affair with New York, ever shot a romantic sequel at JFK or LaGuardia?
