The last push to the finish line (Italy 2025 part 17)

Thankfully passport control didn't take too long, though it's always a pain in the neck coming back into the US, especially when none of the workers seem to know how mobile passport control works. At least flying back to Seattle meant I didn't have to deal with Canadian border control, which is always the worst of any country I've been to (and that's even before the recent political issues between the US and Canada -- I'm very hesitant to deal with the Canadian border right now). Right outside of the international arrivals area is a recreation of a vintage diner, which is pretty neat -- too bad it seems to be semi-permanently closed (Google Maps says "temporarily closed", but it looked mostly empty inside). 

JFK T4 is pretty meh overall, and certainly nowhere on my list of favorite airport terminals, but the arrivals area is quite a bit nicer than most airports I've been to. When I was much younger and Delta was still using T2/T3 (which were absolute garbage despite the neat architecture of parts of the building), I remember walking over here to meet up with my New York relatives on a few trips. (I had thought about doing that on this trip, but I didn't really want to, and in the end they weren't in town at the time anyway.) 

I had a pretty long layover (nearly 4 hours since we landed early), so I didn't want to head straight through security. So I headed upstairs to the Airtrain station (T4 is special in that it has the only Airtrain station that's actually built into the terminal building), only to find that it was all messed up for construction on the day I was there. Of course it was -- train closures and disruptions due to construction were following me around on this trip! At least it wasn't quite as crowded as the CDG people movers at the start of my trip... 

There's that Emirates A380 again. These actually fly the MXP-JFK route, but the 767-400 is more exciting (at least if you consider more rare to be equivalent to more exciting the way I tend to)! I would love to fly on one of these someday, especially if I can manage to be in first class with the famous onboard showers. But I don't know if I'll ever be OK with spending that amount of money, considering that one-way tickets between the US and DXB tend to be over $10k in first class. I'd have to find some sort of way to get a much lower price before I even consider it. 

I much prefer things that I don't have to spend money on! I've wanted to visit the famous JFK T5 headhouse for many years, but it sat closed to the public for ages, including every time I flew through JFK (the original T5 closed in 2001, and my first time flying through here was 2003-ish). Finally, in the late 2010s, the building was remodeled to be the lobby for the new TWA Hotel, with the two new black buildings behind it housing the hotel rooms. Way back at the start of this series, I mentioned that CDG T1 was one of two airport-related "bucket list" items I was able to check off on this trip; JFK T5 was the other one. 

A few years ago, I would have said that this picture represented the past and the future of aviation. But now the A380 is itself heading towards being in the past, with Emirates being the only airline that seems interested in keeping them around in the long term. 

There is a direct outside route to the old T5 from the train station, but it was 20-something degrees outside, so I opted to stay warm and go the long way through the new T5. 

This is clearly the way the hotel designers intended you to enter, starting with the heavily-branded elevator. I can see why they've since signed the outdoor route as the main way to the hotel, though -- the access from the modern T5 is a bit awkward, where you have to go down two escalators, through the baggage claim area, and then back up an elevator. 

That elevator drops you into a little vestibule that's home to the first bit of the museum side of things. I wonder how many people confuse the replica TWA office for the hotel's front desk! 

To get to the real hotel lobby, you head through one of the "flight tubes" that originally led to the airside concourses (which were demolished when the modern T5 was built). I have to say, I'm glad these windowless, tunnel-like skybridges didn't catch on -- a few other airports used them, including CDG's T1 (for the short above-ground section of the tunnels to the concourses) and IAH (for the connections between the landside terminals and the "banjo" concourses), but I'd much rather have glass skybridges (which are, obviously, far more common). 

The new-build hotel wings connect to openings cut in the tubes. The architects clearly wanted to replicate the opulent mid-century style of the original terminal, but there isn't anything particularly exciting about it, and I wouldn't go out of my way to stay here. 

The cool part is the historic terminal, and that's free for anyone to access! 

I always love a good architectural model! This one proved to be a bit difficult to photograph thanks to its highly-reflective glass enclosure, but it does give you a look at the original airside concourses, located where the modern T5 has its landside area. They weren't as architecturally distinctive as the original landside terminal, but it's still sad they weren't preserved. 

The split-flap Solari board is one of the most famous parts of the terminal, and I'm happy to see that it's still in working order. It would be really cool if it was hooked up to real present-day data, but I don't think it actually is. Interestingly, the airline logos on the sign include the Flying Tiger Line, which was a cargo airline and therefore shouldn't have ever actually been on a sign like this. 

The upstairs is open to the public too. I sat in these chairs for a while and called home. Back when this was built, a cross-country phone call like that would have been nearly as much of a luxury as air travel!

The Solari board at the back of the terminal now displays graphics rather than flight info.

These planter and fountain setups would look right at home in a 60s mall. 

Some of the space is being used for a present-day restaurant. This would be a cool place to eat, but I'm sure it would also be pricey! The menu on their website shows it being about on par with Swiss prices... yikes. It's honestly a bit confusing to figure out which of the signs are referring to things that were here in the 60s and which are showing things that exist today!

Strangely, while the other tube is physically connected to the modern T5, you can't actually access it from here. There are stairs down to the baggage claim level, but they just lead to an employee area. The vestibule is instead used for some more exhibit displays, which probably don't get a lot of attention since they're so far out of the main traffic flow. On the left is a model of a 60s living room -- my parents probably had some of this stuff in their houses when they were kids! 

The other side houses an exhibit about the design of the terminal. 

I wish they had a sign explaining the history of this model itself -- it's clearly quite old and in rather rough shape, with the metal elements rusting away. 

 

I massively geeked out over the construction photos and -- even better -- original design drawings for the terminal building. I love this sort of stuff! Apparently the tubes were originally supposed to have curved moving walkways, something that doesn't really exist even today (outside of a product made by a baggage conveyor company that's clearly just a rebranded baggage claim system) -- no surprise those were never installed. 

Back through the moving walkway-less tube and on to the original check-in and baggage claim areas, which are now being used as a food hall and hotel check-in, respectively. The far end of the food hall was being used to film a Dollar Rent-a-car commercial, strangely enough. The old baggage claim area is the one place where things have been very obviously modified from the original design, since they turned it into a replica of the check-in area across the hall.

I have a rule against restroom pictures, but after making sure absolutely no one was around, I got a couple pictures of the original terminal restrooms. I just couldn't resist with how amazingly retro they are! 

And here's a closeup of the amazing Solari board. It's odd how, alongside all of the retro airline logos (and faux-retro JetBlue logo), they have the modern logos for Turkish and Etihad. 

Despite the cold, I still had to pop outside and check out the Lockheed Constellation they have parked in what would have been the original ramp area. The plane currently has a bar inside, which was unfortunately closed when I was there (though since I don't drink, I'm not sure if I would have gone in even if it was open). 

I was the only one out here on this frigid February day. I'm surprised they had the outdoor tables set up at all! 

You can get some pretty cool up-close views of the architecture from out here too. I didn't bother heading out front since there were so many cars that would have gotten in the way of getting pictures.

I bet the "low fare" service they were advertising would cost more than modern-day business class, adjusted for inflation! Air travel was a real luxury back then, in terms of price, not just service.

Sadly, it's about time to head back to the present day, though no JetBlue for me. I would be interested in flying JetBlue, but they have a real problem with delays and cancellations on their Seattle routes... plus they're now flying all-economy aircraft on flights to Seattle, taking away the advantage they had when they used to run planes with proper lie-flat business class. 

On the way back to the Airtrain, I just had to laugh at the ASCII-art arrow on the temporary moving walkway sign! 

All of that construction is for the new terminal 6, which is a replacement for the old T7 in the background. T7 is the last of the first-generation terminals at JFK, so it will be the end of an era when it's gone, but I doubt many people will be sad to see it go. 

The train work meant we had to go the long way around, but I wasn't complaining. T7 is home to a random collection of airlines -- mostly ones that don't codeshare with Delta or American, though Alaska is still over here. British Airways used to be the main T7 airline, but AA has shrunk their presence so much at JFK (they don't even fly JFK-Seattle any longer!) that BA was able to move into T8 with them. 

Over at the other major construction project, I suppose the new T1 will become the first third-generation terminal at JFK. This is being built on the site of the old T2/T3 complex, and with the way the tracks go through the building, I had thought they would reuse the old T2/T3 Airtrain station to have an in-terminal station like at T4, but that station is completely gone and it looks like they're building a new connection to the original T1 station. Seems like a missed opportunity. 

Anyway, having completed a full circuit (in the opposite direction of the normal loop trains), it's back to T4. There's still one more thing that I was really excited about on this layover...

T4 is not an architectural gem, but the main check-in area is pretty neat. Was that guy on the left taking a picture too? 

But I didn't have to spend long landside, because in late 2024 a new dedicated check-in and security lane was added for Delta One. I think most people don't realize that this can be used to re-clear security after getting off an international flight, as there is no signage to indicate this and Delta's website doesn't make it clear, but after a bit of confusion (which may have been mostly because I insist on using paper boarding passes while most people on Delta seem to use electronic boarding passes, which are nicely color-coded for the different classes), the people guarding the entrance let me through. 

I had already dropped my checked bags at the regular international connections desk so I wouldn't have to drag them all around T5, so I just went straight through security. This was the easiest time I've ever had getting through TSA (though other countries often have much easier security checks) -- there was only one person in line in front of me, and all of the employees were the friendliest TSA agents I've ever seen (I guess not having a massive line to deal with makes them less stressed!). The security line drops you right around the corner from the lounge (I'm not sure why it doesn't take you right into the lounge like in some other airports...), and getting into the lounge was a bit more complicated... at least for me as an easily-confused person who was also completely exhausted at the end of a long vacation. Normally you just go into the lounge and there's a desk with someone checking boarding passes (or simply automatic gates, which is my favorite option since you don't have to talk to anyone), but here there was someone outside checking passes, which was fine, and then a row of lounge check-in kiosks inside, which refused to read my boarding pass (it was just an iPad where you pointed your boarding pass at the camera, not a specific barcode scanner, so maybe it only works with the QR codes that mobile boarding passes have?), which I fought with until one of the employees came over to say that we weren't supposed to use those at all and only needed to be checked by the person at the door. This is an issue I've constantly had with airport lounges (and really business class travel in general) -- I'm used to air travel coming with tons of signs and directions so that anyone can figure it out, but when it comes to lounges and business class, there's always an assumption that you know what you're doing, and I never know what I'm doing (especially after a long flight at the end of a long vacation). 

Once you get inside, the lounge is absolutely beautiful -- if I had (a lot) more money, I would make my condo look something like this! (Albeit with a lot less gold and woodgrain.) The tile (both wall and floor) is my favorite part, with the flooring in the "market" area, which reminds me of ancient Roman mosaics, being a particular favorite. There's no question that this is my favorite airport lounge so far, and probably the only one that I would actually choose to spend time in over wandering the terminal. It would be even better if the "outdoor" terrace area was actually open to the outdoors -- maybe some of the windows are able to open when the weather is a bit nicer than in mid-February. Honestly, as much as I don't like JFK, I kind of want to connect through here again sometime just to go back to the lounge! 

Yes, another restroom picture, but I'm just posting this to say that I want that triangular blue tile for my bathroom! The process for getting a shower was a bit fiddly, with a kiosk where you have to put in your phone number or email (except the email part didn't seem to work) to get a message when there's a shower open (except there were already showers open so I didn't actually have to wait) -- of course, I probably could have just talked to the nice person at the desk by the showers, but you know that when there's an electronic option that bypasses the need to talk to someone, I'll always take it! The shower itself was confusing too (at least to a very tired me) -- the lower knob controls temperature like normal, but both knobs needed to be turned a specific way to get the shower to turn on, and it took me several minutes to figure that out. But I shouldn't complain -- being able to take a shower after a long flight is my favorite part of lounge access! 

The most hyped feature of the Delta One lounges is the sit-down restaurant setup. I get why people are excited about that (free food is good), but the last thing I want in the middle of a long day of travel is a large meal. Nothing on the menu sounded all that exciting either (well, except for the desserts -- I always have a sweet tooth!). 

 

 

Instead, I got some pizza from the market area, which is more of a typical airport lounge food setup. It was... fine. It's basically the same sort of pizza that you would get from a by-the-slice place in Italy, which already isn't my favorite kind of pizza, and unlike in Italy, they didn't reheat it for me, so it was just sort of lukewarm. I wasn't really planning on eating in the lounge at all, but I'm a very predictable person -- if there's pizza on offer, I always have to try it! Interestingly, even in the main part of the lounge, all the drinks here (even water) are table service, not self-serve -- I'd always rather have self-serve options, but the employees were super nice and kept refilling my water over and over (even when I kind of wanted to just get up and leave). I sat in an emptier part of the lounge (but still by the windows, of course!) over by some employees who were chatting and polishing glassware -- it really seemed that everyone involved with the Delta One lounge operation genuinely enjoys their jobs, all the way back to the TSA agents. That's not something I'm used to seeing when it comes to air travel.

The main lounge space is on the fourth floor of the terminal building (along with check-in and security), but there's a second entrance on the third floor (home to the gates... at least the ones in the original part of T4). Even the elevators in the lounge are super fancy! I love the rounded corners. 

I guess this is the entrance for people coming off (domestic) connecting flights. 

The airside part of T4 isn't all that nice. It's an upgrade over the old T2/3 complex, but only in that it isn't falling apart. 

I thought this display was interesting -- especially since they used modern Delta seats, with modern IFE screens, for the seating. I guess we're already getting to the point where these are outdated, which feels crazy to me since the vast majority of my flights have been in much older seats than this (but I guess that's what happens when you stop flying for nearly a decade -- technology passes you by). 

Singapore is somewhere that I'd love to visit someday, especially if I can fly Singapore Airlines. But cost is a big problem there... when I've looked in the past, it's often been cheaper to fly the long way to Singapore, via Turkey or Europe. This plane was getting ready for the current longest scheduled flight, 18-19 hours halfway around the world -- that's not a flight I have any interest in taking! 

The far end of concourse A is home to a bunch of the shortest flights from JFK, leaving from the ground-level regional jet gates. Fun fact: the gate signs here (with the integrated destination screens) are taken from Atlanta's wayfinding sign standard, and Delta has also installed them at some of their gates in LAX and LGA. It's weird to see signs from one airport show up at completely unrelated airports like this! 

I think most of the area between the two concourses used to be open to the high ceiling, before the security area was expanded to fill in a large chunk of the area. T4 was built long before Delta decided to move in and turn it into their hub, and there have been a lot of awkward modifications made to accommodate far more passengers than it was originally designed for. 

There are some more cool-looking lounges up here too. I bet the Etihad lounge has a really neat design! The facade on the Centurion lounge looks like a mall storefront to me. The whole Centurion Lounge concept has always seemed a bit strange -- surely if you're wealthy enough to have one of those credit cards (which have an annual fee that's more than I spent on this entire vacation), you'd be flying business class and have lounge access anyway! 

Concourse B, Delta's primary part of the terminal, is so long that you can take a bus from one end to the other. And maybe I should have -- I had spent a bit too long in the lounge, and my flight was already boarding! 

But no, I wanted to walk the whole boring length of the terminal. The retrofit-style moving walkways are another sign that this terminal was originally designed as a much smaller place than it is now! 

The concourse originally only had 10 gates, but it has had three separate extensions added on since Delta moved in. This curve is the start of the first addition, which largely kept the original three-story design. 

The escalators down mark the start of addition 2, which has a more conventional 2-story design (since it was designed for domestic flights and doesn't need an international arrivals corridor). 

All the way down at the end of this section is gate B49, where I was leaving from. Looks like pretty much everyone is already on the plane (or more accurately, on the jetbridge waiting to get on the plane). 

The final part of the concourse is another single-level regional jet area. The first addition essentially replaced the old T3, while the later ones replaced T2. 

This is about as good of a picture of the plane as you're going to get. It's just a boring A321neo, with the stupid raccoon mask on the cockpit windows. 

Finally, one last flight home. The A321neo first class seats have a reputation for being uncomfortable, but I thought they were perfectly fine. Supposedly Delta has started replacing the seat cushions, so maybe I lucked out and got one of the upgraded ones, or maybe I'm just not that picky. I also don't have much to compare it to, since the only comparable seat I've ever been in was the Turkish short-haul seat last year. Obviously, these seats are much nicer than the fake business class on Air France short haul flights! 

Based on the timestamps of these photos, it took a bit over half an hour from leaving the gate to taking off, most of which was just spent waiting in line. Since I had free wifi on this flight, I could watch on FlightRadar24 as we slowly made our way through the queue. These take-off lines are definitely the worst part about flying through JFK. 

On this flight, I got yet another chicken meal. It was fine, but not great, like most short-haul meals I've gotten. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was actually in the mood for dinner, but by this point it was 3 AM Italy time and I had already eaten three dinner-type meals in a row (one at each end of the long-haul flight plus a few pieces of pizza in the lounge) so after just a few bites I realized that I wasn't actually hungry. The brownie thing (it was described on the menu as a cookie, but it definitely seemed more like a brownie to me) was quite good, though -- I always have room for dessert! 

Dinner number 4 was right as we were flying over Toronto. Toronto might just be my next vacation destination, as long as US-Canadian relations don't continue to deteriorate... and more importantly, as long as I can find somewhere I can actually afford to stay. North American hotel prices are getting so expensive that traveling overseas seems more reasonable these days! 

And finally, I'm back home in Seattle. I can see my house apartment from here! 

On the ground, off the plane, and out of energy. 

And that's it! I may or may not decide to put together one final post summing up my thoughts about all of this, but other than that, it's back to normal with retail content from now on, until the next trip!