JFK Live Traffic

JFK Sectional Chart

John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in Queens County, New York in southeastern New York City about 12 miles (19 km) from Lower Manhattan. It is the top international air passenger gateway to the United States and is also the leading freight gateway to the country by value of shipments. The airport is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the two other major airports in the New York metropolitan area, Newark Liberty and LaGuardia. JFK airport is the base of operations for JetBlue Airways and is also a major international gateway hub for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines. Around 90 airlines currently operate out of JFK, but this number fluctuates due to seasonal services and the unstable nature of the airline industry.

The airport was originally known as Idlewild Airport and it was later renamed “Major General Alexander E. Anderson Airport.” General Anderson was a Queens resident who had commanded a Federalized National Guard unit in the southern United States and who had died in late 1942. (IATA: IDL, ICAO: KIDL, FAA LID: IDL) In 1948, the airport was renamed New York International Airport, though the original name remained in common use. The airport was renamed in 1963 in memory of the late President John F. Kennedy. It is colloquially referred to simply as “Kennedy” or “JFK.”

The airport is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, under a 1947 lease from the City of New York.[1] The first commercial flight at the airport was on July 1, 1948.

The airport was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963, one month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The airport received the new IATA airport code of KIA, short for Kennedy International Airport, but as the US death toll in Vietnam became a serious and emotional issue for Americans (“KIA”, short for Killed In Action, was a shorthand in newsreports of US casualties in the war), it was changed in 1968 to JFK, and since then the airport has become widely referred to by the abbreviation “JFK”.

The Worldport (Pan Am), now Delta’s Terminal 3, opened in 1962. It featured a large, elliptical roof suspended by 32 sets of radial posts and cables. The roof extended far beyond the base of the terminal and covered the passenger loading area. It was one of the first airline terminals in the world to feature Jetways that connected to the terminal and that could be moved to provide an easy walkway for passengers from the terminal to a docked aircraft, rather than having to board the plane outside via airstairs, which descend from an aircraft, via truck-mounted mobile stairs, or via wheeled stairs.

The TWA Flight Center, now jetBlue’s Terminal 5, also opened in 1962. Designed by Eero Saarinen, it was sculpted as an abstract symbol of flight. It is considered one of the most architecturally distinguished airport terminal designs in the world. With the demise of TWA, however, it became vacant. In 2005, JetBlue and the Port Authority financed the construction of a new 26 gate terminal behind the Saarinen building, branded as T5, which opened on October 22, 2008. T5 is the first airline terminal to be designed after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and contains 20 security lanes, one of the largest checkpoints in a US airline terminal. T5 is expected to handle as many as 20 million passengers each year. T5 is connected to the Saarinen building through the original tubes. The Saarinen building is being refurbished and will reopen at a later date as an entry point to T5.

Terminal 4 replaced the former International Arrivals Building in May 2001.

In 1970, National Airlines opened their Sundrome, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. It is known as Terminal 6 and is now vacant after JetBlue moved to Terminal 5. As air traffic in New York continued to grow, both Terminal 5 and Terminal 3 were modified in the 1970s to accommodate new Boeing 747s. The supersonic Concorde, operated by Air France and British Airways, provided scheduled trans-Atlantic supersonic service to JFK from 1977 until 2003, when Concorde was retired by both carriers. JFK had the most Concorde operations annually of any airport in the world.

The cargo operations at JFK were targeted in the 1978 Lufthansa heist and 1967 Air France robbery, inspiring the Nicholas Pileggi novel Wiseguy and Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas.

By the mid-1980s, JFK had overtaken Newark International Airport (now Newark Liberty International Airport) to become New York City’s busiest airport.

In 1998, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of JFK Airport the Port Authority introduced a new airport slogan: “JFK: Where America Greets the World.” Later that year, the airport began construction of the AirTrain JFK rapid transit system. Completed in December 2003, the rail network links each airport terminal to New York City subways and regional commuter trains at Howard Beach and Jamaica, Queens.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, JFK was one of the first airports in the United States to be temporarily closed.

On March 19, 2007, JFK became the first airport in the United States to receive the Airbus A380 with passengers aboard. The route-proving flight with more than 500 passengers was operated jointly by Lufthansa and Airbus and arrived at Terminal 1. On August 1, 2008, JFK received the first regularly-scheduled commercial A380 flight to the United States, operated by Emirates on its New York-Dubai route using Terminal 4.

• December 18, 1954 – a Linee Aeree Italiane Douglas DC-6 crashed on its fourth approach attempt to land at Idlewild (the former name of JFK), after circling for 2.5 hours. 26 of the 32 passengers on board were killed.
• December 16, 1960 – a United Airlines Douglas DC-8 collided with a TWA Super Constellation on approach to the airport; the United jet crashed in a Brooklyn neighborhood, the TWA plane on Staten Island, killing 127 people on board and five on the ground.
• March 1, 1962 – American Airlines Flight 1 [1], a Boeing 707 crashed on takeoff from Idlewild after its rudder separated from the tail. All 95 passengers and 12 crew members were killed.
• November 30, 1962 – an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-7 crashed into the ground during a missed approach.
• February 8, 1965 – an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-7 crashed off Jones Beach after takeoff when the pilots found themselves on an apparent collision course with an inbound Pan Am Boeing 707 and made evasive maneuvers.
• September 8, 1970 – a Trans International Airlines DC-8-63CF ferry flight to Dulles International Airport crashed on takeoff from runway 13R, killing all 11 crewmembers on board. The DC-8 freighter started rotating in a nose-high attitude 1,500 feet (460 m) into the take-off. After becoming airborne at 2,800 feet (850 m) down the runway, the aircraft climbed to about 300-500 feet, rolled 20 degrees to the left, crashed and caught fire. The loss of pitch control was caused by the entrapment of a pointed, asphalt-covered object between the leading edge of the right elevator and the right horizontal spar web access door in the aft part of the stabilizer.
• December 1, 1974 – Northwest Orient Flight 6231 a Boeing 727 chartered to pick up the Baltimore Colts in Buffalo crashed near Thiells, New York. The flight departed John F. Kennedy International Airport with only the cockpit crew onboard. The pitot heat was not turned on and the tube iced over during climb out making the airspeed readings unreliable. The plane stalled passing 23,000′ and the crew was unable to regain control. All 3 crewmembers onboard were killed.
• June 24, 1975 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 66, a Boeing 727 on final approach from New Orleans, crashed into the runway lights short of runway 22L, killing 112 passengers and crew. The cause of the crash was wind shear during a heavy thunderstorm.
• January 25, 1990 – Avianca Flight 52, a Boeing 707-321B arriving from Bogotá and Medellin, crashed at Cove Neck, Long Island, after a missed approach at JFK and subsequently running out of fuel.
• July 30, 1992 – TWA Flight 843, a Lockheed L-1011 departing for San Francisco, aborted takeoff shortly after liftoff. There were no fatalities among the 280 passengers, although the aircraft was destroyed.
• November 12, 2001 – American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 crashed while en route to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. During climb, the aircraft lost most of its vertical fin due to the co-pilot’s overcontrol of the rudder while encountering wake turbulence, and crashed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens. The crash killed all 260 people on the plane and five people on the ground.
• On 6 September 2007, Tam Airlines Flight 8080 suffered a heavy landing due to the elevators not responding in the landing flare. An investigation revealed that #2 flight control primary computer did not match #1 and #3 computers, sending erroneous messages to the actuators for the elevators.

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