Opened a year after Saarinen died, at 51, the terminal was also obsolete from day one.
DOH!!! I flew out of the TWA terminal. Very nice but was designed for a time when flying was an exclusive way to travel. Saarinen showed much more foresight when he designed the Dulles Airport building. He designed it so it could be expanded without losing the integrity of the design.
During the 80s I commuted to Cairo ...Always flew TWA and remember JFK terminal well.
The Dulles airport was a disaster from the start from an industrial engineering standpoint. You essentially went through the boarding process twice, once to get on the mobile lounge thing, once to transfer from the mobile lounge thing to your airplane. Stupendously inefficient.
https://www.cardcow.com/images/set293/card00755_fr.jpg
Dulles ultimately built real gates with the midfield terminal with jetways to make the place usable and get rid of the mobile lounges.
Back in the old day folks used to wear their best Sunday school clothes whenever they flew.
That's the barely visited Int'l Airport in Newfoundland, Canada.
It's were TONS of airplanes suddenly had to go when during 9-11 all airplanes from Europe were told to land ASAP.
The place is a living TIME CAPSULE --eery.
There was never any need to update it cuz no one ever complained. Cuz NO ONE goes there.
It's MORE retro than retro cuz it never became anything else.
Behold:
GANDER:
PARADISE for hisotrians and complainey old cranks.
Back in the day, I used to fly through the TWA terminal. You could go from TWA domestic to international without ever being forced into the rest of the airport. Couldn’t be beat.
“John F. Kennedy International Airport, midcentury modernism’s great tribute to sex, adventure and the golden age of air travel.”
Sex? WTH
If I ever have a need to overnight at JFK, I will definitely stay here. It looks great.
I'll have to add staying here to my bucket list.
-PJ
I just hope there is no Room 800...I did see the ‘accident’! No matter what, the government lied...I was boating in Long Island Sound, and I was listening to chatter on the VHF radio...
I was lucky enough to fly from that terminal too. I flew a lot those days. I flew first class from NYC to Paris and back (TWA 800 and 801, by the way). Was an Ambassador Club member too.
Such a different world.
