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Friday, Oct 10, 2008
Terminal One: At JFK International Airport, in an enormous swath of asphalt, glass, and aluminum flying machines, the pilot stalks old ghosts.
Feb 21, 2003 | In the seventh grade I made a secret trip from Boston to New York, a sort of junior pilot's pilgrimage in which, without my parents' consent, I spent the day on the roof of the old Pan Am Worldport at Kennedy Airport, which all the airplane magazines said was the best place for plane-spotting.
I'd never been to New York before. Ten miles away through the brown June haze, I got my first-ever glimpse of Manhattan -- a seeming wall of skyscraper punctuated by the spires of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. But Manhattan's haunting contributions to my life were still many years off, and I would not set foot there before my 22nd birthday. My obsession, for now, was the Kennedy tarmac. I remember some of the airplanes, many of which I snapped pictures of using an old 110 camera: a British Airways VC-10 (That's a V, not a typoed D), an Iran Air 747 (these were still the days of the shah), and my first view of that Anglo/French supersonic wonder, Concorde, which back then was still a point of controversy, complete with sign-carrying protesters, over its sonic booming and generally bad (i.e. loud) temperament. No louder than a smoky old 707, was my verdict, watching it blast along Runway 31L.
Polemics aside, Concorde was around to stay; decades later, it's still around, even after a devastating crash, posturing for prestige on behalf of British Airways and Air France, who swear (until the next fuel crisis) they make money on the thing, owing in no small way to its $7,000 one-way fare. From either Heathrow or Charles de Gaulle, patrons of BA and AF have exactly one destination to choose from if they're willing to break the bank for the chance to tell their business partners and mistresses they broke the sound barrier. The one destination is New York, and Kennedy is the only place in the world where you can see it in the two airlines' colors simultaneously.
On a warm Sunday night, 20 years after my teenage excursion, I'm back at JFK with two hours to kill, and I think maybe I'll go have a look at an Air France Concorde, parked overnight at the gleaming new Terminal One. BA's machine is also on the airport, but at the opposite end. I'd tried to persuade BA staff to allow me down their concourse for a glimpse of G-BOAC (its registration), but to no avail, my cargo pilot credentials from "the world's most experienced shipping company" apparently a security risk to "the world's favourite airline." They gave me some authentic Concorde baggage tags and sent me along. Maybe Air France isn't so uptight. And plus I haven't seen the new Terminal One yet, which I'm told is very nice.
The terminals at JFK, unlike at most big airports, are unconnected and arranged in a huge, mile-wide circle. When the place was designed half a century ago, when the airline biz was still rife with delusions of eternal glamour, the buildings were called "jewels in a necklace." In that spirit, you can check out Eero Saarinen's once iconic, now filthy, TWA building. Or, if you'd like to see the world's largest stained glass window, you needn't invest in a ticket to Rome or Barcelona, but merely ride the candy-striped Port Authority bus over to American.
Terminal One began accepting flights in the summer of 1998 -- a sweeping, elegant, glass-and-steel structure that immediately beckons your eye as you exit the Van Wyck Expressway into the airport proper. Its proud tenants, who must be paying a sheik's ransom for square footage, include Air France, Lufthansa, Singapore, Virgin, and a bunch of others. It resides on the site of the old Eastern facility, which had gone up in 1959 and used to be known, the same but completely differently, as Terminal 1. Yes, Terminal 1 has become Terminal One. (Something like Heathrow's Terminal Four.) The idea here, I guess, is to belie its true function as a mere arrival and departure hall, the spelled-out digit implying that certain indescribable prestige. The One is a name, not a number, and thus Terminal One becomes a place, a destination, not simply a conduit through which we make the annoying transition between automobile and airplane. And it rises very handsomely above its mates in the JFK necklace (all of them watched over by a 321-foot control tower, also recently opened).
They've even gone so far as to give it a logo -- a flight-reminiscent set of waving lines. The whole thing suggests, if nothing else, a lot of paperwork, lawyers, and a bureaucratic pyramid of well-paid people needed to get the place up and running ($330 million was the official cost).
My first impression as I spin through the oversized revolving door is one of overwhelming white-ness. Everything is blindingly, brilliantly, electrically white. Huge ceiling lights reflect off the newly painted stanchions, and the entire place sparkles clean as an operating room. The main hall is one of glass and girders -- that guts-exposed industrial look that's so popular these days in big public buildings. But unlike, for instance, the United terminal at O'Hare, which is pleasantly muted in gray, Terminal One screams with antiseptic brightness. Maybe during the day, with natural light coming through the glass, the effect is different. But at 9 p.m. there is no shortage of candlepower here, and I'm digging for my sunglasses.
Just as the Brits did, the Air France staff won't let me near their needle-nosed superbird, which is probably, maybe, who knows, the very same Concorde I saw that day in 1979. The marquee at Air France's Club L'Espace lounge says Flight 001 (or is it Flight One?) will be departing in the morning for Charles de Gaulle. The Air France man, who I notice is wearing both his company ID and an even more official-looking Terminal One "access permit," apologizes politely and sends me away as if I'm some kind of oddling curiosity (amused French accent: "Oh, you want to look at ze aeroplane ...?") No Club L'Espace for me, and I'm forced to see the Concorde while eating a super-sized Big Mac Value Meal from the upstairs food court, kitty-corner to the windows with only the tail visible.
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