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" Coming off a delayed flight from Las Vegas to JFK a few weeks ago, I was happy to learn I would be landing at the brand new Delta Terminal 4, which replaced the decrepit, warren-like terminal they had used for decades. I had heard so many appealing things about this $1.3 billion extravaganza, not least that it would have nine new gates, many more check-in kiosks and agents, 12 security lanes, &amp;quot;world-class shopping,&amp;quot; and eateries from Danny Meyer, Marcus Samuelsson, and La Brea Bakery. What&amp;#039;s not to love?\u2028  I&amp;#039;ll tell you what&amp;#039;s not to love: unless you take off from the very first A gates (has anyone actually ever taken off at any time from Gate 1 at any airport?), you will have a trek that take a half hour or more to get out of Terminal 4. If you look at the configuration, you&amp;#039;ll see that the B gates stretch way out and lead to the A gates; now look at the jets below, probably 737s and 757s, lined up at the gates. Since a 757 measures 155 feet in length, if you laid 15-20 of them end to end, you could approximate the length of the entry and exit walk you maneuver \u2014 I figure about two-thirds of a mile. I came in at Gate 34, with carry-on bags. There were families with small children and people in wheelchairs, crowds waiting to get on a plane, crowds exiting planes. I walk at a fast clip, yet after ten minutes I was still nowhere near the end of the B Gates. Fortunately, the driver of a cart with elderly and disabled passengers stopped and asked if I wanted a lift. I hopped on, but still, it was another five minutes to get to baggage claim and exit!  Source      Delta&amp;#039;s ad. Having achieved that goal, I found myself facing a huge column reading &amp;quot;TAXIS,&amp;quot; to the left of which was a snaking line of well over 200 people waiting for a taxi, with another 100 or so on a line outside the terminal. I asked an attendant how long it would take to get a cab, and he said, &amp;quot;Thirty, maybe forty minutes.&amp;quot; I nearly crumbled to the floor. &amp;quot;But there&amp;#039;s an approved car service that can pick you up in like five minutes.&amp;quot; I called 212-777-7777 and gave my info, what I was wearing, and waited outside at an appointed spot. Well, it didn&amp;#039;t take five minutes, it took fifteen because the jam of cars, including stretch limos, and the lane was so standstill that my driver had difficulty getting near me. Those neon-vested traffic cops hired to move cars along or ticket them merely stuck their heads in the windows of a few cars then let them continue to stand there \u2014 some in the middle of the lane. By now, it had been over an hour since my plane&amp;#039;s wheels hit the tarmac.  Source These patently absurd but symptomatic designs of new mega-terminals have master planners, developers and airlines who believe that passengers should be discomforted in every way on their way past Brooks Brothers, RadioShack, Shake Shack, and Mandarin Express. Were I ever to take another flight on Delta, not knowing in advance what gate I would be going to, I would have to factor in at least 30-45 minutes extra time after getting through security.\u2028  Airports like Vegas, Atlanta, Denver, Orlando, and others seem to revel in tram railways to get passengers to far-flung gates, as if longer and bigger is better. International terminals have vast, long corridors like something out of a Kafka novel to dis-engorge you to passport control and beyond. JetBlue&amp;#039;s new JFK terminal is equally labyrinthine: If you park your car in the lot or take the monorail, you&amp;#039;d better add one hour to your expected time at check-in, and at certain times (like 6 a.m.), the travelers on the security lines at JetBlue can number in the several hundreds. (They charge you ten bucks in advance to leap the line.) Then consider the wholly human-friendly older airports like LaGuardia and Kansas City, where you get off the plane, walk past maybe 10 gates and you are out the exit door of the terminal. That is good design, if an old, even outdated one. Even London&amp;#039;s Heathrow, which can be an endurance test to enter, is easily exited after passport control.  The increase in air travel has made bigger terminals necessary, but their designers seem far more interested in attracting retail shops than making it easy for passengers to get to their planes. One need not be nostalgic for the old days of JFK&amp;#039;s Pan Am Terminal (built in 1960, long occupied by Delta, soon to be demolished), when a parent could bring a child flying alone right on the plane, and a wheelchair-bound passenger didn&amp;#039;t need to arrive at 9 a.m. to make a 3 p.m. flight. One need only wonder why, when air travel has become so egregiously torturous, Delta has chosen to make a titanic blunder like Terminal 4 and be proud of it. I, for one, will look into any alternative to Delta when booking my flights out of JFK in the future. Life is too short to waste in an airport. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a24288/jfk-delta-terminal-4-review/>