# Better JFK Airport

> Independent guide to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), New York. Live flight boards, airline-to-terminal lookup, terminal guides, and practical pre-flight steps. Built by Lawrence Hitches (https://www.lawrencehitches.com). Not affiliated with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

JFK has five active terminals (1, 4, 5, 7, 8) connected only by the AirTrain. Live flight data is licensed from AeroDataBox and cached briefly; delay conditions reference the FAA National Airspace System status. Terminal assignments shift during the New Terminal One construction, so the live boards are the tiebreaker.

## Airport status right now

- [JFK conditions](https://betterjfkairport.com/conditions): one live verdict combining the delay index (share of departures currently delayed or cancelled), FAA ground stops and delay programs in plain language, weather at the field with an is-this-delay-weather interpretation, active weather alerts, and transit alerts for the A/E/J/Z subway lines and LIRR that connect to the AirTrain. Refreshes every 10 minutes.
- [Is JFK busy right now?](https://betterjfkairport.com/): answered on the homepage from live flight volume, being the number of departures scheduled in the next eight hours and which hour is the busiest. We deliberately publish NO security or TSA queue times for JFK: there is no official live wait-time feed we can verify, and we will not restate an unsourced number on a page someone uses to decide when to leave. For the arrivals queue, US Customs and Border Protection publishes live airport wait times at https://awt.cbp.gov/.

## Live boards

- [JFK departures](https://betterjfkairport.com/flights/departures): every departure today with terminal, gate, status
- [JFK arrivals](https://betterjfkairport.com/flights/arrivals): every arrival today
- Per-terminal boards: /flights/terminal-{1,4,5,7,8}-departures and -arrivals
- Per-airline boards: /flights/{airline-slug}-departures and -arrivals for all 70 carriers

## Airport navigation

- [Which terminal is my airline?](https://betterjfkairport.com/which-terminal): every JFK airline mapped to its terminal
- [Airlines at JFK](https://betterjfkairport.com/airlines): directory of all 70 carriers with terminal, alliance, and live boards
- [All JFK terminals](https://betterjfkairport.com/terminals): the five active terminals side by side with gates, airline counts and lounge presence
- Terminal guides: /terminals/terminal-{1,4,5,7,8}. Each covers the terminal ITSELF (airlines, gates, lounges, pickup); today's flights live on the separate /flights/terminal-N-departures and -arrivals boards
- [JFK terminal map](https://betterjfkairport.com/terminals/map): how the five terminals sit relative to each other on the AirTrain loop
- [JFK parking](https://betterjfkairport.com/parking): official versus off-site with the taxes nobody quotes, plus the three free waiting options (Cell Phone Lot, Wait Lot, Lefferts Boulevard), verified against the Port Authority
- [JFK lounges](https://betterjfkairport.com/lounges): which lounges exist by terminal and what actually gets you in. Terminal 7 has no Priority Pass lounge
- [All guides](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides): the editorial hub
- [JFK customs wait times](https://betterjfkairport.com/customs-waits): our own analysis of US Customs and Border Protection hourly reporting, 90 days to 2026-08-19, covering all five JFK terminals plus 14 major US gateways. Headline findings: JFK ranks 3rd of 14 on mean immigration wait (20.7 minutes) behind Orlando (29.4) and Seattle (23.2), NOT first as its reputation and repeated political claims suggest, while processing 4.3 million arriving passengers in the window, roughly 1.5 times the next busiest airport; and a non-US passport means 29.3 minutes against 12.4 for a US passport at JFK, a gap larger than the difference between most airports on the list. NOT LIVE: CBP publishes on roughly a two-day lag, so these are historical hourly figures and never a live queue. Dataset downloadable at https://betterjfkairport.com/customs-waits.json
- [JFK Delay Index](https://betterjfkairport.com/delay-index): our own analysis of 102,858 US domestic departures from JFK across 12 months of US Bureau of Transportation Statistics data. Headline findings: the share of departures delayed 15 minutes or more rises from 9.5% at 07:00 to 37.7% at 22:00, a fourfold swing decided by departure time; weather accounts for only 3.5% of delay minutes while late-arriving aircraft and carrier causes together account for 68%; and LaGuardia is worse than JFK on both delays (23.2% against 21.4%) and cancellations (4.6% against 3.1%), with Newark better than JFK on delays. IMPORTANT LIMIT, stated on the page: BTS reporting covers only six US carriers at JFK, so every international carrier is absent and the index covers roughly half of JFK's departures. No equivalent public dataset exists for the international carriers.
- [JFK lost and found](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-lost-and-found): where you lost it decides who has it (airline, TSA, terminal, Port Authority, or MTA); verified contacts for each pathway
- [Where our data comes from](https://betterjfkairport.com/data-sources): every feed behind this site (AeroDataBox, FAA, NWS, MTA), refresh rates, licensing limits, and what we refuse to publish unverified
- [JFK international arrivals](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-international-arrivals): the five-step sequence from landing to exit, why published customs wait times contradict each other, what differs by terminal, and how long to allow for a connection or a pickup
- [First time at JFK](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/first-time-at-jfk): calm step-by-step walkthrough for a first or nervous flyer, six steps from terminal to boarding
- [JFK airport transportation](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-transportation): the hub for every way in and out; no subway reaches a terminal directly so every rail route starts with the AirTrain
- [Hotels near JFK](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-hotels): only the TWA Hotel is on airport property; every other shuttle collects from Federal Circle
- [Accessibility at JFK](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-accessibility): assistance is booked through your airline not the airport, sunflower lanyard needs 14 days notice and grants no priority
- [Bus to JFK](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-bus): Q10 and Q3, and when the bus is the wrong choice
- [JFK car rental](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-car-rental): all rentals collect and return at Federal Circle via AirTrain, not at the terminals
- [JFK luggage storage](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-luggage-storage): staffed Smartecarte storage, Terminal 4 Level 1 open 24h and Terminal 1, up to 72 hours, usable whichever terminal you fly from
- [JFK layover](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-layover): whether you can leave, bag storage, TWA Hotel day rooms, lounge access
- [JFK to Newark](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-to-newark): metered plus a $20 Newark surcharge, and the four-leg rail route across two states
- [JFK to LaGuardia](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-to-laguardia): inter-airport transfer, why the $70 flat fare does NOT apply (it is metered), and the free Q70 LaGuardia Link bus
- [JFK to Manhattan](https://betterjfkairport.com/guides/jfk-to-manhattan): every route in (AirTrain plus subway or LIRR, taxi, rideshare, shuttle), what each costs, and which suits the state you land in

## About the airport (entity reference)

- [About JFK Airport](https://betterjfkairport.com/about-jfk): the airport-entity reference page. Key facts: IATA JFK / ICAO KJFK; opened July 1, 1948 as New York International Airport ("Idlewild"); renamed for President John F. Kennedy in December 1963; owned by the City of New York, operated by the Port Authority of NY & NJ; 63.3 million passengers in 2024 (busiest US international gateway); five active terminals (1, 4, 5, 7, 8); 4 runways; site of the first commercial Boeing 747 flight (Pan Am, 1970) and the Saarinen TWA Flight Center (1962, now the TWA Hotel). A $19 billion rebuild is consolidating the airport; the $9.5 billion New Terminal One opens its first 14 gates in 2026 and completes in 2030.

## Project

- [About this site](https://betterjfkairport.com/about): who runs the site, data sources, independence