JetBlue terminal OK'd for JFK Airport

A new $808 million terminal serving JetBlue Airways Corp. flights will be built at John F. Kennedy International Airport under an agreement with the airline that was approved by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the New York area's three major airports.

The JetBlue agreement also calls for renovating and reusing the former TWA Flight Center, an architectural landmark completed in 1962 that was designed by Eero Saarinen to look like a bird in flight. Though it won't be used for passenger boardings, it will be put to an as-yet-undetermined "new use," and will incorporate its "connecting tubes" into the new $808 million JetBlue terminal, which will be built behind it, said William DeCota, the agency's aviation director.

"Today's authorizations are very unprecedented in their scope to our airport system, to the city and the state, and to the tens of millions of people who use" the authority's airports "every year," said DeCota, speaking at the monthly meeting of the authority's board of commissioners.

The agreement with JetBlue, JFK's largest carrier, comes as AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, the airport's second-largest carrier, prepares to open the first 13 of 55 new gates at its $1.1 billion new terminal, whose construction started in 1999. The facility will combine both domestic and international flights into a single facility, DeCota said.

The airline's separate domestic and international facilities will be demolished as the new facility is brought on line, he said. The first 13 new gates are to be completed by next April, 23 more by 2007 "and the final 19 as demand warrants," DeCota said.

About 22 percent of JFK's traffic, or 7 million passengers, flows through American Airlines' terminals, he said. The authority approved selling $500 million of bonds, to be reimbursed from American Airlines revenue, to cover the final phase of construction.

The Port Authority, which also operates bridges and tunnels between the two states, as well as its shipyards and a commuter rail line, runs Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York, and Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J.

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