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JFK Airport: The Ins and Outs You Must Know Before Going There
JFK Airport is literally the largest airport in New York. It is an international airport. It is the main hub of New York City, and you would think that with credentials such as that, it would be a beautiful airport or a good service airport, an easy-to-get-around airport.
But interestingly enough, it’s none of those. Well, it can be a little bit, but not really. And it’s always become, like, a massive disappointment for me. Today we are going to be talking about the ins and outs of JFK Airport.
Every time I seem to go there, and we’re talking I used to live in New York, and the Airport used to always be under construction, and not much has changed anyway.
How to Get to JFK Airport?
So let’s talk about logistics. How to get to JFK if you’re coming from New York, if you’re flying out of JFK, first, you can obviously take an Uber, or a taxi to drop off your rental. Those are the easy ways.
Public Transportation
But one thing that is very accessible is public transportation. So you would have to get on the subway. That will take you to Jamaica, where you transfer from the subway to the terminal monorail. It’s super easy. You use the same card as the Metro card, and it brings you right to the airport.
JFK Airport
Now, the airport itself is like a city. It has over eight terminals, and each terminal is probably a good size airport in a small country.
So we’re talking huge. You do need to know exactly where you’re going so that you’re not kind of walking for miles, which is a possibility, but it’s actually not the hard part. It’s understandable. It’s a Huge airport.
Getting In Process
So we’ve had to take several flights out of JFK, and getting in, you go through the same process. You check in, depending on your airline.
Some will have outside, some inside, but then you have to get into the actual terminal to your gates. Depending on your terminal, depending on the size of the gate.
No Internet Connection
First, the internet does not work there. It’s telling you that it works there, but it doesn’t work. If you ask anybody to help you with that, nobody knows anything. Nobody knows how to help you with that, and this has not been my first time with that issue.
Normally I get internet from the actual airlines, but especially when you’re flying in and arriving, but when you’re departing, it doesn’t work like that. You still are not technically with the airline anyways.
So if you are roaming like we were because we don’t live in the US anymore, you make sure that you have your own internet to be safe.
But don’t rely on the internet at the airport.
Security
Now, the food situation there was absolutely horrendous, and because you never know how long it’s going to be, sometimes you arrive 4 hours beforehand, and you’ve crossed right through without any problem, no security.
Or you could get there, and it will take you 3 hours just to get to your gate because of security, whatever the reasons are. I mean, I’ve had to sometimes wait in security for 2 hours just to get through.
Food at the JFK Airport
I have to say, I am so disappointed with the options that they have for restaurants and foodstuff. When you are in certain terminals. I don’t know what it is. I can’t imagine there being a discriminating thing.
But first of all, very few, like we just had our most recent experience, was flying to Europe, and every single airline was overbooked.
The Terminal was packed, and there were only five places to get food. First, nothing is healthy. There was one place that gave you a little bit of a salad, and one place they gave you some options for a fruit juice, like a smoothie, and it wasn’t even like the real fruit.
You had to buy it in a box, at least it was organic. And we do prefer to have healthier options, but that’s not even the point. So we had to choose from the other four or five places.
Long Waiting Lines
You always need to get there a little bit early, and because you don’t want to carry all this crap with you, we always rely on getting food at the airport. Normally every airport we’ve been to, it’s been pretty simple.
So here it was a mess. Like there were only three of the five places open by the time and the lines were over an hour on each one because there were thousands of people and four tiny little places open.
Bad Service
We’re standing in one place, they completely ran out of food altogether and shut down. So everybody who’s been waiting had to go somewhere else, and what they offered, nobody else offered.
So we went to the next line because my husband and I are vegetarians. We were going for a vegetarian burger, literally by the time we got there we got the last one.
So everybody that was in line, nobody ever said anything. We literally got the last burger there, and the guy who was working there knew nothing. He didn’t have any option at all, he didn’t know anything about any of the sauces, and he didn’t know what was offered.
I mean, the guy was beyond clueless, and it was just really disheartening. Like he just did not even care.
It was amazing. But what’s interesting is that we got the very last burger. Nobody was told after that. So the people that have been waiting for about an hour behind us, because that’s how slow it was by the time they arrived there, without knowing there’s no other option for vegetarians. I mean, it was terrible anyway.
Conclusion
If you do go to this airport I recommend bringing something to hold you over until your flight just to be safe, or you’re going to have to buy some sort of crap food which is going to cost you like $12 to bag popcorn.
This is my advice for JFK when you do arrive, it is a little bit easier sometimes you go through customs in seconds, sometimes you could go through customs in hours.
Again, that’s pretty much everywhere in the world today to make sure that you are prepared for that baggage is pretty simple they do have again, you might or might not have internet when you arrive depending on your flight because I arrived one time with JetBlue, I had the internet the whole time but again when we were flying out we couldn’t get internet at all.
So make sure you are prepared regardless and know where you have to go and pick up your car or the subway.
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