JFK Airport’s Terminal Setup Contributed to the Storm-Recovery Fiasco

Even as it became clear that last week's bomb cyclone in New York would be as bad — or perhaps worse than expected — many international flights were already on their way to New York John F. Kennedy International Airport, dispatched hours before by airlines gambling that they'd make it. Usually it works out. The weather clears, and the plane that left Taipei or Hong Kong 15 hours earlier lands without incident. That's often true even when domestic airlines like JetBlue Airways or American Airlines cancel many of their flights because airports tend to find a way to accept long-haul arrivals over the flight from Buffalo, New York. But that's not what happened at JFK. Instead, the airport closed for a longer-than-expected period on Thursday afternoon into Friday morning, and long-haul flights had to go to Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or even Newburgh, New York, sometimes at airports not prepared to accept them. When flights were cleared to return to JFK, things got worse