Landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport

What JFK is like

JFK is not one building but a ring of separate terminals strung around a loop road, with different airlines in each and almost no way to walk between them. Most travellers coming from Asia land here after twelve hours or more in the air and have to make their first decision about getting into the city while still thoroughly tired. It is a busy international gateway rather than a calm one, and the arrivals process reflects that. This is the airport that tests whether your data plan was actually ready before you boarded.

On arrival

Turn the eSIM line on as the wheels touch down; service normally appears while the aircraft is still taxiing to the stand. The walk from the gate to the immigration hall is long here, with several escalators along the way. Inside, the hall splits into lanes for American passport holders and lanes for visitors, and the visitor lanes are always the slower of the two. Staff at various points ask people to put phones away while queueing and during the interview itself, so send the message to whoever is meeting you before you go in. Open the map again once you have your bag and are through customs into the public hall.

How far the airport Wi-Fi gets you

Free airport Wi-Fi in the United States, here included, is advertising-funded rather than simply free: you accept terms, usually sit through or click past a promotion, and then get a slice of time before the sign-in page reappears. The awkward part is that the moment you most want a connection is while you are shuffling forward in the immigration queue, which is exactly when nobody wants to be typing an email address into a captive portal. In the older terminal buildings the shared network also slows sharply when several wide-body flights land together. A working mobile line skips the entire performance.

Getting into town

The rail exit is the AirTrain, which loops the terminals and meets the city network at two points: one that hands you to a fast commuter train into Manhattan, and one that hands you to the subway, slower but cheaper. Taxis queue on the arrivals level of each terminal, while app-booked cars use separate pick-up points, so make the airport signage and the app agree before you start walking. Late afternoon into the city is genuinely slow, and a map left open with live traffic will recalculate repeatedly and work through a couple of hundred megabytes an hour. On the subway itself you have service on the platforms, but the tunnel stretches between stations still drop out. Budget data for the transit app, the map and at least one long call home.

What people ask about this airport

• Message before the hall — Phones usually go away inside the immigration hall, so send your rough timing to whoever is waiting while you are still in the corridor.
• Terminals are islands — If your onward flight leaves from another terminal, allow time for the AirTrain ride and a second pass through security.
• The US and Canada are separate — If the trip continues up to Toronto or Montreal, arrange Canadian coverage as its own thing: the two countries are normally sold separately from each other.