Qatar Airways Moving To JFK Terminal One, Opening Dedicated Lounge

Wonder if "dedicated airport transfers" is T1-T8 tarmac transfers (or similar)

First, no, that doesn't mean they'll be leaving oneworld just because they'll be transferring terminals; I've heard that a lot in regards to CX 😉

I'm guessing the move is that Terminal One's floor area is best suited for them. Just like CX, they want their own space along with facilities, so they feel it'd be more worthwhile investment despite the minor inconvenience of transferring terminals. Besides, I think Terminal 6 is full already with all these anticipated carriers moving in. It's just impossible to have your own lounge facilities at 8 unless you finish construction of the terminal that was supposed to be done decades ago.

I wonder what the numbers are on those who have connections with American at JFK. Won't it be more convenient to put them on flights from DOH directly; they have a more extensive network in the US from DOH.

A couple of observations:

1) Terminal One (which, bafflingly, is also branded as "JFK1" in that picture) manages to look outdated and ghetto in that rendering. On brand for JFK and NYC more broadly.
2) Serious question. You do realize that Qatar Airways is basically Air Hamas, right? Just in case, since I'm sure you'll soon write another piece lamenting the state of the Middle East.

So at 1 point there will be Terminal 1 along side Terminal One?

1 should deceide which 1 should passenger be dropped off?

This one rebranding is just how a generation of snowflake has impacted.

I doubt there are that many JFK connections to DOH. People are not flying XXX-JFK-DOH-YYY. It's almost all JFK originating passengers flying JFK-DOH-XXX. Transfer pax are probably routed via AA's PHL-DOH route.

That being said, JFK's OW lounges were largely sufficient, was QR not happy with the experience it provided? I don't see very much other reason to move.

Down the hall and to the left

I love Home Alone too 😉

Speaking of Terminal One, when the time is right, here are two questions? Will there be any change/refresh to the Air France lounge? Will there be any change/refresh to the current TSA checkpoint?

It'll be a brand new terminal so everything will be new. The current terminal will be demolished and the remaining portion of the new terminal will be built on top of the current terminal's footprint.

Similar to Heathrow , they prefer to be in T4 where they have enough room for their own facilities vs T5 or T3 with BA or other oneworld partners

The QR lounge at JFK will probably be the best lounge in the Americas by far.

And going by the carriers at JFKs Terminal 4, apparently Terminal 4 will be a ghost down apart from DL with everyone moving into One or 6. And they can certainly use an extensive spruce-up.

“You do realize that Qatar Airways is basically Air Hamas”

Dumbest comment yet from you.

CX next door might have something to say about that heh 😉

I think DL would be happy about that? They keep wanting to grow at JFK, more room for them.

Who cares about what a bunch of snack bars do at a rat-infested hellhole located in the worst city on Earth, whose inhabitants should be Hamased for the sake of humanity and the gene pool?

Move makes total sense for QR and other OW carriers looking to create a more premium experience. Given AA’s paltry operation out of JFK there’s little value for other carrier to remain in T8. Connecting traffic get routed through PHL where there is a route network to support far more connections. JFK remains primarily For O+D.

As T4 clears out here’s hoping DL can acquire more slots and grow operations.

Were you going for max stupidity, with both of these comments? If so, mission accomplished.

So many potential reasons, which they'd have little reason to reveal to the public.

First (and probably most importantly) they may have wanted to take an equity stake in that terminal. That's the main reason Air France, Lufthansa, and Korean are there. AA/terminal 8 may not have been as willing to play ball.

Second, each terminal (sometimes down to the concourse level) are contractually locked into internal servicing/servicer contracts for terms of years, some exclusive, some concurrent. Qatar may not have been happy with the offerings and/or costs there.

Access + Exclusivity. The only other cases I know of airlines having dedicated gates exclusive to their own premium passengers at JFK, are Air France and British Airways' Concorde lounges (the real ones) which expressed their passengers straight from the lounge to the Concorde. But that hasn't been a thing for more than 20 years, since that aircraft retired. Doubtful that Qatar could've gotten that at terminal 8.

Not true at all. Especially when coming off of 703 and 701 (less so for 705), you will always see almost a 3rd the the bags at baggage claim have tags for an additional flight past jfk. The AA (and b6) connections at JFK for QR are a pretty big deal.

How long would you leave for a connection between Terminal One and 8? Realistically.

It sounds more like an Emirates Chauffeur Drive-type product to me (maybe the plan is to introduce this on expensive business class tickets?). Let's hope they also do a better job with the 'VIP Check-in' than they have with the "Premium" Check-In area at LHR, which is now often total chaos at the times of day when multiple flights are leaving in short periods because they've prioritized being able to sit down and pretend it's a hotel lobby over actually getting the passengers checked in quickly. It's almost everything that's wrong with Qatar Airways in a nutshell, to be honest.

Honestly IMO, I'd give myself 3 hours. Since DOH doesn't have pre-clearance, who know how long those queues will get at CBP.

Speaking of pre-clearance, we still don't know how EY fits in all of this as AUH has pre-clearance and nothing has been mentioned of a non-sterile baggage claim area. (Or what am I missing?)

For me, this is another reason these airline alliances are too complicated compared to the benefits. I would think that as an alliance, you would want the "under one roof" as much as possible to make things easier for customers to interline, yet we have the opposite going on. Now anyone connecting from QR to AA or vice versa will need to transfer between T1 and T8.

This is not just QR. I know AF is a part owner in T1, but I really thought they would move to T4 to be with DL. I know...there's a lot behind the scenes as to why these decisions are made. It's just one of those things I will probably never understand.

Without DOH preclearance (or HKG preclearance for CX), the extra 10-15 mins to ride the AirTrain isn't that big of a deal. You're still going to have to clear security again anyway. If there's a more exclusive QR lounge experience at T1, it's probably going to be better than the BA/AA experience at T8.

Dude what?

I'm always surprised how little frequency there is between NYC and AUH/DOH/DXB (relatively speaking, given the size/wealth/business of the metro area). Are there limits on the bilaterals? I would have assumed there's quite a bit of India/SE Asia demand to sustain more but I guess it's more of a europe thing.

I wonder how many oneworld regulars will be enticed to try every single lounge at JFK 😉 Apparently you can bounce around the different terminals even if your flight is not departing from that terminal!

Yes, but there is no airside transfer, so that a lot of security checking.

News flash - JFK landing slots are hard to get and expensive. Plus you don't want to drive down prices with excess capacity that needs to get filled at discount prices.

I don't know why the reconstruction of JFK isn't an opportunity to consolidate airlines by alliance. It would be smarter to have SkyT in T4, OW in T8, Star in T1, and randoms/non-aligned in T6. But because JFK terminals are run by the airlines, and not in a consolidated way, smart solutions are not possible.

T8 was never fully built out by AA, so QR could build a dedicated lounge and gate area in T8, but QR probably doesn't want a lounge easily accessible by BA passengers, and AA probably doesn't want to upgrade their lounge to QR standards.

There are some travelers who are willing to go through all that from what I read!

JFK is not really a hub compared to the likes of LAX, SFO, ORD, etc. It's more of an O&D airport.

And just a slight correction, but only Terminal 8 is run by an airline (American). Terminals One and 6 are operated by consortiums. Terminal 4 is run by Schiphol Group, 5 by Fraport.

As a US Citizen:
15 -30 seconds to clear immigration via GE
5 mins walk at most to the air train.
10 minsat most on airtrain including wait time
5 mins walk from airtrain to TSA Pre check.
15 mins at most to clear TSA since I have TSA Pre

So about 35mins give or take.

What DOH or HKG pre-clearance?

I mean, I get your point. But you post makes it seem like those airports offer US pre-clearance as an option. Pretty sure Dublin and Abu Dhabi remain the only airports outside of the Americas, that do.

JFK is not really a hub compared to the likes of LAX, SFO, ORD, etc. It's more of an O&D airport.

LAX is a larger O&D airport than JFK, both by total O&D passengers and by percentage of O&D passengers.

JFK (as of 2023) has the exact same percentage of transfer pax as EWR (15.2%), and is in line with SFO (18.9%).

ORD is the only one of the aforementioned that deviates from that general area, with 38.0% transfer traffic.

LAX pretty much serves all of Southern California and even points north and east. Sure you have ONT, LGB, SAN, etc., everything is funneled through LAX. It's more spread out with JFK, EWR and LGA and down to PHL.

Major Canadian airports also offer US pre-clearance facilities (includes YYZ, YUL, YYC, and YVR to my knowledge, may include more airports).

YOW, YWG, YHZ, and YEG also offer it.

I'm literally saying they don't offer it so you can't arrive as if it's a domestic flight on QR or CX so it doesn't make that much difference if you have to switch terminals. Of course, those with lots of checked bags may disagree as collecting them and riding the AirTrain with them makes it tougher (pack lighter!).

Korean is testing a system between ICN-ATL in which they would transmit images remotely to the CBP so you don't have to go through the hassle of claiming your bags and having to recheck them again.

And don't they usually have a bag-recheck counter right after customs? While it's an inconvenience to still have to take the train between terminals, it makes things easier!

News flash-- LHR has much harder and more expensive slots than JFK and there are 12 daily flights to Doha, 9 daily flights to Dubai and 5 daily flights to Abu Dhabi.

Then there are about another 6 daily flights from other London airports. So I'd agree with dxb that New York to Middle East, looks relatively light.

Likely geographic position and because most US-Asia traffic is transpacific.

Think they would be classed as inside the Americas?

Easy, except if it would not be the US, a terrible country to connect if you can NOT connect inside Security AND also need to consider that a majority of foreign passengers WILL NEVER be able trough US Airports, simply because of the worlds most stupidest Immigration situation. So a transfer from T5 - T4 at LHR (even with the outdated bus transfers) is still easier and more convenient then transferring in the US.
No matter if OneWorld or not.
LHR can not really be compared with a US airport transit, no matter if JFK, LAX, MIA . . . ANY US airport will be a nightmare!
A "modern" country, but when it comes to aviation, a 3rd world country and getting worse, even anew Terminal won't change anything on that situation. LHR, also chaotic, but due to NO Immigration for Transit passengers, way more convenient.

Well yes for inbound passenger arriving on QR. But if you are outbound connecting (eg MIA-JFK-DOH) it isnt going to be as simple.

I suspect there will be an airside bus like they did for JetBlue and BA.

ORD is better, right? 😉
... Lucky you, most destinations from ORD won't connect at JFK. good for you, right?

Why connect at JFK when you could fly direct?! Even then, aren't you able to tag your bags all the way through?!

Few corrections on the article from the press release:

“The first phase, including the new arrivals and departures halls and first set of 14 new gates, is expected to open in 2026. At completion in 2030, the New Terminal One, with a total of 23 gates, will be 2.6 million square feet, making it the largest terminal at JFK and nearly the same size as LaGuardia Airport's two new terminals combined.”

I have no idea what the worst city on Earth is but you are certainly in the bottom tier of worst commenters on this site. In fact you may be one of the the worst commenters I’ve ever seen on the internet.

You really should do the world a favour and kill yourself because you are literally a worthless piece of garbage.

The fact that Ben hasn’t banned you for the insane, inflammatory, bigoted trash you post here is not a good look on him at all.

Why hasn’t @ORD_Is_My_Second_Home been removed from this site yet?

News flash - If you don't need human margin of error both JFK and LHR would be able a lot more traffic.

Tim Dunn survived his permanent vacation and his alter ego untouched.

What do you think?

I don't know why the reconstruction of JFK isn't an opportunity to consolidate every building under one roof with airside connection.

Another the obsolete system of the 60s that needs to be modernized.

Ownership can still be independent, just some more collaboration.

Because I'm cute. Why haven't you been banned for being a terrorist enabler? Oh, that's right. You don't have an account, brave boy.

Yes and yes.

It's called geography. JFK is much further away from the Middle East than LHR.

LHR is pretty close to the great circle path of JFK-DOH, and there's already a bunch of people traveling JFK-LHR. So people that need to go to DOH can take a simple one-stop. It's not efficient to overfly a place that has great yields and ability to transfer people like LHR

Ironic that I would talk about people being banned, when my alts like Eskimo and Julie haven't been banned either

I landed at JFK T8 the week it was finished and fly through it regularly. While big, it never elicited anything like "Wow, this is nice". The food choices were and still are local stale or pre-packaged items other than Bobby Van's. I'm expecting TOne to be more wow than utilitarian.
I did go Wow, this is nice at LGA's new terminal.

Mostly correct but that misses the point. T1 is operated by a consortium of airlines, including Lufthansa, Air France, Japan Airlines, and Korean Air. Jetblue has the right to operate T5, which it has hired Fraport to be the manager.

I'm not sure of T6 -- that one is probably operated by JFK Millennium Partners.

Your comment is irrelevant. Yes both have expensive slots, and QR/EK have chosen were to invest their money to buy slots.

Yes outbound is easier as you can through-check your bags. As of now, you can't do that on DOH-JFK-XXX.

Why don't you come after me and do the job yourself? I'm not that hard to find.

"Think they would be classed as inside the Americas?"

Yep. People don't read. Nor know geography, it seems. 😉