Cockpit Confidential by Patrick Smith Page B

hydraulics for what is, at heart, a simple gangway?
    Of course, I’m opposed to jet bridges on principle. I prefer the classic, drive-up airstairs. Some of the international stations I fly to still employ those old-timey stairs, and I always get a thrill from them. There’s something dramatic about stepping onto a plane that way: the ground-level approach along the tarmac followed by the slow ascent. The effect is like the opening credits of a film—a brief, formal introduction to the journey. By contrast, the jet bridge makes the airplane almost irrelevant; you’re merely in transit from one annoying interior space (terminal) to another (cabin).
    Save your emails. This is just me being romantic. The benefits to the jet bridge are obvious—inclement weather, disabled passengers, etc.—and I realize there’s no going back.
15. Last but not least, some aesthetic flair
    If an airport has one aesthetic obligation, it’s to impart a sense of place: you are here and nowhere else. On this front, Europe and Asia again set the standard. I think of Lyon and its magnificent hall by Santiago Calatrava, or Kuala Lumpur with its indoor rainforest, where terminal design is a point of expressive pride—where it makes a statement , be it quietly stylish or architecturally stupendous.
    Take the magnificent Suvarnabhumi (pronounced “Su-wannapoom”) airport in Bangkok, Thailand. Its central terminal is the most visually spectacular airport building I have ever seen. At night, as you approach by highway from the city, it looms out of the darkness like a goliath space station—a vision of glass and light and steel, its immense transoms bathed in blue spotlight. Or for sheer character, try the little airport in Timbuktu, Mali. Here you’ll find a handsome, Sudanese-style building emulating the mud-built mosques ubiquitous in that country.
    With scattered exceptions (Denver, San Francisco, Washington, Vancouver), there is nothing comparable in America. To the contrary, some of our most expensive airport renovations have been terrible disappointments. jetBlue’s wildly overrated home at JFK, for example. Terminal 5—or “T5” as the carrier likes to call it—is a $743 million, 72-acre structure that opened in 2008 to considerable promotion and fanfare. Inside, the atrium food court and rows of shops conspire to make yet another airport feel like yet another mall. The Wi-Fi is free, and so is the noise and claustrophobia at the overcrowded gates. But it’s the exterior that’s the real tragedy. Although the streetside facade is at worst cheerless, the tarmac side is abominable—a wide, low-slung, industrial-brutalist expanse of gray concrete and ugly brown sheathing. Once again it looks like a shopping mall. Or, to be more specific, it looks like the back of a shopping mall. All that’s missing are some pallets and dumpsters. The facility’s only visual statement is one of not caring, a presentation of architectural nothingness, absolutely empty of inspiration—precisely what an airport terminal should not be . Is this the best we can do?
    It’s ironic that Eero Saarinen’s landmark TWA Flight Center sits directly in front of T5, itself part of the jetBlue complex. Regarded as a modernist masterpiece, the Flight Center opened in 1962 and was the first major terminal built expressly for jet airliners. It is supposed to serve as an entryway lobby and ticketing plaza for T5, though for now it remains semi-derelict and only partly renovated. I wish they’d finish the thing so more people could appreciate what is widely considered the most architecturally significant airport terminal ever constructed. Saarinen, a Finn whose other projects included the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the terminal at Washington-Dulles, described the interior as “all one thing.” The lobby is a fluid, unified sculpture of a space, at once futuristic and organic.