See inside JFK airport’s new $9.5 billion international terminal

It’s far from finished but the new, $9.5 billion Terminal 1 at John F. Kennedy International Airport is taking shape. Its first phase is slated to open in mid-2026.

It will replace the current terminal, which opened in 1998.

The terminal, which will be JFK’s largest, is now weathertight. Winding baggage conveyor belt structures have been installed, and you can make out future ticket counters, where customers flying carriers like Turkish Airlines, Air New Zealand, Etihad Airways, Air China, Taiwan’s China Airlines and others will set down their luggage and show their passports to ticket agents.

The terminal — set to be roughly the size of the two new LaGuardia Airport terminals that opened in the past decade combined — will be dedicated solely to international travelers, which the developers said is key to the design.

“From the very first pen to paper … we had the international customer in mind,” Jennifer Aument, CEO of the New Terminal One, the company developing the project, said at a press conference at the airport last month.

CNBC and other media got a look at the construction progress, led by Aument, in early July as part of what the company said will likely be among the last hardhat tours of the facility before opening day.

The project is part of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s $19 billion overhaul of JFK. In addition to Terminal 1, the current Terminal 7, currently home to Alaska Airlines and Ireland’s Aer Lingus, will be knocked down for a new Terminal 6, whose first gates are set to open next year. LaGuardia Airport’s revamp, in comparison, was about $8 billion.

As air traffic grows, airports around the country are racing to replace aging infrastructure.

U.S. airports need at least $173.9 billion for infrastructure upgrades from this year through 2029, according to a report earlier this year by the Airport Council International-North America.

“These investments – averaging nearly $35 billion annually – are essential to accommodate airlines and passengers, improve operational efficiency, elevate service quality and customer experience, and fulfill airport resiliency needs,” it said.

The new JFK Terminal 1 is set to open around the start of the 2026 World Cup, when some games will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, about 30 miles away.

More than half of the airlines at JFK are changing terminals in the coming years because of the construction, Aument said.

One thing she pointed to with the new design: “a terminal flooded with light.” That means no basement customs lines.

The departures hall, security lanes and customs will be on the same level of the three-floor terminal, which features a wall of slanted windows. Its design, led by architecture firm Gensler, is supposed to conjure the image of a butterfly, with the body splitting the terminal down the middle.

The AirTrain, which connects the airport’s terminals and parking lots with train stations in Queens, is already running through the construction site and will stop at the terminal when the facility opens.

JFK’s overhaul also includes roadway improvements around the airport, where traffic has crawled around the biggest hub in the region for years.

Terminal 1’s mid-2026 open will include the departure and arrival areas and the first 14 gates, all capable of receiving wide-body aircraft that are used for long-haul flights, and will have a capacity for 14 million passengers a year.

There will be 23 gates — 22 wide-body gates and one narrow-body gate — for planes like an Airbus A320 or a Boeing 737s — when the rest of the project is complete, currently scheduled for 2030.

The final version of Terminal 1 will also have more than 300,000 square feet of dining, retail, lounge and recreational space, with more than half, 180,000 square feet, just for retail and dining.

Aument said the airport will be the only one in the U.S. with a cash-and-carry duty-free shopping. Generally, customers will make duty-free purchases that are then returned to them before they board their flights, but in this format, they can take them right away.

The new terminal will also have its own microgrid, with solar panels on the roof, that the developer said will enable the facility to have “full resiliency and maintenance of 100% [of the terminal’s] operations in the event of power disruptions.”