Cargo modernization at JFK: a long way off

Facilities reconfiguration and access road improvements are just getting under way.

John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York handled 120,532 tons of cargo in July 2021, a 36.1% increase over the year before, and, impressively, 11% over pre-pandemic 2019. It’s a trend mirrored elsewhere in the economy, as cargo volumes first fell, in the early months of the pandemic, and then spiked. JFK’s 2021 volumes began to grow in a big way in March, which saw a 40.6% year-over-year increase, followed by 61.6% growth in April. 

Load factors for import flights have reportedly been pushed to 85% as a result, and trucking capacity is scarce for airport transfers and local pickups and deliveries. Ground handler terminals in JFK have been taking as much as five days to break down import freight, prompting Flexport, the San Francisco-based freight forwarder and customs broker, to recommend using Boston as an alternative. 

How to Build and JFK’s Air Cargo Capacity for the Future

But JFK’s COVID-19 growth numbers mask a longer-term negative trend at the airport, where cargo volumes have been slipping over a period of decades. Cargo volumes reached 1.8 million tons in 2004, according to Statista, but have since dropped to 1.3 million in 2019 and 1.2 million in 2020. JFK’s 40-year old cargo facilities are too small and not technologically current, users complain, issues that are in the process of being addressed by the Port Authority of New York / New Jersey (PANYNJ), with buildouts of new facilities and a longer-term program to reconfigure cargo operations at the airport. In the meantime, the one-time biggest air cargo gateway in the world now stands at number seven in the United States.

The current strain on JFK’s infrastructure underscores the need for cargo infrastructure improvement, but also the possibility of growth. “JFK has a major opportunity to expand its cargo operations, given its location and direct access to all of the major airport hubs worldwide,” said Mike Simpson, executive vice president at Worldwide Flight Services (WFS), the main cargo handler at JFK.

JFK’s problems also involve congestion on its access roads, most infamously the Van Wyck Expressway, JFK’s main artery, where traffic often moves at a languid eight miles per hour. A 2016 plan to expand that and other nearby roadways is currently being implemented by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), but it will be years before the projects are completed and, as with the airport cargo projects, before it is known whether they will be efficacious. 

In June 2021, the Port Authority signed a long-term ground lease with Aeroterm, a provider of airport facility-related services, for the development of the first new cargo facility at JFK in two decades, a $145 million, 350,000-square-foot facility on 26 acres. After two obsolete buildings are demolished, they will be replaced with an expanded facility that will include ramp capacity to handle three large cargo freighters simultaneously and a dedicated temperature-controlled area for pharmaceuticals. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.

“This new facility will be able to handle significant cargo volumes, ease cooperation between airlines operating within carrier alliances, and optimize the use of technology, equipment, and resource planning,” said Simpson, whose company is scheduled to operate exclusively out of the new facility once it is completed.

Longer term, a complete reconfiguration of cargo operations at JFK is on the drawing boards. In 2020, a Port Authority panel recommended “a shift towards consolidated cargo handling.” Noting that “facilities represent up to 30% of the cost structure of handling,” the panel’s report recommended “moving to a more efficient operating model…to meet air cargo industry performance targets and JFK land-use efficiency.” Key features of the reconfiguration will include “a major consolidation of facilities,” notably clustering “cargo facilities in the north area of the airport where there is convenient road access to off-airport cargo operations.” The consolidation’s ultimate vision, the report said, will promote the “most efficient use of space and manpower” and “good governance.” The redevelopment process will extend well into the 2030s.

Van Wyck constraint

JFK critics have long noted that developing modernized on-airport cargo facilities when the airport is difficult to get to is of little help. That’s where the expansion of the Van Wyck Expressway comes in.

A NYSDOT project to improve interchanges with nearby parkways, designed to draw passenger vehicles away from the Van Wyck, has been ongoing for several years. Three of four phases of that project have been completed and Phase 4 reached a milestone recently with the completion of two reconfigured ramps in the Kew Gardens Interchange with the Grand Central Parkway.

The actual $2-billion expansion of the Van Wyck, on a 4.3-mile stretch between the Kew Gardens Interchange and JFK, is now just getting underway, and will be proceeding through three contract phases. The first contract, worth $340-million, for design-build services to replace four bridges and lengthen five more over the expressway and to replace two ramps, was awarded in July to a joint venture between Posillico, Inc., and El Sol Contracting and Construction Corporation, both Long Island-based companies, and Dewberry, an engineering firm based in Virginia. This project is anticipated to be completed at the end of 2023.

Contract 2, which is in the process of being let, is a $460 million undertaking to retrofit and replace four Long Island Rail Road bridges, modify another bridge, reconstruct the Van Wyck Expressway’s service roads, and replace certain superstructures and substructures. That project is also expected to reach to the end of 2023.

Contract 3, which represents the actual capacity improvements to the expressway by adding a fourth high-occupancy vehicle lane in each direction and reconfiguring entrance and exit ramps, was presented in the form of a draft request for proposals last July, and is estimated to cost $1.2 billion. That project is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.

It remains to be seen whether New York State’s $2 billion will be well spent by increasing the velocity of cargo movements to and from JFK. And, while new cargo processing facilities may provide a partial answer to JFK’s cargo woes, the ultimate optimization of cargo operations at the airport is still a long way off.