JFK Airport Terminal 1 remains closed after power outage, fire
New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport's Terminal 1 will remain closed Friday due to electrical issues, the airport said late Thursday.
Friday's closure comes after a Thursday night power outage at the terminal disrupted more than 100 flights at the city's busiest airport. The airport tweeted that an electrical panel failure, which caused a small fire that was immediately extinguished, was responsible for the overnight outage.
JFK Terminal 1 will remain closed on 2/17 due to electrical issues as the Port Authority continues working with the terminal’s operator to restore flight operations as quickly as possible. Travelers should check with their carriers for flight status before coming to the airport.
— John F. Kennedy Airport (@JFKairport) February 17, 2023
Some 30 flights into or out of JFK were canceled on Friday, according to data from FlightAware, a website that tracks flight cancellations and delays.
"Travelers should check with their carriers for flight status before coming to the airport," JFK officials tweeted in announcing the terminal's closure on Friday.
Airport officials are working with the Port Authority to resolve the issue "as quickly as possible," the airport wrote on Twitter. The airport has been operating affected outbound flights from other terminals, such as Terminal 4, since Thursday, to minimize service disruptions, CBS News New York reported.
Passengers expressed frustration with the delays and cancellations.
"It feels like a movie, like it's not real," traveler Isabella Bivas told CBS News New York. "I'm still waiting for them to say it's a joke."
Port Authority and JFK spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some inbound international flights were diverted to other airports along the East Coast such as Boston and Newark.
One trans-Pacific flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to New York was forced to turn back due to the outage, with the Boeing 787 making a U-turn at its halfway point, near Hawaii, according to Bloomberg News. Passengers essentially had a 16-hour flight to nowhere.
Here it comes. The 16 hour flight from 🛫 Auckland, to... 🛬 Auckland 😨😨
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 16, 2023
The flight made a U-turn because of the closure of Terminal 1 at JFK.https://t.co/ZpFoXsvmtU#NZ2 pic.twitter.com/w0BJh7G7f6
The aircraft's turnaround made it the top-tracked flight on Flightradar24, a website that monitors flights across the world, Bloomberg added.
Terminal 1, which opened in the late 1990s, is scheduled to be replaced by a new, $9.5 billion terminal now under construction. Groundbreaking was initially supposed to happen in 2020 but was delayed until last summer by the pandemic.
Along with Air New Zealand, a number of major airlines operate out of Terminal 1, including Air China, Air France, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, Lufthansa, Italy's ITA Airway, and Turkish Airlines (See here for a list of airlines.) Travelers should consult their airline for flight status information.
—The Associated Press contributed to this report.