12 new york | july 8–21, 2019
intelligencer
Tribes:
Rachel Handler
From Chic to Geek
After a splashy launch, the new
hotel at JFK finds its devoted
audience: aviation nerds.
stefano and marco, two extremely
buff Texans, are standing on the pool deck
atop the brand-new TWA Hotel, grinning
uncontrollably. Located right next to Jet-
Blue’s Terminal 5 at JFK airport, the hotel
is the result of a $265 million renovation
of architect Eero Saarinen’s futuristic
1960s landmark, the TWA Flight Center.
But the guys aren’t here for the period-
perfect hotel rooms or to eat at its swanky
restaurant. Despite the 90-degree weath-
er, they aren’t even paying attention to the
pool. “This is the place to be if you love
planes,” says a giddy Stefano, 28. “I’m an
avgeek,” as they call themselves. “Aviation
is my thing, my niche, my kink, if you
want to put it that way. I’m the happiest
person today.”
“I’m telling people I came in for World
Pride, but it’s really for this,” he adds, lower-
ing his voice. “Sorry, a Kenya Dreamliner is
backing up. This is a 787, which is their
shorter variant. We need to see this.”
The preopening hype around the TWA
Hotel was feverish, pitching it as a haute
couture destination in its own right,
despite the fact that said destination was
the airport. Karlie Kloss Instagrammed
about it, and Louis Vuitton debuted its
cruise collection there in early May, after
premiering past collections on a Japanese
mountaintop and in a tiny French village.
Almost every outlet that covers the city—
including this magazine—wondered if the
hotel could make Kennedy airport fash-
ionable. But in the month since its open-
ing, the hotel has been plagued by
middling-to-bad reviews and a sort of low-
key sense of chaos, with guests complain-
ing about poor customer service, random
power outages, and errant fire alarms.
“Disturbingly abysmal,” wrote one reviewer
on TripAdvisor. “Truly the twilight zone
from 1962. You are on your own, and it’ll
cost you,” wrote another ominously.
In the hotel’s indoor common areas on
the last Friday in June, the mood is bleary
and hushed—besides the glamorous trap-
pings, it is indistinguishable from the exis-
tential malaise of an airport. In the aptly
named Sunken Lounge, a handful of
exhausted travelers on layover stare blur-
rily at their laptops, ignoring one another.
On the eighth-floor pool deck, I’m greeted
by the loud hum and sharp scent of air-
planes taking off directly in front of me.
The pool, billed as infinite, is the length of
approximately six coffins and the width of
two. Everyone must place their belongings
in see-through bags, and there are clearly
not enough chairs to support the burgeon-
ing population.
Even so, the energy up here is differ-
ent—harmonic, joyful. For the poolgoers at
the TWA Hotel, the airport is not a grim
means to an end, and the hotel is not a chic
destination that just happens to be next to
the airport. For them, the airport is the
point. The Caesar salad costs $16, and con-
versations are regularly extinguished by
the deafening sounds of jet engines, but
who cares? The spot overlooks Runway 4
Left–22 Right, one of the biggest at JFK,
and you can spend an entire afternoon
having your sunglasses blown off your face
by the mammoth aircraft taking off just a
few hundred feet away, if that’s your thing.
Beet-red white men in shorts cluster
near the edge of the deck, photographing
the massive jetliners. Many work in avia-
tion or are retired from the industry; at
least three of them get choked up talking
about their feelings for planes. They’ve
arrived in pairs or with their wives—at leastone of whom has a distinct fear of planes—
who are here to be supportive. Jack, who
worked for TWA for 12 years, starts crying
the minute I ask him what he’s doing at the
pool. “I’m having a funny reaction,” he says,
his voice wavering. “I’ve driven out of the
airport so many times, and this was dead
space. But when I saw this today, I teared
up. When I got off the elevator, I said, ‘JP-
jet fuel!’ I could smell it instantly.”
At the bar, I meet Gil and Dave, two “big
plane guys” from D.C. who used to work for
the FAA. “An airport is a portal to the rest of
the world,” says Gil, who becomes increas-
ingly poetic as he opens up. “A lot of the
airports now are like a big shopping mall,
but this is different. You’re not just going
somewhere to get to somewhere else.” Gil,
who headed here after one of his avgeek
friends described the place as “heaven,” tells
me he plane-spots regularly. “When I grad-
uated from college, I bought a hotel room at
Hartsfield-Jackson with my buddy, and we
took radios and ordered pizzas and sat there
for two days watching planes.”
Spencer, another former TWA employee
and “one of the first” avgeeks, also gets
teary talking about the “floodgates of mem-
ory” that the hotel has opened for him. He
says he rates the hotel a “nine out of five” for
its attention to period detail. He then
spends eight minutes explaining to me the
difference between a “pilot” and an “avia-
tor,” the primary factor being a sense of
artistry and an appreciation for the miracle
of flight. “I don’t know if I can tell you how
I know the difference,” he says. “I can just
tell by talking to someone.”
Now that I’ve been here for a few hours,
the guests have begun to accept me into
their fragile ecosystem. Several swim by to
surreptitiously express their discontent
with the pool’s size. Chris, who “works in
hotels,” points at the lounge chairs. “Did
you know there are only 14 of them?” he
whispers. “I counted for you.”
But the complaints aren’t enough to
deter those united by their fascination with
flight. Over the course of four hours, I hear
dozens of variations on the theme of “I can’t
believe this gigantic thing makes it into the
air.” Joanna tells me she’s visiting the hotel
with her son, who’s on the spectrum and is
only soothed by pools and planes. One man
wants to make sure I understand how
much each plane weighs. “I’m talking tons,”
he reiterates. “Think about it.”
Laurie, an older woman who’s been sit-
ting in the corner of the pool for several
hours, tells me she worked for Delta back
in the ’70s and now she’s here because “I’ve
always been fascinated with travel. I love
to make up stories: ‘Where are they going?
What will they do when they get there?’ ”