JFK airport airline terminals: every carrier, A to Z

The terminal in the middle column is the one your airline checks you in at, which is the terminal you travel to. It comes from the Port Authority's own airline directory, read on September 7, 2026. The right-hand column is a different kind of fact: a building the airline has publicly signed for and is not using yet, taken from the two terminal developers' own airline partner lists. Do not act on the right-hand column, and do not ignore it either, because it tells you which answers have a short shelf life.

Three rows need more than a cell. JetBlue is the only carrier the directory lists against two terminals: it checks everyone in at Terminal 5, and its international arrivals land at Terminal 5 between 5:00 AM and 10:30 PM and at Terminal 4 between 10:30 PM and 5:00 AM. JetBlue is also signed to move to Terminal 6, which will change its gates and not its check-in terminal. Viva Aerobus appears in the directory as the bare code VB, with no trading name at all; the New Terminal One's own April 2026 partnership announcement is what identifies it. And SATA International is the name the directory uses for the airline that trades as Azores Airlines, so a search for the brand finds nothing in the official list.

"None published" in the last column means exactly that: no move has been announced by the airline or named on either developer's partner list. It does not mean the airline is staying. Four Terminal 1 carriers sit in that gap, Asiana Airlines, Cayman Airways, ITA Airways and TAP Portugal, in a building with a closing date, which is a real unanswered question rather than an omission here.

JFK has six terminals, numbered 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and five of them have check-in airlines. The gaps in the numbering are old ones: Terminal 3 was demolished in 2013 and Terminal 2 in 2023, and the New Terminal One is going up on their sites.

Two things in that table surprise people. Terminal 1 has the most airlines and Terminal 4 is the biggest building, at 36 gates across 1.5 million square feet on the Port Authority's own figures, so carrier count is not a proxy for size: Terminal 1 packs 26 carriers into a compact building where every gate is 1 to 5 minutes from security. And Terminal 6 has signed 16 airlines and taken none of them yet, which travel sites keep reporting the other way round: several list carriers as having moved in, and the directory places every one of them elsewhere. The terminal overview covers all six in the terminal guide.

Three carriers account for most of the searching, and each has its own page here because each has a wrinkle the table cannot hold.

Delta Air Lines is at Terminal 4, where check-in, security, gates and baggage claim all sit, and where 20 carriers in total check in. The wrinkle is that Delta's own partners are split: Aeromexico, KLM, LATAM, Virgin Atlantic and WestJet are at Terminal 4 with it, while Air France, China Eastern and Korean Air are at Terminal 1, and Delta says collecting and re-checking your bags on a Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 transfer can take up to an hour on its own. The Delta at JFK guide covers the curb zones, the check-in cut-offs and that connection.

JetBlue Airways checks in at Terminal 5, and the confusion is Terminal 6: JetBlue is a member of the consortium building it, some JetBlue departures already use its gates, and no JetBlue passenger checks in there. The JetBlue at JFK guide covers the split arrivals, the BlueHouse lounge and what the Terminal 6 gates mean for your departure.

American Airlines is at Terminal 8, which it runs, shared with British Airways since 2022 and with 12 more carriers, most of them oneworld partners. The American at JFK guide covers the counter hours, the four lounges and the Flagship check-in.

This is the mistake the airport itself warns about, and it puts it plainly with its own worked example: check the terminal of the operating carrier, not just the booking airline, so a ticket bought from Finnair and flown by American Airlines means going to American's terminal. A codeshare ticket carries the selling airline's flight number and the operating airline's aircraft, crew and check-in desk, and the desk is what you need.

Where to find the operating carrier: it is on your booking confirmation, usually in small type reading "operated by", and it is on your boarding pass once you check in. Alliance partners are the common case at JFK, because the alliances are split across buildings here. Terminal 8 holds the oneworld group around American Airlines and British Airways. Terminal 4 holds Delta and five of its partners, with three more a terminal away at Terminal 1. And the Lufthansa group checks in at Terminal 1 while Air Canada and ANA, which will share Terminal 6 with them eventually, are at Terminal 7 today.

One more version of the same trap: the terminal you land at is not always the terminal you left from. JetBlue's late-night international arrivals are the documented case, landing at Terminal 4 after 10:30 PM while every JetBlue departure checks in at Terminal 5. If someone is collecting you, tell them the arrival terminal rather than the airline's usual one.

39 of the 73 airlines at JFK have committed to a terminal they are not using yet, and none of those moves has happened. Check your boarding pass close to travel if you are flying with one of them.

16 have signed for Terminal 6, and the developer announces each one in a dated release of its own: Aer Lingus, Air Canada, ANA - All Nippon Airways, Austrian Airlines, Avianca, Brussels Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Condor, Frontier Airlines, Icelandair, JetBlue, Kuwait Airlines, Lufthansa, Norse Atlantic Airways, SWISS, TAP Portugal. Eight of them are at Terminal 7 today, which is the building Terminal 6 replaces, so that is the migration to watch. The four Lufthansa group carriers are the counter-intuitive part: they check in at Terminal 1 today and are moving across the airport to the north side, not into the New Terminal One being built on their current site.

23 have signed for the New Terminal One, the $9.5 billion replacement rising on the Terminal 1, 2 and 3 sites, including Air France, KLM, Korean Air, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, Etihad, EVA Air and SAS. Most of them are at Terminal 1 already, but five are not: Qatar Airways is at Terminal 8 today, Etihad, KLM and China Airlines at Terminal 4, and Ethiopian Airlines at Terminal 7, so for those five it is a genuine change of building rather than a change of name.

Nobody publishes a date you can plan around. Both developers name 2026 in general terms, Terminal 6 for its first gates and the New Terminal One for its opening, and a couple of releases put a single carrier's move in that year. Nothing more precise than a year exists for any of it, and the Port Authority's own project page puts the New Terminal One's full completion in 2030 while naming no phase-one date at all. The honest position is that the middle column of the table above is right today and the right-hand column will start overtaking it without warning.

The directory covers carriers with a check-in operation at JFK, so a few real situations fall outside it. A charter or a seasonal carrier may not appear at all. A regional flight is often operated by a partner under a mainline brand, in which case the mainline carrier's terminal is the answer. And a carrier that only lands here, without checking passengers in, has no row to appear in.

What to do, in order. Read the "operated by" line on your booking and look that carrier up in the table. If it is not there, check your boarding pass, which carries the terminal for the flight you are actually on. Then check your airline's app, which updates on the day. One rule covers exactly this case, and it is worth repeating: always confirm with your airline before traveling, because terminal assignments and schedules may vary.

If you get it wrong and end up in the wrong building, it is recoverable and it is not fast. The AirTrain is free between terminals and takes under 10 minutes terminal to terminal, with trains every 5 to 15 minutes, and then you clear security again at the other end. The terminal transfer guide covers what that really costs in time.

• Look up the operating carrier, not the ticket seller. It is the wrong-terminal mistake the airport writes its own FAQ about, using a Finnair ticket flown by American Airlines as the example. The operating carrier is in the small type on your confirmation.
• Nobody checks in at Terminal 6 yet. If a booking, a blog or an aggregator sends you to Terminal 6, go to the terminal your airline actually checks in at. For JetBlue that is Terminal 5, even when the gate turns out to be in Terminal 6.
• Terminal 1 and Terminal 7 answers decay fastest. One is closing and the other is being demolished, and between them they hold 36 of the 73 carriers. If you are flying from either, check within a few days of travel rather than at booking.
• Arriving is a separate question from departing. Immigration, customs and the arrivals hall can sit in a different building from your airline's check-in desk, as JetBlue's late-night international arrivals show. Give a meeting driver the arrival terminal.