On Wednesday, May 13, hundreds of union carpenters, contractors and members of other trades in yellow vests and hard hats gathered beneath a giant American flag suspended inside JFK Airport’s New Terminal One—a cavernous space defined by towering glass walls, perforated acoustic ceilings, and giant computer-printed white “tree columns” that stretch through three floors of open atriums into the terminal’s soaring departure hall.

The event recognized building trades union members who have worked on the New Terminal One—the centerpiece of the Port Authority’s sweeping redevelopment of JFK Airport—bringing  together labor leaders, contractors, carpenters, and project executives.

Part of a broader $19 billion overhaul of the airport, the new terminal will eventually span roughly 2.6 million square feet with 23 international gates and more than 300,000 square feet of retail, dining, and lounge space, replacing the existing Terminal 1 and expanding across the former Terminal 2 site. 

“This is going to be one of the top five best-in-class airport terminals globally,” said Gary LaBarbera, President of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.

AECOM Tishman is serving as the design-builder for the project, with Gensler and AECOM as architects/engineers. The terminal has become a showcase for both large-scale union construction and increasingly ambitious airport design.

Among the project’s most striking features are the angled perforated ceiling panels and suspended acoustic baffles designed to absorb sound and reduce echo throughout the massive terminal. In a typical airport, hard surfaces amplify noise, making gate announcements difficult to hear and turning crowded concourses into echo chambers. Here, project leaders said, the goal is a calmer and more intelligible passenger experience, even during peak travel periods.

“The design is actually to remove the echo,” said Michael White, Council Representative for the New York City and Vicinity District Council of Carpenters. “They took everything into account here to make this state-of-the-art terminal of the future.”

White pointed to the sheer scale and diversity of the union carpenters and contractors working across the sprawling site, where tradespeople from across the region have spent years building out the terminal’s enormous footprint.

Airports often serve as a city’s front door—and for many travelers arriving from around the world, this terminal will help shape those first impressions.

“For many of them, it will be their first time entering New York. It will be their first impression of New York,” said Palmina Whelan, Capital Program Director for The New Terminal One at JFK.

Eric Reid, COO, New York Region, AECOM Tishman, said the project forced the company to think creatively about how to build at such an enormous horizontal scale. Unlike the vertical high-rises the firm is best known for building, the terminal stretches across more than two million square feet.

“We have to reorient ourselves to think differently about manpower, logistics and sequencing across two million square feet horizontally instead of contained vertically,” Reid said.

Reid described the terminal’s enormous multi-story interior spaces as one of the project’s defining construction challenges—and also one of the reasons the building already feels so striking.

“When you walk in, your eyes go up,” he said. “It’s awe-inspiring—almost like when you walk into a cathedral.”

Labor leaders at the event emphasized the scale of the undertaking, with more than 10 million labor hours already worked on site and a peak workforce of roughly 6,000 tradespeople.

White said the project demonstrates the scale of work union carpenters and contractors are capable of handling together.

“There’s nobody else on the planet that could do a job the scope of this project except union labor,” he said.

Dan A. Bianco, Jr., LIUNA Vice President and New England Regional Manager, called the terminal “a defining project” for both New York and the labor movement.

“One day you’re going to fly out of this terminal,” Bianco told workers. “You’re going to look at your kids, your grandkids, and say: ‘I built that.’”