Considering that New York is one of the biggest 24hour cities in the world I have been disspaointed twice by the same airport.
Destination wise, the airport is really good, there are 9 seperate terminals that make up JFK several of which are specifically for one or two airlines with the rest distributed around the other terminals. The airport itself is about 1 hour from Manhatten or about 25 miles and is in the borough of Queens.
Getting a cab from the airport is easy once you find the taxi rank, and only use yellow cabs. There is a standard fee of $35 from the airport to Mahatten, but on the way back to the airport you must pay for time spent in traffic.
There are a number of interesting and useful facilities offered by the airport and companies making money from newly landed tourists. There are cab ranks at each and every terminal, but due to the ammount of passangers traveling through each terminal and the cab shortage in New York means that there are huge queues. Try the buses, you can buy the tickets there and they either go to port authority or you can swiitch buses and go most hotels. There are very few shops in the airport although for those waiting to pick you up the shops have great views of the runways. There is one duty free shop per terminal, and each is small and pokey. The authorities recomend buying cigarettes there as everything else is cheaper in the city. The toilets are clean, and there are alot of stairs, although a few lifts, it can be a long walk to the gate!
However, getting to New York requires getting into the countriy which is harder than it seems. I would recomend that you check all your forms before you get in the queue as immigration men arent that nice and answer all the questions they ask perfectly. This september I waited for over an hour at immigration, only to have a really hard time getting into the country and being nearly reduced to tears by the man there. After an hours wait one would have thought it would be easy to find ones luggage, however that too was tough. Eventually we found ours in a pile at the side of the carosel.
When getting out of USA it was alot easier. There is very little to do at the airport, and with the exception of a McDonalds and a few seats there was little there. I also had trouble getting through the gates, having thought we were going straight to the gates I left it late only to have to queue for 10 minutes, to show my passport, go through the scanner and then take off my shoes! After that we were checked again at the gate and the lady made me drink some of my water and took peoples zippo lighters off them and throw them away, I was quite shocked.
The best part of JFK was simply to get on my 7 hour flight, which was full of babies and young children and get back to a film that wasn't in English!
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