Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- A canopy over the departure curb of JetBlue's new terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport is about as welcoming as what you would find at a million-square- foot warehouse along the New Jersey Turnpike. You expect to see tractor-trailers backing into the doorways. The new building, called Terminal 5, opens to passengers today.

JetBlue Airways has invented a loyalty-inspiring bargain brand with smart customer service and meaningful design touches -- like bigger seats -- that actually improve today's degraded flying experience. A few of those touches still can be found within Terminal 5, but that savvy goes missing in the architecture of the building itself by New York-based Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the U.S.

As if intended to remind passengers of the genteel flying experience of yore, Terminal 5 wraps around Eero Saarinen's 1962 TWA Flight Center, stranding it on a plane of gravel. Beneath TWA's lusciously curving, white concrete roofs, graceful stairways swept passengers up to preflight martinis and views of the swirling crowds below.

Long obsolete, it's also a reminder of how changes in airline technologies and business models have ground to dust engineers' ideal layouts and architects' grandest aspirations.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which put up $663 million of the terminal's $743 million cost (JetBlue is covering the rest), reluctantly agreed to retain the Flight Center and is completing an asbestos cleanup. You'll be able to check in there someday, but other possible uses remain in play.

Bill Hooper, Gensler's project director, chose not to compete with the Flight Center's self-conscious acrobatics in his design of the expanded terminal. Yet he seems to have ceded any attempt whatever at expressiveness.

Massive Concrete Walls

The terminal hunkers behind massive retaining walls of precast concrete. The departure canopy tips up at one end in what is described as a gesture reminiscent of Saarinen's soaring shape. It is, instead, one of many architectural afterthoughts: an awkward transition between a high pedestrian bridge and the lower terminal building.

Passengers will scurry through Terminal 5's ticketing hall as quickly as possible, so JetBlue has traded the old architectural grandeur for a ceiling that slopes up to high windows diffusing welcome daylight through thick metal trusses. The central half of the hall is devoted to waiting lines for the 20-lane security area.

Shoeless Feet

JetBlue claims it's the largest checkpoint in the country, and some nice details reduce the usual stockyard anxiety. Frequent travelers can select lines that bypass those with children or otherwise need to move more slowly. Rubber flooring feels more comfortable under shoeless feet. A long bench beyond the X-ray scanners allows disheveled passengers to regroup after a pat-down.

The security area opens to a 55,000-square-foot ``marketplace.'' Tightly packed masses of tables serving 47 stores, restaurants and fast-food outlets herd 40,000 or more daily passengers through this awkwardly laid-out triangle to three concourses, two of which are tucked obscurely in far corners.

The airline brought in David Rockwell, the well-known designer of restaurants and Broadway shows, to liven up the clumsy trusses supporting a tipped-up ceiling of corrugated metal. He suspended a 40-foot-diameter ring hosting video graphics using spindly metal wires that JetBlue, in a moment of PR desperation, has compared to Brooklyn Bridge cables.

Clever Stores

The airline redeems itself somewhat with clever stores -- among them a Ron Jon Surf Shop and Muji to Go, the low-priced Japanese retailer of minimalist clothing and pencil holders.

Gensler has inelegantly though effectively provided high windows to light the concourses, a spirit-lifter, especially for delayed passengers.

The architect devoted well-deserved attention to the waiting areas by providing a higher-than-average seating count. (The chairs are good-looking and comfortable but nap-resistant.) A high-stooled bar offers outlets to charge electronics and touch screens to order food.

JetBlue says it can deliver luggage to the claim area nine minutes after arrival. Since a one-hour wait for bags at JFK is not unusual, this counts as some kind of miracle.

Most of what's best about the terminal is service-driven. If JetBlue can keep that up, few will worry that this monument to human throughput (20 million passengers annually) resigns itself to the increasingly grueling experience of flying rather than enlivening it.

(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: James S. Russell in New York at jamesrussell@earthlink.net.

Last Updated: October 22, 2008 00:01 EDT