Inside JFK T1's resilience strategy

In early 2023, a three-day power outage brought JFK Terminal One to a standstill. Staff were handwriting boarding passes, manually assigning seats, and calling airline headquarters for passenger manifests.

“We were flying blind,” says Steve Rowland, Executive Director of JFK T1.

However, the outage also triggered a fundamental rethink.

JFK Terminal One is operating in the middle of one of the largest airport redevelopment programs in the country—part of a $16 billion transformation across JFK, including two major new terminal projects and a complete rebuild of the Central Terminal Area. For terminal operators like JFK T1, that means working through constant construction—and the system impacts that come with it. As Rowland makes clear, resilience isn’t just about emergency response. It’s about keeping operations moving through disruption, planned or not.

We sat down with Steve to discuss what they learned from the outage and why Ink DRS is now part of the terminal’s operational playbook.

What did the 2023 outage reveal about the terminal’s readiness?

We had a three-day power outage, and it exposed a lot. Common-use check-in went down. Bag systems were down. Printers, communications—everything. We had no redundancy. Boarding passes were handwritten. We were calling HQs to get manifests. It just wasn’t sustainable.

We realised we had no way to recover quickly, and that’s not acceptable for an international gateway like JFK.

As a common-use terminal, how does that change the challenge?

The thing about Terminal One is that we're fully international and shared across more than 30 airlines. So when something breaks, it’s not just one airline that’s affected—it’s everyone. If the systems go down, the whole terminal stops. And you can’t depend on each airline to bring its own solution.

And shared systems—CUTE, CUSS, flight information—are all cloud-based. That’s great when it works. But when something fails, you’re back to pen and paper. That’s slow, it’s manual, and it’s expensive. We end up printing QR-coded bag tags that can’t be read by the system, defaulting to generic paper processes, and it throws off your whole flow.

Delays at check-in can cause late departures, and that can cascade into cancellations if we run into crew duty limits. It also disrupts security and bag screening. It all connects.

That’s when we started thinking: We need a terminal-owned fallback—something centralised, mobile, and reliable.

What were you looking for in a solution?

It had to be mobile. That was non-negotiable. We didn’t want to build another desk-based solution. If the counters go down, you need to be able to run check-in from the gate, from the curb, from another Terminal, from anywhere.

We also wanted something we could control. A terminal-level tool, not something managed by a single airline. It had to work with multiple carriers, multiple rules, different manifests. Ink gave us that.

Why was Ink DRS the right fit?

It’s clean. It’s mobile. It doesn’t rely on the terminal’s infrastructure. We can hand a phone and a printer to an agent, and they’re up and running. You don’t need Wi-Fi. You don’t need power. You don’t even need a desk. That flexibility was critical.

The system handles different airline configs, seat maps, business rules—all of that. That’s what makes it scale across the terminal.

How did deployment and onboarding go?

Really well. We’ve onboarded six airlines already [by June 2025]—TAP Portugal, EVA, Air Serbia, Air China, Neos, and Air New Zealand. We trained their staff in one session. In most cases, they were ready to go that same day.

We’ve deployed over 70 mobile kits across the terminal—phones, printers, scanners. They’re available to any airline if a system fails. It’s fast to deploy and easy to use. That’s what we wanted.

Do you plan to use Ink DRS only for outages, or do you see other value?

That’s the interesting part—it’s not just a backup anymore. It’s an operational tool.

We’re a smaller terminal, and we’ve grown—more aircraft, passengers, and airline activity. But the check-in lobby is undersized. I’d love to give every airline 15 counters, but I can only give them eight. That creates congestion.

With the DRS system, an airline can walk the line. Agents can check people in before they reach the counter. That gets them through security faster and supports on-time departures. And that’s really the business we’re in—on-time performance.

We’re thinking about how to bake it into the daily operation—not just keep it on the shelf for emergencies.

Where does this fit in the bigger picture of JFK T1’s transformation?

While JFK is undergoing redevelopment, we’re surrounded by it: heavy construction, changing infrastructure, and power interruptions. Even without a system outage, we see impacts—power drops, connectivity issues, things that can bring operations to a halt. That’s why we needed a solution that gives us continuity.

Ink DRS fits that. It gives us control. We can keep moving passengers even while work is happening around us. It’s about resilience, yes, but also about agility.

What does the project's success look like?

We want every airline trained. Every agent equipped. We want the confidence that if something breaks—whether it’s a power outage or a system hiccup—we can keep moving.

If the power supply goes out again, we’re not shutting down. We’re still processing passengers. That’s where we need to be.