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Hotel Review: TWA Hotel at JFK Airport in New York City

Hotel Review: TWA Hotel at JFK Airport in New York City

Travel back in time to 1962 at the TWA Hotel, which is the only on-airport hotel at New York's JFK International Airport.

Hotel Overview

The TWA Hotel is connected to JFK's Terminal 5 via iconic flight tubes and is also the only on-airport Air Train accessible hotel at JFK.  

The location makes it perfect for when you need to relax or sleep when dealing with long layovers, night flights, and early morning flights.  You can book a regular hotel stay here or a DayTripper stay for 4 or more hours between 6AM to 8PM.

And if you're not interested in making a reservation, you can still stop by and walk around to take in the sights or grab a quick drink at one of the on-site restaurants. 

Hotel highlights here include:

  • Nostalgia and charm of what the hotel would have looked like in 1962 
  • 512 ultra-quiet guest rooms with great views of JFK’s runways and the iconic TWA Flight Center

  • The Paris Cafe and The Sunken Lounge 
  • A rooftop infinity pool and observation deck with runway views
  • A Lockheed Constellation "Connie" L-1649A transformed into a cocktail lounge



  • Museum exhibits on TWA, the Jet Age and the midcentury modern design movement

Overall Impression

We booked a Day Tripper stay at the TWA Hotel after spending 5 nights in Manhattan.  Since we had a late night flight from New York City to Paris that departed at 11:00 PM that night, we decided a short stay to rest and relax before our flight made sense for us since we had to check out of our room at the Renaissance Times Square Hotel by 4:00 PM that day.  

For more on our New York family itinerary, be sure to check out the following blog post on where we stayed, what we did and where we ate in New York City:




Other options we entertained including just hanging out at the airport, but with two young kids in tow, it just didn't make sense to do that.  Not only is the location of the TWA Hotel convenient, but the overall nostalgia and charm makes for a fun visit.  

Once we got settled in our room, we headed down to grab dinner at The Paris Cafe by Jean-Georges and then walked around the hotel, before making a quick stop at the Connie Cocktail Lounge.


After dinner and taking in the sights of the hotel, we headed back to our room for a quick rest before departing for our flight check around 8:30 PM, which was as easy as walking to the Air Train platform in Terminal 5 and making our way to Terminal 2 for our flight.