False alarm, true terror: The panic at JFK Airport on Sunday night raises urgent questions about readiness

Thank heavens the reports flooding into 911 on Sunday night of gunshots at JFK Airport were only that.

Thank heavens too that more than 250 police from the Port Authority, which runs the airport, and the NYPD responded with speed and courage to the credible possibility of an active shooter.

Still, the panicked chaos that swept through two terminals at the airport demand a top to bottom review — led by the NYPD — of how police and Port Authority leaders performed in an event that became a live-action drill.

For an extended period, thousands of travelers stampeded and hunkered down, terrified for their lives. Some fled onto the tarmac. Some were crushed in dead-end hallways. Family members lost touch with one another in the madness.

Civilian security guards and TSA agents alike abandoned their posts to run for their lives.

Neither the Port Authority, which owns the airports and answers to Gov. Cuomo on the New York side of the Hudson, nor the NYPD, which backs up PA cops, issued information that might have helped calm fears.

Under Commissioner Bill Bratton, the NYPD has trained scores of officers in how to confront active shooter events, such as those that happened in Dallas and Orlando. They have been described as able to handle numerous simultaneous attacks.

The JFK false alarm has raised urgent questions about readiness, particularly after terror attacks on airports in Turkey and Brussels.

Someone in Terminal 8 reported shots at 9:33 p.m., perhaps mistaking raucous applause after Usain Bolt’s gold-medal 100-meter Olympic finish for gunfire.

Within minutes, additional calls flooded 911 as travelers spread misinformation via social media using their cell phones. Eventually, 911 logged more than 100 calls with the panic spreading from Terminal 8 to Terminal 1.

Some 170 NYPD officers joined 80 PA cops to hunt down presumed perpetrators.

Video taken by a crouched traveler shows scores of people huddling behind chairs and poles as six police responders make their way down a concourse, shouting “Get down on the ground!”

Three carry rifles at the ready and three are armed only with service pistols. Their bravery is remarkable.

Throughout, though, cops and travelers alike lacked reliable information. While the facts are hard to assemble in a fluid, dangerous situation, social media posts by travelers fueled the terror.

Not until nearly two hours after the nightmare began did the Port Authority so much as tweet instructions or assurances to bring order to the mob.

Speaking with the Daily News Editorial Board, Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye described the police response as “quick and overwhelmingly effective.” Much later in the day, he offered in an email that the PA “did not meet today’s customer expectations,” seeming to describe, say, a rash of lost luggage.

Clearly, the hunt for a possible killer and crowd control were inextricably intertwined at the airport. As well as the responders may have accomplished the first, their leaders failed to adequately include the latter in their emergency planning.

Improvement must happen immediately.