After a year of record traffic, the Port Authority is celebrating a high consumer survey ranking at LaGuardia, named Monday as one of the two best airports in the country for its size. The agency is working on similar improvements at Newark and Kennedy Airports.
“We’ve lived ten or twenty years of LaGuardia coming last in literally every single customer survey, so to have a customer survey that puts LaGuardia at the top of its class is a real ratification of our efforts,” said Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said in an interview.
Results were released Monday for the ASQ passenger survey, a program of the Airports Council International. The survey ranked LaGuardia and Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport as the top two North American airports with 25 million to 40 million passengers annually. About 4,200 LaGuardia passengers participated in the survey, conducted near the airport’s gates in 2023.
The improvements come as the three major New York airports combined had their busiest year ever in 2023, with total traffic of 144 million passengers, up 3% from 2019. Kennedy had 62.5 million passengers; Newark had 49.1 million and LaGuardia had 32.4 million. Compared with 2019 records, Kennedy was flat, Newark was up 6% and LaGuardia was up 4%.
While work at LaGuardia costing $8 billion is largely complete, more improvement is underway at the other two.
At Newark, a new Terminal A costing $2.7 billion opened in January 2023. “It’s gotten very positive reviews, as positive as LaGuardia,” Cotton said. “We’re coming out with a master plan for the rest of Newark shortly.”
At Kennedy, “What’s underway is two very large international terminals, a complete rebuild, driving $19 billion of investment,” he said. “It’s in full sway in terms of construction.”
Work on JFK Terminal One, costing $9.5 billion, began in September 2022. Work on Terminal Six, costing $4.2 billion, began in February 2023. Also, the $1.5 billion expansion of Terminal Four is near completion.
At JFK , the port authority is also overhauling roadways. “I feel it’s important to say that there is so much construction at JFK, we are urging anyone traveling to leave extra time and we apologize in advance for the inconvenience,” Cotton said.
Asked about the impact of recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the airport, he said, “We are making it clear we will not tolerate obstruction of airport traffic in any way. We have had a number of protests there. The primary purpose was to obstruct the airport. We have taken very aggressive enforcement action. None of efforts have had any significant impact”
LaGuardia’s onetime disfunction was most famously recognized by Joe Biden, then vice president, in a February 2014 speech in Philadelphia. “If I took you and blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think I must be in some third world country,” Biden said then. The Port Authority board voted in 2015 to start work on LaGuardia improvements.
At the time, Cotton worked as an advisor to former Governor Andrew Cuomo. “Cuomo launched these projects,” he said. “He was in office when the major construction was underway at LaGuardia.” The work at Kennedy began under Governor Kathy Hochul. “Governor Cuomo was a great champion of LaGuardia,” Cotton said. “Governor Hochul has been a huge champion of Kennedy.”
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