A sinkhole was found around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning near one of the runways at New York LaGuardia. It was spotted during the airport’s daily morning airfield inspection. It was near the taxiway at the edge of Runway 4/22, and once spotted that runway was closed.
At approximately 11 a.m., the Port Authority was conducting its daily morning inspection of LaGuardia’s airfield when crews identified a sinkhole near Runway 4/22. The runway was immediately shut down, and emergency construction and engineering crews are onsite to determine the…
— LaGuardia Airport (@LGAairport) May 20, 2026
That meant operations had to be shifted to the airport’s only other runway, reducting capacity for takeoffs and landings.
- New York LaGuardia has runway 4/22 which is 7,002 feet. This is the one that’s effected by the sinkhole. It’s also the runway that was involved in the Air Canada Jazz fire truck crash, although the incidents do not appear related.
- LaGuardia’s other runway is 13/31, another 7,002 foot strip. That’s the one all traffic has to use while 4/22 is re-opened.
No cause for the sinkhole has been announced. The airport sits on reclaimed bayfront land, and runways are on filled coastal land which can be vulnerable to settlement, drainage failures, and subsurface erosion. Emergency crews were dispatched, including an excavator and dump truck, as workers marked-off the sinkhole.
As of this writing, about 20% of the days’ flights were cancelled, with more cancellations than any other airport in the world for Wednesday, and 28% of flights were delayed. That’s not solely because of runway capacity. There’s also a weather delay program in place at the airport.
It’s unclear whether the runway will be able to re-open on Thursday. Initial suggests were the runway could re-open Thursday at 6 a.m. but the closure seems reasonably likely to be extended.
One of my friends said he reported it on Waze
:lmao: