The Best And Worst Airports In America — Why LaGuardia Is The Most Overrated

An airport is not supposed to be a mall with gates. If you’re at the airport, you’re trying to get somewhere – quickly – you are flying, not taking a bus. So a great airport is one that gets you to it, through it, and out of it as fast and efficiently as possible.

• how easy is it to reach the airport from where people actually are? An airport close to downtown with direct rail access is great. An airport that requires a long drive, an expensive transfer, or a shuttle to reach the terminal is not so good.

• How much of a schlepp is the airport once you arrive? Is security by the entrance with gates close after screening, or does the airport force long walks, trains to remote concourses, bus gates, and layouts mean you’re traversing the airport for as much time as you’re flying?

• How well does the operation run? Bureau of Transportation Statistics data is useful, though not only. On-time performance and cancellations are part of the picture, but that is also a function of weather and which airlines have a significant presence there. It’s also runway and taxiway configuration, too.

Aiport access, passenger throughput, and operational reliability are much more important than pretty terminal. However, there are some minimum standards. Airports should be clean; offer sufficiently staffed food and sundries options for travelers staying a variety of lengths of time; have decent lounge and shower facilities if international connecting gateways; and offer enough space around gates with seating, power ports, and wifi. But these are secondary to getting you in and out quickly.

The Best Airports in America

With this criteria in mind, these are the actual best airports in the United States.

• Washington National Airport is close to downtown, with metro connected directly to the airport. The airspace and operating environment can be constrained, both in terms of congestion and allowable routes. River visual approach is very cool – just look out the window – but any deviation can scramble fighter jets or at a minimum cause a diversion. You’ve got the White House and Capitol immediately adjacent.

  This airport is easy to get to, through and out of. And it happens to have some great lounges, even – Capital One’s Landing is arguably the best lounge food in the United States. There’s a Centurion lounge, the nicest American Airlines Admirals Club on the E concourse (the first that was done in their new aesthetic) and there are Delta and United clubs. The United Club is actually the airport’s old formal dining room, a very cool (albeit small) space that could use a refresh.

  

  

  

• San Francisco is relatively close-in, and BART goes directly to the airport (ignore or avoid the homeless). The drawback is the runway layout: in poor visibility, arrival rates fall sharply because the parallel runways are too close together for normal simultaneous operations. Now, the FAA is cutting operations by forbidding simultaneous landings across their runways. That’s going to make the airport a lot less convenient, more congested and more delayed.

  

  

  

  Arguably, the attached Grand Hyatt San Francisco Airport is the best airport hotel in the United States.

• San Diego remains one of the country’s most useful airports because it is close in and simple. It doesn’t have direct rail, but compact footprint makes it easy to get around.

• Portland has the MAX Red Line going straight to the terminal and runs every 15 minutes or better most of the day. It’s not super far from downtown. And it also happens to have good maps and signage and a sense of place, too. But that doesn’t trade off with accessibility. So getting to it and through it are easy.

  

Also good are Chicago Midway, Houston Hobby and maybe surprisingly Boston which has real public transit access, including the Silver Line serving terminals and a workable Blue Line connection. It’s home to the first U.S. Chase lounge and is getting a Centurion and JetBlue lounge. And it’s worth giving credit to Minneapolis and Detroit also.

Boston Logan

Chicago Midway

The Worst Airports In America

Here are my 8 picks, all are worse than Atlanta!

• Denver is the clearest case for worst in the country. It is far from where people are. The ride from downtown is long. Most passengers are dependent on the train to the concourses and those keep breaking down. The airport has repeatedly struggled with security problems. It is a bad local airport even before you get to weather or airline issues.

  

  Denver’s airport has been a disaster for the past 30 years – since the time leading up to its opening. Case studies in failure have been written about its baggage handling system.

  

  

  The airport is terrible to get to and from, and to get out to its gates and back, for local passengers. In fairness, if you’re only using it as a connecting airport the experience isn’t nearly so bad. And the lounges, though crowded, are good! You have both Capital One and Centurion lounges and these are the best collection of United lounges, too.

• Newark is a mess both structurally and operationally. Access has always been challenging. The existing AirTrain is old and being replaced, but the replacement is years away.

  

• New York JFK is fragmented and bad at the basic job of being an airport. The AirTrain helps only in the sense that it exists. Terminals are disconnected. It’s a terrible airport to get to. It’s a terrible airport to connect between terminals at. They keep forcing passengers to bus to take transit to get an Uber.

  

  And several terminals are dilapidated. Lots of lounge options in terminal 4 to wait out your inevitable delays, though. Tough luck if you’re flying domestically on not-Delta, though.

  

  

  

• Miami combines long distances with a worn-down feel. Concourse D is notoriously long, and Miami still too often feels like an airport that treats walking a mile to your gate as normal. They’re just taunting us with their signage that MIA stands for ‘Modernization In Action’.

  

  

• LAX has improved only enough to stop being the automatic answer. The Los Angeles Metro Transit Center is open, but passengers still need a shuttle connection to the terminals until the people mover opens and that was supposed to happen three years ago. The airport is unpleasant to get to and get out of. Traffic is terrible, circulation is terrible, and standard rideshare was moved off-airport to the LAX-it lot which most passengers take a slow bus to which first stops at all terminals.

  

  

  

• Charlotte deserves to be in the bottom tier because the place has outgrown itself. It’s a medium-sized airport forced to cosplay as a major hub. The ceilings are low and corridors packed solid body to body. There’s no room at the gate.

  

  

  And it’s a terrible walk from American’s E regional concourses to the B and C gates. E has nothing redeeming about it. Planes also too often get trapped in the alleyways so that published short connections are rarely possible. The Admirals Clubs are packed solid and bottom-tier. Charlotte has a nice Delta Sky Club, though. And rocking chairs, I guess.

  

• Washington Dulles is far from the city and once you make it there you’re nowhere near your gates. The airport train dumps you off nowhere near United gates, and it’s a United hub. They built the train stop where a new terminal is supposed to be, but it’s been over 15 years – and the temporary midfield concourse has been in service for 45.

  

  

  

• Philadelphia also known as Filthadelphia. The walks are terrible. The place is run down. It does have a good Chase lounge (and the worst American Express one).

  

  

Overrated And Underrated

There are airports that aren’t among the worst or the best but where public perception of them just doesn’t match their actual quality or utility. I think the best example of this is New York LaGuardia, surely the most overrated airport in the country, because how of decrepit the buildings used to be and because of… a water feature?

This should not be controversial, even though it will be.

The rebuilt LaGuardia is far prettier than the old one. It is a nicer place to wait. That is not the same thing as being a better airport. The renovation did not solve the core problem: there is still no direct rail service into the terminal complex. You are still depending on buses. The airport is still constrained operationally. And the new terminals often require longer walks than the ugly but more compact old version.

At LaGuardia, much of the investment went into making the airport feel more upscale while leaving the underlying transportation problems unsolved. It went from a dump that was still easy to get through, with security by the entrances and gates right behind those checkpoints, to a suburban shopping mall with much longer walks.

To be sure, the old Central Terminal was ugly and leaking.

Yet for all the renovation, we didn’t get the airport any better connected to the city, and we didn’t get an additional runway. Instead, we traded the future stream of retail income for more attractive buildings. I will die on the hill that this was the wrong way to prioritize limited resources. Yet the airport is now hailed as a marvel.

Perhaps the most underrated airport in America is Chicago Midway. Also consider Houston Hobby.

People underrate Midway because they compare it to O’Hare’s flight options rather than to the actual job of an airport. The rail connection is direct. The airport is compact. You do not spend your trip crossing a zip code to reach your gate.