America’s Worst Airport

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 23, 8:30AM EDT

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America’s Worst Airport — © Roman Tiraspolsky / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

The U.S. public, which could barely travel in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, changed the airline industry radically. Carriers parked planes and cut the number of pilots, plane crews and support staff. These companies had to turn to the federal government for assistance. The total tab to taxpayers was $54 billion. Industry CEOs said the money saved the industry.
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Fast forward a few months, and carriers were open for business again. Intrepid travelers started to fill airline seats despite the pandemic. Airlines went from having too many planes and too many people to too few of each. Route systems had to be cut back. Flights were delayed or canceled because they were short on crews. However, even angry customers wanted to travel.
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A byproduct of the new jump in air travel is that airports were often poorly prepared for the demand. The level of consumer woes showed up in the new J.D. Power 2022 North America Airport Satisfaction Study. On a scale with a maximum grade of 1,000, satisfaction with airports dropped 25 points to 777. Michael Taylor, travel intelligence lead at J.D. Power commented: “The combination of pent-up demand for air travel, the nationwide labor shortage and steadily rising prices on everything from jet fuel to a bottle of water have created a scenario in which airports are extremely crowded and passengers are increasingly frustrated—and it is likely to continue through 2023.”
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The study, in its 17th year, covered 26,592 people surveyed between July 2021 and June 2022. Those included must have traveled from a U.S. or Canadian airport in the past 30 days. These were asked about both the airports from which they departed and those at which they arrived.

So that the study compared airports of similar sizes, results were divided into three categories: mega, large and medium-sized airports.
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Among mega airports, the one with the lowest score by far was Newark Liberty International with a score of 719. The average score among airports in this category was 769. Coming in with the best score in the category was the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 800.

Newark is one of three airports that serve the New York metro area, along with LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.