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Airports

Here Are North America’s Worst (and Best) Airports of 2016

By
Kevin Lui
Kevin Lui
By
Kevin Lui
Kevin Lui
December 16, 2016, 3:46 AM ET
US-WEATHER-STORM-TRANSPORT
A view of LaGuardia Airport, North America's worst.Mehdi Taamallah /AFP/Getty Images

New York may be a world leader in many things, but airports just isn’t one of them.

In fact, of its three airports, two of them were named North America’s worst in this year’s J.D. Power survey on airport user satisfaction.

Once again, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty have, in that order, finished first in the race to the bottom—scoring just 649 and 669 out of 1,000 points respectively—as they had in a separate study released back in November. The collective judgment by over 36,000 travelers also condemned Philadelphia, Chicago-O’Hare and Boston-Logan to the bottom five, in that order.

LaGuardia has been notorious for everything from crumbling infrastructure and epic delays to overcrowded terminal buildings. The airport’s bad rep even briefly featured in this year’s presidential campaign.

“Those current terminals handle more than 13 million travelers a year,” explained Michael Taylor, who directed this survey for J.D. Power, “they were designed to handle only 8 million travelers.”

Plans to rebuild LGA are now underway.

Looking on the bright side, travelers found Portland, Ore., Tampa and Las Vegas to have the best large airports on the continent, while Indianapolis, Buffalo, N.Y. and Fort Myers, Fla. nabbed the top three in the medium airport category. Vancouver, listed as a medium airport, was found to be Canada’s best, edging out Toronto-Pearson, Montreal-Trudeau and Calgary.

For more on LaGuardia airport, see Fortune’s video

On average, the travelers taking part in the J.D. Power survey found their experience through medium-sized airports better—760 points out of 1,000 to 724 for large airports. As Taylor explained to Bloomberg, using middle-sized airports, which tend to be less congested, is actually often easier.

About the Author
By Kevin Lui
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