Q My wife and I recently flew JetBlue to JFK. Around 1am, we reached the baggage-claim area and were besieged by car-service drivers. Their aggressiveness was unnerving; one guy got right in my face! How is this legal? I thought car-service “personnel” couldn’t approach people in airports. Yet there had to be 20 or 30 guys in the area. What’s up with that?—A. Roberts, NYC

A You’re right. It’s illegal for car services to hustle in the airport. But some of the cars you see may be there legitimately. TLC-licensed sedans and “community car services” are allowed to make prearranged pickups; these are the guys you see holding name signs or hanging out on the curb. And yellow cabs must be dispatched from a central holding area that maintains contact with airport personnel. Hustlers, meanwhile, are either unlicensed or are TLC-licensed cars that just did a drop-off and want to make a buck on the way back to the city. The Port Authority police have a “hack squad” of undercover officers that roam the airport looking for solicitors, but it’s possible they weren’t in your terminal at 1am. “We have a lot of police working around the clock,” says Port Authority spokesperson Pasquale DiFulco. “But they can’t be everywhere at all times.” For Jose Calcano, a driver and dispatcher for Riverside Car-Limo Service, illegal pickups aren’t worth the risk: “We’d get a summons!” he says.

—Nicole Tourtelot

See previous What’s up with that?