It's official: California has the best airports, and New York and New Jersey have the worst. Boom!
Well, that’s mostly true, as determined by the Wall Street Journal, but we have to narrow the focus a little: San Francisco and Sacramento have the best large and mid-sized airports, respectively, while over on the east coast, Newark and LaGuardia are the corresponding culprits of bad airporting.
The Journal surveyed the 50 busiest airports in the US with 19 criteria within three major categories (reliability, value and convenience) to come up with its rankings. San Francisco got high points for limiting overhead announcements (which really are the bane of one’s mental existence: we promise, we’re not going to let strangers leave their luggage with us), yoga rooms and artwork to pass the time, touchless water bottle filling stations to avoid both germs and single-use plastics, and multiple security checkpoints to massage passenger flow. Best of all? Its flights run on time more than 80 percent of the time, in part thanks to its $10 million investment in new GPS landing technology to help pilots when the weather and visibility are poor.
In second place for large-sized airports was Atlanta, just two points behind San Francisco, and in third place was Minneapolis, two points behind Atlanta. The only other California airport in this category, Los Angeles, came in at #6.
Sacramento’s good weather, runway space and customer service brought it to the top of the mid-sized airports list. Its overall score of 70 was significantly higher than San Francisco’s 61 in the other category. In second place was San Diego with a score of 67, and in third, was San Jose with 66. That means California swept the top three in this smaller airport category. Two other California cities, Santa Ana and Oakland, were #9 (61 points, just like San Francisco) and #10 (60 points), respectively.
On the other end of the spectrum, LaGuardia was last on this mid-sized list with a score of 38, seemingly in large part because of its convenience being inconvenient. It’s experienced a ton of flight delays but it’s going through a $8 billion renovation that will make concourses more attractive and provide more taxiway space for planes. The redesign of gates will also make accommodating larger aircraft possible. LaGuardia shared last place with San Juan Airport in Puerto Rico, which had an overall score of 39 but was placed at the same rank.
It’s often a crapshoot what you get at the airport, but checking your particular flight on this US Department of Transportation website by entering the carrier and the flight number will yield the percentage of time that flight is delayed or canceled, with the reason given for the issue.