America’s most loathed airport is cool now

After that fortress-like approach, deplaning into the building is a pleasant departure from its dreary reputation. The concourse is light and airy with a rising roofline that visually guides travelers to the bridge to the terminal and the city beyond.

Concessions, including local favorites like Irving Farm coffee roasters and national chains like Wendy’s, beckon with dining options. Forget a book? Grab one at beloved New York bookstore Strand. Need a gift for the kids? The Lego store has you covered.

Or just want to relax away from the traveling masses? Credit card provider Chase recently opened a gleaming new lounge, joining ones managed by Air Canada, American Airlines, United Airlines and American Express.

This isn’t the LaGuardia of “airport sushi” infamy anymore.

The airport has come a long way since Vice President Joe Biden described it as “third world” in 2014. Gone is the 1960s-era Central Terminal Building with its leaky roofs, lack of food options and nowhere to sit. Terminal B replaced it in 2020. And Terminal C, which is still under construction, will replace Terminals C and D when it is completed later this year.

“This is gorgeous,” one female traveler stopped to tell Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Executive Director Rick Cotton, the man who oversaw the transformation of LaGuardia, as he watched a water feature falling from the ceiling in the middle of Terminal B.

“I feel like I’m not at home,” she added before disappearing to catch a flight as “New York, New York” played in the background.

Reactions like these are common, Cotton said on a walk through Terminal B last month. The Port Authority, which operates LaGuardia, receives similar feedback from travelers.

“This is civic architecture,” he said while looking out one of those walls of glass you can see from taxiing planes. “It should be inspiring and appealing.”

And an inspiring and appealing edifice is what the Port Authority and its private partners have achieved: a pleasant, art-filled, Instagrammable place — and this time in a good way.

From last to first place

There are many problems with LaGuardia. For one, in a world of large, mega-airports like Dallas-Fort Worth, it’s minuscule. The airport, with just 680 acres, is smaller than Central Park.

On top of that, LaGuardia was built without a master plan, Cotton said. The original terminal — Terminal A, later known as the Marine Air Terminal — opened in 1940 and Terminal B was completed in 1964. Later came Terminals C and D in the 1980s and 1990s.

“It was ‘we’ll just build this one new terminal building,’ and it was how the Port Authority had approached the airport as a whole … No plan. Piecemeal,” Cotton said.

Then came former New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo.

Cuomo, in January 2015, announced an “aggressive infrastructure redesign” of New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports after years of inaction. Cotton noted that, among other reasons, rebuilding the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks took “an enormous amount of the resources of the agency.”

By summer 2015, New York State had selected private partners to redevelop Terminals B, C and D at LaGuardia, including LaGuardia Gateway Partners for Terminal B and Delta Air Lines for Terminal C. Construction began on Terminal B in 2016 and Terminal C a year later.

“There was a real continuity of top leadership support,” Cotton said. He cited Cuomo and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for their support.

“You need that in terms of committing the funding, and you need that in terms of a thousand different problems that come into play,” Cotton added, who was named Port Authority executive director in 2017.

What the Port Authority and its private partners did was no small feat. “You have a fully operational airport with passengers and you’re fully reconstructing that facility,” said TJ Schulz, president of the trade group Airports Consultants Council.

He likened the reconstruction of LaGuardia to “changing a tire on a car that’s moving on the interstate.”

It paid off: the trade group Airports Council International World recently named LaGuardia as having the best customer experience for airports its size in North America, which is a dramatic turnaround from its historical last or near-last place standing. Skytrax, the publisher of global airline and airport quality rankings, lists LaGuardia Terminal B as one of just three facilities in North America with the top five-star rating. LaGuardia Airport as a whole is rated four stars.

A work in progress

The design of the new Terminal B, which was completed in 2022, aims to reduce stress and create a “calm, frictionless experience” for travelers, as LaGuardia Gateway Partners CEO Suzette Noble put it.

“Once you’re through security, this great window looks out on the airfield. You can see the two bridges, [and] you can see the airplanes,” said Peter Ruggiero, a design principal at architecture firm HOK that designed Terminal B, in a 2020 talk. “You know where you’re going; you have a sense of those distances.”

When asked about all of the vertical movements travelers must make — at least three from curb to gate — Noble said it was solely the result of the terminal site’s small size. It’s not something LaGuardia Gateway Partners has, at least not publicly, received many complaints about. She said complaints are typically about WiFi and flight delays.

In addition to improving the inside, the Port Authority, along with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and city officials, is working to improve the journey to LaGuardia with bus upgrades. A new direct shuttle service is planned from the end of a nearby subway line. A controversial AirTrain to the subway, like the one at JFK, was canceled in early 2023 due to spiraling costs.

The new Terminal C, which is home to Delta Air Lines, is still under construction with two-and-a-half of the four new concourses open. The rest is expected to open this summer.

Construction on the building is still very obvious. Look out the panoramic windows after security, and you see half of the former Terminal D amid arriving and departing planes with an old Delta sign — “NEW YORK’S #1 AIRLINE” — still hanging above the former curbside drop-off area.

Travelers, though, already like what they see.

“How did LaGuardia went from being a joke to this,” X user umichvoter posted in September, along with an image of one of the new multilevel atriums in Terminal C.

Like Terminal B, Terminal C goes up where most airport spaces go out. There’s no great hall welcoming travelers when they enter from departures; instead ticketing is on one level and security a level above connected by two three-story atriums filled with public art. A massive, digital screen spanning the space above the security queues shows changing images that reflect the destination of a soon-to-depart flight.

“New York City is such a vertical city,” said Jay Liese, the project principal on Terminal C at architecture firm Corgan. “In some ways we see the three-level [terminal] as being a little bit of a metaphor for New York.”

One thing Corgan and architectural partner Gensler did after security was create soaring atriums at the entrance to the concourses in Terminal C. That makes the place where travelers wait to board their flights feel much larger, and significantly increases the space for restaurants, restrooms and kid play areas.

The concourse atriums are the concessions space in Terminal C, a more dispersed approach than the central hub in Terminal B.

“It becomes a more organic part of the customer’s journey to their gate,” Liese said of the decision to spread out amenities across the terminal.

You can eat a sandwich or pizza at Sunday Supper looking out a floor-to-ceiling window on the ramp where planes are coming and going, or down on the travelers milling about as they wait for their flights. From there, it’s a quick escalator ride down to the concourse floor and walk to the gate for your flight out.

“It has exceeded, frankly, my highest hopes and expectations,” Cotton said of the new LaGuardia while sitting in Terminal B. “The combination of the architecture — light and airy, and you compare that to the old, dark, undersized LaGuardia. [It’s] night and day.”