Newark Lost It's Liberty, Again!
- Nabeel Geoffrey
- Sep 20, 2023
- 2 min read
In the latest J.D. Power airport customer satisfaction study, Newark Liberty ranks bottom of the top 20 in the mega airports segment. For years New York's Laguardia airport was in the spotlight and was famously compared to a third world airport by Joe Biden in 2014. There has been a country wide investment focus since to upgrade the infrastructure including airports. When compared with the vastly superior experiences of modern airports around the world it was clear that North America was playing catch-up.
Since the last published J.D Power survey in 2022, In the latest published results Newark Liberty ranks bottom of the top 20 mega airports list again. This must be a worry for United Airlines which uses EWR as a major hub.
Detroit jumped +2 places to take top spot in the latest survey which scored 800 points out of a scale of 1000. The largest improvement since the 2022 report was made by Denver International which climbed 7 places to joint seventh with Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson and Orlando International. Whist Newark remains bottom, New York JFK recorded the largest drop from 4th in 2022 to 11th in the latest J.D Powers report.
When looking at the top 20 Mega airports operational data obtained from the DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, we can see some interesting insights some of which support the J.D Power data and some not.
The best ontime performance between Jan-May 2023 was registered by Seattle Tacoma International Airport (82.7%) however it was ranked 18th position on the J.D Power study, SEA also performed well as far as % of delayed, cancelled and diverted flights.
Harry Reid Las Vegas, registered the worst on-time performance between Jan-May 2023 according to the DOT BOTS data (69.18%) of the top 20 mega airports, yet ranks 3rd on the J.D Power latest study.
The DOT performance data mostly aligns with the JD Powers study with the exceptions above. Fort Lauderdale performed the worst in the % of delayed flights (27.22%), whilst Dallas Fort Worth cancelled 2.77% of flights the highest volume of this batch, Denver registered the most (493) flight diversions in the Jan-May 2023 period.
In Newarks defense they have been marching full steam ahead with their master redevelopment plan which includes the $2.7 billion Terminal-A redevelopment with 21 of the 33 gates became operational earlier this year. Another seven gates opened in July, with the remaining 5 gates opening this week. Further plans include replacement of the dated AirTrain for enhanced connectivity. These investments should help EWR to steadily start climbing the rankings. J.D Power will keep us posted for sure. Click the link to see the full J.D Power 2023 report including the rankings for the Large and Medium airports.
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