Despite dramatic recent improvements to United’s Concourse C, Newark ranked last in passenger satisfaction among large airports. (Photo: Chris McGinnis)
United Airlines is spending millions on improvements to its Terminal C hub at Newark Liberty International Airport, and for passengers, the work can’t be finished soon enough: A big new consumer survey finds Newark ranks at the bottom of all large U.S. airports in passenger satisfaction.
In fact, many U.S. airports have been spending lots of money on expansions and improvements in recent years, and it’s apparently having a generally positive impact on travelers. A new J.D. Power survey of 21,000 North American travelers — its first poll on airport satisfaction since 2010 — found that on a 1,000-point scale, passengers’ overall satisfaction with large airports has gone up 54 points in the past five years, to 719, while the score for medium-sized facilities jumped 69 points, to 752.
That’s not to say there aren’t still big differences from one airport to another. The survey found that among large airports, Oregon‘s Portland International scored highest in satisfaction (791), just ahead of Tampa (776) and Las Vegas McCarran (759). By contrast, the lowest-scoring large airports were some of the nation’s busiest: Newark (646), LaGuardia (655), Los Angeles International (670) and Chicago O’Hare (680). Atlanta’s giant Hartsfield-Jackson ranked 8th with a 742 score, while San Francisco was in the middle of the pack at 721.
Related: Trip Report- United p.s. business class SFO-EWR
Among medium-sized airports, Cleveland was at the bottom of the satisfaction list with a score of 698, just below Houston Hobby (700) and Hawaii’s Kahului (705). The highest-rated mid-sized facilities were Dallas Love Field and Southwest Florida International (both at 792), followed by Indianapolis and Raleigh-Durham (both at 789) and Jacksonville (787).
Oregon’s Portland International scored first place as the nation’s favorite large airport. (Image: Jim Glab)
What makes a passenger decide that one airport is great while another is awful? J.D. Power found that key factors include retail concessions, security screening and gate areas. Airports that have added more new restaurants, bars, stores and other services “are realizing significant gains in overall customer satisfaction,” a J.D. Power official said.
The survey found an inverse correlation between passenger satisfaction levels and the amount of time it took them to go through check-in and security. And clean vs. messy gate areas can make a difference of almost 200 points in passengers’ satisfaction with the airport’s terminal facilities, J.D. Power said.
“Making sure travelers can hear flight announcements and having ample seating and outlets for charging electronics around a gate also lift satisfaction with terminal facilities by more than 130 index points,” the company said.
Another interesting finding: Older travelers tend to spend the most time in airports (an hour or more), but they spend a lot less money there ($7-$10) than Millennials and GenXers ($25 and $18 respectively), who are in airports on average for less than 50 minutes.
Check out the total listings below in the two charts from J.D. Power’s 2015 North American Airport Satisfaction Study.
Readers: What do you consider to be the country’s best and worst large and medium-sized airports? Do you agree with the J.D. Power findings? What can make or break your satisfaction with an airport? Post comments below.
NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: New Oakland-London route + Big hotel acquisition + Uber at Las Vegas McCarran + American’s international Premium Economy service + Healthy eating for travelers
Do you follow us on Twitter? It’s a great way to keep up with the latest news!
Please join the 100,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!
EWR is by far the worst airport I have ever had the bad luck to visit in my life. I am pregnant and fainted in the TSA line and then started having false labor contractions (I thought I was miscarrying – it was terrifying). My husband tried to get help and instead they blatantly ignored him, then refused to help him, THEN pulled him aside and searched him, and then demanded to search all our bags and laughed at me when I started crying from the excruciating pain and fear that I was miscarrying in the middle of the airport. Nobody ever got us medical help. I could have lost my baby, or gotten seriously injured when I collapsed. They are shameless, horrible people.
PDX is beautiful, as is RDU. Reagan is nice but they totally need to jack up the people-moving to Terminal A, which is a huge hike from the metro. And what kills me is the announcement overlap—DOES NOBODY SEE THIS AS A PROBLEM?
I mean, we live in an age where information is king, and for some reason many airports like to put people with no command of English on the P.A., and then they talk over each other.
I would love to see EWR get hit by a tornado, and then the wreckage to be struck by a meteor. It’s the worst airport I’ve ever been in by far—and the only airport where luggage handlers take breaks in the middle of unloading a plane, so that passengers will get part of their luggage, but not the rest. Because you know—break time.
Happily, luckily, haven’t used that in recent years. 🙂
LAX T-3 has got to be worse
I’m surprised to see Orlando near the top – my experience there last summer, in the United terminal was anything BUT satisfactory! Plus the decor was 1980’s and in serious need of an upgrade. The food options were horrid, the baggage system was down, it was a cluster!
Moving on to the worst of terminals category, I nominate T-6 at LAX. What a vile dump.
I had been once in the United Club of Newark EWR and the experience made me concurs, yes, it is the worst United Club I ever been. The EWR Airport itself, not worse that many Airports I ever been, specially LA LAX, Paris CDG and London LHR.
I’ve been going to ABQ about once every three months. I was surprised to see it so low in the list of Medium Airports, because I think it is great. It has WAAY more runway and gate capacity than it has flights, you’re out of the airport in a rental car very quickly, and security hasn’t been bad. The United staff are casual, friendly, and competent.
YES! YES! YES! There is nothing redeeming about it!
The article is full of interesting facts such as “an inverse correlation between passenger satisfaction levels and the amount of time it took them to go through check-in and security”. In case anyone actually thought that people enjoy long lines, now you know.
I was kind of surprised when I read the title to see how long this article was. Living about 20 minutes away from EWR for most of my live you could simply have written “Yes.” and be finished. (To be fair – they’ve done great work with the shops and amenities but the security, baggage claim and constant delays are by far the worst I’ve experienced in any airport).
EWR is the worst. Terminal C is okay, but Terminal B and especially Terminal A is THE WORST. A tiny hallway with 4 security stations jammed into it, only two food options past security, and a beat up tiny bathroom. The delays are terrible due to runway configuration. Combine that with super high fares, and EWR is the pits.
Maybe SFO ended up in the middle because it’s a mixture of wonderful and dreadful terminals, and it all averaged out. In five or six years, I bet SFO will be at or near the top of the list.
I would agree that PDX is the best. I’ve been stuck there several times because of delayed flights, and it’s so spacious and filled with things to do that the time passes swiftly. (Of course, there are signs at PDX warning passengers not to put marijuana in checked luggage if they are flying out of Oregon, so one wonders if Portland has an additional factor that influences people’s fondness for this airport.) Also agree that EWR is the worst. The absolute worst flying experiences I’ve had are flights from Europe to some city in the U.S. with a connection in Newark. On bad days I can barely do it without going mad. I really don’t understand how foreigners can do it at all if they don’t speak English.
For medium-sized airports, SNA and JAX are my favorites. Twenty years ago I used to commute from Washington DC to Jacksonville each week, and the nice JAX airport made this bearable. My worst medium-sized airport is MKE, especially the rental car experience, which because of construction is pretty scary if you have claustrophobia. And the airport itself, astonishingly, manages to be very spread out and congested at the same time.
But we should remember these are U.S. airports. A friend of mine went to a medium-sized airport in an undeveloped nation a few years ago, and they didn’t even assign gates to flights. Arriving planes would just pull up to any empty gate that the pilot felt like using, and departing flights would leave from gates that were not announced or posted anywhere until the very last minute. And that was on a useless P.A. system in a foreign language and sometimes in unintelligible English. My friend got to the airport three hours before his departing flight and almost missed it anyway. So things could be a lot worse.