New York Airport O&D Travel:
How Newark, LaGuardia, and Kennedy Differ


There are three major airports in the New York vicinity: Newark (EWR), LaGuardia (LGA) and Kennedy (JFK). There are other smaller airport's like Stewart (SWF) or further away one's like Philadelphia (PHL) that draw the occasional TriState resident, but these are the big three, combining for a total of 87.7M domestic passengers and generating 71.4M domestic O&D passengers in 2018. The airport's have lots of overlapping service, but when looking at which routes and destination people fly to from each airport, some clear distinctions among the airport's emerge.

So which airports do New Yorkers fly to from each of their three airports? Below is a chart of the top ten destinations by O&D traffic from each of the airports.

Top Destination by O&D Passengers out of NYC Airports 2018
Newark (EWR) LaGuardia (LGA) Kennedy (JFK)
order PAIR O&D_PASSENGERS PAIR O&D_PASSENGERS PAIR O&D_PASSENGERS
1 MCO 1,854,220 ORD 2,625,320 LAX 3,010,630
2 SFO 1,661,930 ATL 1,819,620 SFO 1,878,080
3 LAX 1,514,410 MIA 1,419,050 MCO 1,148,600
4 FLL 1,457,050 FLL 1,287,090 LAS 1,047,500
5 ORD 920,030 DFW 1,174,180 FLL 940,690
6 ATL 829,160 MCO 987,380 SEA 737,380
7 LAS 762,510 BOS 894,220 MIA 667,390
8 PBI 748,970 DEN 842,880 SJU 644,820
9 IAH 715,120 DTW 768,010 SAN 583,860
10 TPA 702,710 CLT 738,360 PHX 568,860

The biggest O&D destinations are Florida airports and West Coast cities along with a smattering of major airline hub airports, like ATL, DFW, DTW, and IAH. LaGuardia has flight restrictions that keep it from flying all the way to the West Coast (and to farther out International destinations), so it does not have any of the West Coast flights that EWR and JFK fly. That's one reason the numbers for these destinations are higher in their individual ranking at EWR and JFK because the NYC total O&D traffic that is looking for direct flights is split among only JFK and EWR instead of 3 airports. LGA still has some O&D to the West Coast, it is just significantly lower because of the connection requirement.

Newark's top spots include several of the United hubs, while LGA's is filled by AA and DL hubs. JFK is a little more spread out possibly because they have a pretty wide range of airlines that are more evenly dispersed operating at the airport. One area that is particularly interesting out of this data is the NYC to Florida market. All three airports serve a wide range of Florida destinations, but the O&D varies by airport. Below, I compare how NYC flies to the top seven Florida destinations, Orlando (MCO), Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Miami (MIA), Palm Beach (PBI), Tampa Bay (TPA), Fort Myers (RSW) and Jacksonville (JAX).

O&D Passengers to Florida Airports out of NYC Airports 2018
Newark (EWR) LaGuardia (LGA) Kennedy (JFK)
PAIR O&D PASSENGERS % Total O&D PASSENGERS % Total O&D PASSENGERS % Total
MCO 1,854,220 46.5% 987,380 24.7% 1,148,600 28.8%
FLL 1,457,050 39.5% 1,287,090 34.9% 940,690 25.5%
PBI 748,970 43.0% 570,150 32.7% 422,810 24.3%
TPA 702,710 42.5% 473,790 28.7% 476,300 28.8%
MIA 595,810 22.2% 1,419,050 52.9% 667,390 24.9%
RSW 450,450 52.8% 176,120 20.6% 227,030 26.6%
JAX 170,680 28.2% 147,140 24.3% 288,280 47.6%
Size of pie is relative to airport's total O&D traffic from the three NYC airports. Individual slices show the number of travelers to/from the Florida airport to the respective NYC airport.

Kennedy averages the smallest share of FLorida O&D travelers out of NYC, but does dominate the market to JAX serving 47.6% out the 606k travelers. LaGuardia has slightly higher averages than Kennedy, ranking second at most destinations except Miami, where it captures over half of the 2.7M O&D travelers. Newark is the top airport for serving Florida by a pretty significant margin with over 42% of travelers from Tampa, Palm Beach, and Orlando along with a 52.8% share of the Fort Myers market. Out of all 7 markets combined Newark serves 39.3% of the 15.2M O&D travelers to these seven Florida airport. Regardless of which airport residents are starting from, lots of New York and New Jersey residents are heading down to Florida.