LaGuardia was just named the best airport in the U.S. for the second year in a row

We're truly impressed by LaGuardia. Once considered one of the worst airports in the nation, it’s now earned the title of best in the U.S. for the second year in a row, according to the Forbes Travel Guide.

Not that long ago (as in nine years ago, as discussed on Reddit), LaGuardia had a terrible reputation for flight delays and cancellations, cramped and dirty spaces (with some terminal areas smelling like urine) and bad food options. Starting in 2016 and ending in 2022, an enormous $8 billion redevelopment project took on improving the airport and did an astonishingly good job at it: who would have ever predicted that LaGuardia would now be named the country’s best airport two years in a row?

Forbes Travel Guide’s Verified Air Travel Awards are judged by an invitation-only panel of 9,000 luxury travel advisors and hospitality experts. According to Forbes, LaGuardia won for, “its spacious gate areas, state-of-the-art architecture and food from New York culinary institutions such as H&H Bagels and Junior’s.”

Forbes Travel Guide isn’t the only one who noticed the glow-up. In 2021, LaGuardia won the Prix Versailles as the best “new” airport in the world (after the first new passenger facilities started opening). Skytrax named Terminal B the world’s best new airport terminal in 2023 and, that same year, the Airport Service Quality Award called LaGuardia the best North American airport in the 25 million to 40 million passenger-category.

“From the very start, our mission at LaGuardia Airport was to transform what was once the worst airport in the nation into an airport that would rival the best in the world that is also capable of handling the passenger volumes of the coming decades,” said Port Authority executive director Rick Cotton, as reported in a press release from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Considering that the magic touch applied to LaGuardia will soon grace JFK and Newark, too, as a part of a historic $30 billion transformation, we're bracing to become the city with the very best airports in all of the U.S.