I Love Laguardia

Those who think it’s the worst airport in the U.S. don’t appreciate its one major advantage 

- Clarie Suddath

LaGuardia smells like a used car filled with old Cinnabon bags. It’s New York’s second-busiest airport (behind John F. Kennedy International), and yet there’s no convenient way to get there by mass transit. The floors are scuffed. The carpets are stained. Some of the bathroom stalls don’t have working locks. Just this month, a runway was struck by lightning, and brown water poured out of a ceiling. Each year it serves about 28 million people through a hodgepodge of terminals that seem to be perpetually under construction. During a 2015 speech about infrastructure, then-Vice President Joe Biden told a Philadelphia audience, “If I blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think, I must be in some Third World country.” People laughed. “I’m not joking,” Biden said. People laughed some more. I don’t know why, though. LaGuardia is my favorite airport.