Every year around this time, thousands of New Yorkers engage in an intricate Thanksgiving ritual that involves advanced calculations, complex analytics, risk-assessment and strategic thinking.
Their goal? Get to the airport.
New York City is served by three major airports, and there is no easy way to get to any of them. This may be the largest city in the United States, and one of the most-visited in the world, but for most residents, an expedition to LaGuardia, Kennedy or Newark Liberty (in New Jersey, an entirely different state) is a daunting endeavor requiring planning and precision.
No subway line goes directly to any of the airports, so if you want to take public transportation, you will have to transfer somewhere, somehow, at least once. The bus? Slow.
Just drive, you say? Well, most New Yorkers don’t own cars. And long-term parking at Kennedy Airport, for example, is prohibitively expensive at $40 to $80 a day.
So maybe you want to take a cab. A taxi from Manhattan to Kennedy will cost $70 before tolls, surcharges and tips. Uber and Lyft prices have increased steadily, meaning people headed to the airport often pay more than $100.
And once in a car, New York residents must deal with New York roads.
The city’s highways are notoriously sluggish and messy. As one traveler, Conrad Dornan, 44, put it: “I’ve lived here for 23 years, and the road to J.F.K. has been under construction the entire time.”
Katy Thompson, 56, usually gives herself 90 minutes to get from Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Kennedy because major roadways in Queens are always congested.
“It’s always a gamble as to who or what is blocking the Belt Parkway,” she said. (A user on the r/Queens subreddit once asked, “Can someone tell me what’s going on with the Van Wyck?” — referring to a different perpetually clogged expressway. The top reply: “Friend, the Van Wyck has had construction since its construction.”)
Airport transportation is so harrowing in New York that Uber’s latest big idea is to reinvent the shuttle bus. The Uber Shuttle consists of 14-passenger vans, which pick up and drop off at three stops in Manhattan.
(A few extremely brave souls have even ridden Citi Bikes to the airport.)
Public transportation is cheaper, and sometimes faster, than taking a cab, but it is not without its drawbacks.
Lugging suitcases into the subway will quickly make you realize how many sets of stairs you need to tackle. Fewer than 30 percent of all stations are accessible, meaning they have a ramp or elevator. Very often, elevators and escalators are out of service.
No subway line goes directly to LaGuardia Airport, which is on the northwestern edge of Queens.
Several subways lines go almost as far as Kennedy, on the southwestern shore of Queens, a sneeze away from the Nassau County border and the rest of Long Island. But the trip’s last leg must be completed on the AirTrain, which requires a transfer and another $8.50 on top of subway fare.
Then there is Newark Liberty Airport, which for New Yorkers involves crossing the Hudson River either by a costly cab or by relying on New Jersey Transit.
Given all the obstacles, New Yorkers plot their escapes well in advance, and know that being nimble is imperative.
“I try to leave at the latest possible time where I know if something goes wrong, I will have time to make adjustments,” said Sonny Stephens, 27, who lives on the Lower East Side and planned to fly out of Newark this week.
Mr. Stephens said he would take the F train from Delancey Street to West 4th Street; transfer to the A, C, or E to Penn Station; and then board a New Jersey Transit train to Newark for an AirTrain to his terminal.
Despite all the transferring, Mr. Stephens said he preferred to take public transit over a cab or ride-share, which would be “five times as expensive but doesn’t get me there five times as quickly.”
With an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a job in “marketing budget optimization,” he has transferred his analytical expertise to the airport schlep.
“I always think of things in terms of like, what’s your R.O.I. going to be like?” he said. “Is it really worth the investment?”
It is decidedly not worth it to Sydell Bonin, 24, who lives in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. “It doesn’t matter how cheap the fight is,” she said. “I’m not commuting to Newark Airport.”
Ms. Bonin said J.F.K. is her “ideal” airport, but she is flying out of LaGuardia to Montana this week because the airfare was less expensive. She described the slog from her neighborhood to LaGuardia, which involves two trains and a bus, as “nightmarish.”
That’s why, after thinking about it, she scheduled an Uber — five days in advance — to pick her up two hours before her flight.
Ms. Bonin does not actually live that far from the airport. “It is like eight and a half miles for me,” she said. “I can bike that.” But with luggage and an early morning flight, a car ride wins. It will cost $48.
Kyle Donnelly, 69, refuses to pay for a car. “It’s too expensive,” she said. Instead, she planned to take the subway from Washington Heights, near the tippy top of Manhattan, all the way to the AirTrain in Howard Beach, Queens.
“You’ve got to grit your teeth and sit on the A train for two hours, that’s all,” Ms. Donnelly said.
Her flight from Kennedy to Tulum, Mexico, at around 10 a.m. So she planned to leave home at 6. Although the trip would take a while, the price was right: “I’m a senior,” she said, “so I pay $1.45.”
Also planning to rely on public transportation was Carly McGoldrick, 24, who lives in Alphabet City in Manhattan and was flying Spirit Airlines to Detroit.
“Why would I spend $70 plus tip on a taxi to the airport, when I spent the same amount on my round-trip flight?” she said.
Ms. McGoldrick planned to walk 12 minutes to the F train and take it to the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue stop in Queens. Then she would ride a city bus to LaGuardia.
“The Q47 stops at Terminal A,” Ms. McGoldrick said, “whereas the Q70, which is the free fare bus to the airport? That one does not stop at Terminal A — and I learned that the hard way.” The Q47, she added, was “technically free with the subway transfer,” but she said it took “longer than the train ride.”
Ms. McGoldrick said she generally tries not to get to LaGuardia too early because once she is in Terminal A, where Spirit’s gates are, there are not many seats and few food options.
“They remodeled Terminals B and C,” she said, “but Terminal A is basically like a bus depot.” She recognized it recently in a widely shared video that showed a raccoon falling from the ceiling behind an airline check-in counter.
Whatever its flaws, public transportation has its fans at this time of year.
Hannah Lass, 28, described herself as “obsessed” with the relatively new Long Island Rail Road link between Grand Central Terminal and Kennedy, which she called “such a game-changer,” and “so much faster than driving!”
Ms. Lass, who will be leaving from her office in Midtown, has paid $100 to $200 for Ubers to the airport in the past, and usually flies out of LaGuardia. But she booked her flight to Florida this week out of Kennedy to take advantage of the new rail connection.
“I just love the consistency,” she said. “I know pretty much exactly when I’m going to get there from when I leave.”
Leaving early is essential. Rick Cotton, the executive director of the Port Authority, which oversees the New York-area airports, warned travelers to allow themselves even more time this holiday season. All three airports are expecting a record number of Thanksgiving travelers.
At Kennedy, travelers will encounter lots of construction: $15 billion worth of improvement projects are underway, and the authority is rebuilding the airport’s road network. It will be a bit of a mess.
“We’re apologetic,” Mr. Cotton said. “We hope that the people’s positive assessment of how LaGuardia turned out will give them a perspective that the long-term gain will be more than worth short-term pain.”
Taking a cab or Uber? Mr. Cotton recommended being dropped off at the Lefferts Boulevard AirTrain station to avoid congestion near the terminals.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t drive,” he said.
Driving to the airport is a no-no for Ron Scheff. Once, in 1974, he was stuck in traffic on a Queens expressway trying to get to Kennedy. He was 13 and absolutely overcome with anxiety at the thought of missing his flight to Denver for a camping trip
Mr. Scheff, 63, calls it “maybe the most traumatic experience” of his life.
“My father was telling the cabdriver, ‘Get off the highway!’” he said. He made it, but only takes public transportation when he has a plane to catch now.
To make a 12:30 p.m. flight to visit cousins in Houston for the holiday, Mr. Scheff planned to leave his apartment in Long Island City, Queens, at 9:10 a.m. and take the E train to Pennsylvania Station.
There, he will meet his older brother, Ken, who lives in Morningside Heights in Manhattan. They will catch a 10:01 a.m. New Jersey Transit train that is scheduled to arrive at Newark Airport at 10:26 a.m.
Mr. Scheff had no qualms about taking two different trains to cross two different rivers, and shrugged at the idea that some New Yorkers might be intimidated by New Jersey Transit: “It’s really easy,” he said.
When it comes to weighing time, speed, comfort and cost, all travelers have their own formula.
“There’s an art to it,” Mr. Stephens, the Newark-bound business analyst, said. “It’s not exact science.”
One person who is not worried about making it to the airport is Patrick Hazari, 42, who has lived in Astoria, Queens, since 2007.
“LaGuardia is in Astoria’s backyard,” said Mr. Hazari, who will fly to visit his parents in Knoxville, Tenn., this week. His average travel time from home to the terminal is a mere 12 and a half minutes.
“The fastest is like eight or nine minutes,” he said. “I think of it as like a private airport.”
Mr. Hazari said he had an Uber receipt from a trip to LaGuardia that reads “6:10 a.m. pick up, 6:19 a.m. drop-off.” He laughed. “Can’t get better than that!”
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