United has really been putting the hard sell on consumers about just how great Newark is lately. I get it. The headlines were really bad earlier this year when the wheels fell off at the airport, so they want to counter that now that it’s running better. But the truth is that Newark sucks, JFK sucks, LaGuardia sucks, and if you need to fly in and out of New York, your chances of having an operational issue are far too high no matter what airport you use. This isn’t United’s fault, but there is some danger for the airline in talking Newark up too much.
It was a couple of weeks ago that United put out a press release and had an event to “celebrate” Newark not being as terrible as it has been. Seriously. The press release sounded like there had been an incredible victory.
United Celebrates Turnaround at Newark Liberty International and Charts Bright Future
The reality of the situation is that air traffic control staffing issues, technical problems, runway construction, and general congestion brought Newark to a standstill. A few years back, Newark became a Level 2 airport which meant that it no longer had slot controls. It had runway timings, but airlines were overscheduling the actual capacity of the airport. This came to a head when the airport had to shut down a runway for construction. The end result was gridlock.
According to Anuvu data, in the month of May, Newark saw only 61.3 percent of flights arrive within 14 minutes of schedule while JFK was at 74.4 percent. And while JFK had less than one percent of flights canceled, Newark had more than seven percent.
In the short-term, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reduced airport capacity to 68 operations per hour. This was very doable once the runway reopened early on June 2, and performance improved. But how much did it improve? Not nearly enough to consider it a victory.
In its press release, United said this:
This summer, United celebrated its best operational summer ever at EWR, putting the airport on par with JFK and LGA for on-time performance. In fact, United flights out of Newark arrived on-time more often this summer than flights operated by airlines out of JFK or LGA.*
That little asterisk is always what calls my name. This should be something we could replicate, right? Well…
*According to A:14 on-time performance data for arrivals and departures for United and the cumulative DOT reporting carriers at JFK and LGA from masFlight for June 2 – August 31, 2025.
Oh good. See, masFlight is the same data I use. Anuvu is the parent company. So I can look all of this up myself. The results are indeed true using that cherry-picked methodology.
For that time period, if we look at flights out of Newark, 67.46 percent arrived at their destination within 14 minutes of schedule. But LaGuardia was better at 69.52 percent and JFK even better at 70.15 percent. What gives? Oh right, United is only counting airlines that report to the Department of Transportation (DOT) with their data. So I believe that means we can only look at Alaska/Hawaiian, Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and of course, United.
At JFK, those airlines account for about 78 percent of total departures, and it does lower the on-time rate to 69.83 percent. LaGuardia was slightly worse at 67.66 percent. But Newark, well, with just shy of 90 percent of departures counting, 69.86 percent arrived within 14 minutes. We are talking three one-hundredths of a percent difference, but Newark comes out on top.
Let’s forget that Newark saw about a third of a point higher on its cancellation rate. Oh, and if we used arrivals into the NYC airports instead of departures out, Newark would have finished last.
This is what counts as a turnaround, apparently. And let’s not forget exactly what it took to get Newark to function even that well (or not well). United had to dramatically slash flying.
United July Newark Departures by Year
Data via Cirium, includes regional flying
That’s a decrease in departures of 3.4 percent vs last year and 6.0 percent compared to the year before. Sure, United was able to operate the same number of seats this summer as last thanks to bigger airplanes, but that hurts the communities that need connectivity the most. When we look at the markets that gained the most seats, it’s San Francisco, Denver, Austin, London/Heathrow, Vancouver, and Nashville. No surprises there. But what about the big losers? Excluding Tel Aviv for obvious reasons, here are the cellar dwellers:
Biggest Loss of United Departing Seats from Newark by Market July 2025 vs Prior Year
Data via Cirium
It’s the small and mid-size cities that lose out the most. In many cases, they have plenty of seats to New York on their own, but they lose out on all that great connectivity United has built up through Newark to places abroad.
To be clear, we can’t blame United for this. It is being forced to cut down its flight schedule because of the Port Authority’s and the federal government’s complete and total inability to provide a functioning airport and airspace system that meets the needs of the local population. Now, to make up for these failures, the FAA has decided to put mandatory cuts down to 72 operations per hour through October of next year. I guess they think they can squeeze in more than the 68 they had this summer, but not that much more.
United has no choice but to cut back, and for what purpose? By cutting back it gets back to a poor operation instead of a completely terrible, awful, ridiculously-bad operation. That’s a helpful tradeoff, but it’s not one that any operator should have to make. And there is no real hope of an actual fix on the horizon for any of the New York airports.
