America Built an Actually Good Airport
Photographs by Peter Garritano for The Atlantic
In 2004, Steven Spielberg made an entire movie about the terror of getting stuck for months in an airport, but I might be happy never to leave the new LaGuardia
Air travel itself, the part where you are crammed like a rodent into a metal tube, is clearly miserable. So is everything in its orbit: the barfsome cab from the city, the shameful indignity of security, the sullen panic of being away from home, and—most of all—the ghastly purgatory of the airport that detains you.
For a very long time, New York City’s LaGuardia Airport felt like the intricately dressed set of an apocalypse film. Spread across its terminals were abandoned check-in stands gone feral, floors damp with discharged moistures, low ceilings looming over dark corridors. Now, near the end of a nine-year, $8 billion rebuild of its main terminals and roadways, LaGuardia has become an unexpected hero for American infrastructural renewal. It is an incredible airport.
Terminal B, which houses most airlines, feels like a theme park—in a good way. Delta’s Terminal C, still under construction, has had its cramped and dingy concourses replaced with airy new spaces and a swank, cavernous airline club. Across the airport, sedans and
