Live flights at LaGuardia Airport (LGA)

LaGuardia Airport opened in 1939 on the site of the old Gala Amusement Park and Glenn Curtiss Airport at North Beach in Queens. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia had pushed for years for a real airport inside city limits. He once famously refused to leave a flight that had landed in Newark, New Jersey, insisting loudly that his ticket clearly said New York.

Built with federal Works Progress Administration money, it rose on new landfill along the edge of Flushing Bay. It opened as New York Municipal Airport and was renamed for the mayor in 1947. Its Marine Air Terminal, finished in 1940 for Pan American's transatlantic flying boats, is one of the last active terminals from that era. Idlewild, later renamed Kennedy, soon took over long haul flying in the 1940s.

This left LaGuardia as New York's short haul domestic airport. Slot controls, meaning limits on how many flights can use an airport each hour. A rule barring most flights beyond 1,500 miles shaped its network for decades. By the 2000s the cramped terminals were a national punchline, so a rebuild costing about 8 billion dollars began. Terminal B opened in 2020 and Delta's Terminal C followed in 2022.

LaGuardia squeezes onto about 680 acres beside Flushing Bay, with two crossing runways, 4/22 and 13/31, each about 7,000 feet long, partly built on decks over the water. Those short runways and the tight site rule out widebody jets and long haul flying.

A federal perimeter rule limits most departures to 1,500 miles, though Denver is grandfathered in and Saturdays are exempt. The airport is slot controlled, meaning airlines need a reserved takeoff or landing time to operate here. Delta and American run competing hubs from Terminals C and B, there is almost no scheduled cargo. Delays here ripple across the whole national flight system.