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The Best & Worst Airports In The U.S. For Layovers

a man sitting in an airport with his feet on his side

Unless you’re lucky enough to only have to go to cities that have direct flights from where you are, chances are good you’re going to have a layover. It may only be an hour, or it may be until the next day (in which case you may want to know about what to do if you’re stuck at an airport overnight). Either way, there are some airports that are just better for layovers than others.

FinanceBuzz is a website that helps its users “make moves” regarding their personal finance choices and specifically assists with areas like credit cards, investing, loans, banking, debt help, etc. With so many of their readers flying again, and with that, being stuck on layovers, they wanted to see which of the busiest airports in the U.S. provided the best and worst experiences for passengers during layovers. They looked at factors such as airport size, the availability of lounges and food, flight delay and cancellation frequency, etc.

They used the 50 busiest airports in the country and took into consideration:

Their methodology & sources:

From https://financebuzz.com/best-worst-airports-layovers:

For this analysis, FinanceBuzz looked at the 50 U.S. airports with the highest passenger volume in 2020 according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. For each airport, we gathered data points for six different factors related to layovers. The data was then put into a dynamic formula that assigned a 0-5 score to each airport for every factor, with scores being relative to all other airports in our evaluation. Individual factor scores were then weighted and added together to get a final score on a 0-100 scale. For this particular analysis, all factors were given a uniform weight of 3.33.

Factors, data points, and sources are as follows:

All data collected between September 15-22, 2021

5 Best U.S. Airports For Layovers

1. Miami International Airport (MIA) – overall score of 66.5 out of 100
2. San Antonio International Airport (SAT) – 66.4/100
3. San Diego International Airport (SAN) – 65.1
4. John Wayne Airport (SNA) – 64.0
5. William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) – 63.9

5 Worst U.S. Airports For Layovers

1. O’Hare International Airport (ORD) – overall score of 23.0 out of 100
2. Dulles International Airport (IAD) – 34.1/100
3. Kansas City International Airport (MCI) – 34.9
4. Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) – 35.2
5. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) – 36.0

Buzzfeed posted 15 of the “best” and “worst” and also included the number of gates, how many restaurants or shops there were per gate, the number of lounge, the percent of flights with 60+ minute delays and the percent of flights canceled. You can go to this page of their website to see the full list.

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