Newark Liberty International Airport, originally Newark Metropolitan Airport and later Newark International Airport, is an international airport straddling the boundary between the cities of Newark in Essex County and Elizabeth in Union County, New Jersey. It is owned jointly by the cities and leased to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates it.
The airport is located 3 miles south of Downtown Newark and 9 miles west-southwest of Manhattan in New York City. It is near the Newark Airport Interchange, the junction between Interstate 95 and Interstate 78 (both components of the New Jersey Turnpike), as well as U.S. Routes 1 and 9, which have junctions with U.S. Route 22 and Route 81.
The City of Newark built the airport on 68 acres of marshland in 1928 and the Army Air Corps operated the facility during World War II. After the Port Authority took it over in 1948, an instrument runway, a terminal building, a control tower, and an air cargo center were added. The airport’s original 1935 central terminal building is a National Historic Landmark.
Newark is one of three major airports serving the New York metropolitan area; the others are John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, which are also operated by the Port Authority. EWR employs more than 24,000 people.
The airport handles almost as many flights as JFK, despite being 40 percent of JFK’s land size. In 2017, EWR was the sixth-busiest airport in the United States by international passenger traffic and the fifteenth-busiest airport in the country. It served 43,393,499 passengers in 2017, which made EWR the 43rd-busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic. In 2019, the airport saw 46,336,452 passengers, the most in its history. As of 2020, EWR served 15,892,892 passengers, which made it the 50th-busiest airport.
Newark serves 50 carriers and is the third-largest hub for United Airlines, the airport’s largest tenant, and FedEx Express, its second-largest tenant (operating in three buildings on two million square feet of airport property). During the 12-month period ending in July 2014, over 68% of all passengers at the airport were carried by United Airlines.
