Newark Airport (EWR)

Also known as EWR, this airport is located 15 miles southwest of midtown Manhattan in New York City and sits on the border between Newark and Elizabeth, in New Jersey. Owned by the city of Newark, it—like nearby LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports—is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Together, the three airports make up the largest airport system in the country, the busiest in the world by flight operations, and second busiest by passenger traffic. While 37.5 million travelers passed through EWR in 2015, a combined 122.7 were served by the New York City airport system.The first major airport in the United States, Newark Library International Airport now hosts a total of 50 carriers. It’s United’s third largest hub (after Chicago-O’Hare and Houston-Intercontinental), and passengers flying on the airline represent over 68 percent of all travelers flying to and from Newark. It opened first opening in 1928 as the New York metro area’s first major commercial airport, and remained the busiest in the world until the opening of LaGuardia in nearby Queens, New York, in 1939.Its 1934 terminal—an Art Deco-style building with abstract murals by Arshile Gorky—was dedicated by Amelia Earhart in 1935. Gorky originally painted ten murals (he was funded by the Works Projects Administration’s Federal Arts Project) but only two survive today. The lost eight are a mystery: no one knows how they went or where. Now a museum and the headquarters for the Port Authority’s police force, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.AirTrain, a free monorail system, connects EWR’s various terminals with the Newark Liberty International Airport Station, which is served by both New Jersey Transit and Amtrak trains. NJT buses also link the airport to Irvington, downtown Newark, and Newark Penn Station, where travelers can transfer to PATH trains and from there travel to Harrison, Hoboken, Jersey City, and Manhattan across the Hudson River.