Love And Hate At Newark Airport

David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD on

Love And Hate At Newark Airport - September 2025

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. That’s how A Tale of Two Cities begins, but when we’re talking about United Airlines at Newark Airport, it somehow always feels like the worst of times.

A couple of weeks ago United’s CEO issued a press release assuring everyone that Newark operations were “back to normal.” Everything is supposedly running as smooth as grease on a slip and slide. Translation: pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after decades of watching United, it’s this – when they say there’s nothing to worry about, that’s precisely when you should start to panic.

Just days ago, I read a rumor online that United is considering significant staff cuts at Newark. From flight attendants to pilots to ground staff, everyone could be on the block. With softening demand and FAA bottlenecks limiting traffic in and out of the airspace, it wouldn’t be surprising if layoffs show up in the airline’s playbook. Cost savings always come easier at the front lines than in executive suites, after all.

I remember (when I was much younger) that Newark was the quiet, hidden alternative to JFK and LaGuardia – a sleepy little secret where you could dart in and out of New York without the chaos. That didn’t last long. Everything since has been decidedly anti-passenger: removing moving walkways and replacing them with mid-corridor restaurants, shuttering lounges, forcing passengers to stuff bags into sizers that never matched actual bin space, and cultivating a general culture of belligerence on the ground.

Much of this traces back to Continental’s leadership era. Gordon Bethune, famous for saying you could make pizza too cheap for people to want it, promptly cheapened his own. One of his successors, Jeff Smisek led a team that felt passengers were “over-entitled,” and later left under a cloud of questionable legality. The culture they left behind regrettably still lingers in an iteration of United that took the worst of both airlines.

To be fair, there have been a few bright spots – mostly defined by bad things stopping. Ground staff eventually gave up on shoving suitcases into sizers for sport. The newish touchless check-in TSA lanes are decently rapid, but only because they’re not yet mobbed. And the new Terminal A is genuinely nice, even if it operates like it’s never met Terminal C. (I’ve written about that recently – where the baggage operations at A and C never, ever coordinate.)

So, do I hope Newark-based employees keep their jobs? Absolutely. But would I shed tears if they don’t? Not exactly. For decades, staff had a daily choice to be decent to passengers at the hub 15 minutes from my house – and too often chose not to. That’s Newark: a place where love and hate coexist in equal measure, depending on whether you’re boarding or deplaning.

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

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