Many travelers find the process of flying can be enough to turn them into a bundle of nerves, with add-on charges, cancellations, and constantly shifting airline policies making the journey stressful long before takeoff.
Although plenty of people deal with aviophobia — a fear of flying — some airports have also built reputations for leaving passengers frustrated and on edge before they even reach the gate.
An analysis from ground transport company Mozio suggests that recurring flight delays, difficult airport access, and the challenge of navigating busy terminals and TSA lines have helped turn certain major US airports into particular pressure points for anxious flyers.
That tension has only grown in recent years, as Air Traffic Control staffing struggles and the resulting ripple effects have contributed to widespread delays. Still, Mozio’s findings indicate that some airports consistently create more stress than others.
Based on Mozio’s scoring across factors such as delays, parking prices, and how easy it is to reach the terminal, Chicago O’Hare International Airport ranked as the most stressful airport for passengers.
O’Hare recorded a stress score of 8.42 out of 10. By Mozio’s measures, that puts it at the top of the list, with 25.4 percent of flights experiencing delays at one of the country’s busiest hubs.
Costs and convenience also play a role. Parking at O’Hare is listed at $43 per day, and the trip from the airport into the city can take more than an hour, in part due to the airport’s location on the outskirts of Chicago.
Even though many travelers would likely say this matches their experience of O’Hare, Mozio’s research also highlighted a notable geographic split, with several of the most stressful airports clustered within the same region.
Right behind O’Hare, and unlikely to shock frequent flyers, was New York’s LaGuardia Airport, which earned a stress score of 7.54.
LaGuardia stood out most for its steep parking charges, with drivers paying as much as $80 per day. On top of that, Mozio’s figures show the airport has an even larger share of delayed flights than O’Hare.
Over the past year, 26.3 percent of flights traveling through the mostly domestic airport were delayed. And after travelers retrieve their cars from that $80-per-day parking, it can still take close to an hour to reach Manhattan.
For New York passengers, the stress isn’t limited to LaGuardia. Mozio’s rankings placed the city’s other major airports — John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport — in third and fourth, with both receiving stress scores of 7.19 due to their own travel complications.
Both JFK and Newark also list parking at $70 per day and typically involve about an hour of driving into the city under ideal conditions. However, they reportedly experienced fewer delays than LaGuardia, with fewer than 25 percent of flights arriving late and more than 76 percent departing within 15 minutes of schedule.
Not every airport scored poorly. On the opposite end of Mozio’s scale, Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport was rated the least stressful by a wide margin, earning a stress score of 1.76 thanks to lower parking costs and only 19 percent of flights facing delays.