August 2025 marked a significant milestone for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as its four commercial airports collectively recorded their busiest month ever, handling 13.8 million passengers. This surpassed the previous record set in July 2024. The agency also reported an all-time high in international travel, with 5.5 million international passengers passing through its airports.
John F. Kennedy International Airport experienced its busiest month on record, welcoming 6.2 million passengers. LaGuardia Airport had its highest August ever with 3 million travelers, while Newark Liberty International Airport saw year-over-year growth for the first time since January 2025 despite earlier challenges with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) staffing and equipment. Newark’s August total reached 4.5 million passengers, up by 4 percent compared to August 2024.
During the Labor Day holiday period from August 28 to September 2, about 2.5 million passengers traveled through the Port Authority’s airports—a new record for that timeframe and a two percent increase over last year’s holiday numbers.
For the first eight months of this year, approximately 95.4 million people flew through Port Authority airports—2.2 percent fewer than during the same period in 2024, primarily due to operational limits at Newark Liberty related to FAA issues.
The Port of New York and New Jersey reported its second-busiest August ever as businesses responded to ongoing global trade volatility by importing more goods. The port handled 835,845 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), which was just under one percent below the pandemic-era record set in August 2022 but represented a nearly six percent increase from August last year and a substantial rise compared to pre-pandemic figures.
From January through August, the port processed over six million TEUs—a four percent increase from last year and more than twenty-one percent above levels seen before the pandemic.
PATH commuter rail ridership continued its recovery with five million passengers in August—seven percent higher than last year’s numbers and reaching over seventy percent of pre-pandemic levels from August 2019. Average weekday ridership rose by more than eight percent compared to last year, while weekend ridership exceeded pre-pandemic levels: Saturday traffic was up by more than five percent and Sunday traffic by almost seven percent relative to August 2019.
In total, PATH carried nearly forty million riders over the first eight months of this year—over seven percent higher than during the same period in 2024.
Vehicular crossings at the agency’s six bridges and tunnels remained steady with strong demand: they served nearly eleven million eastbound vehicles in August—two percent above last year’s level and just below pre-pandemic volumes from August 2019.
For January through August, about eighty-one million eastbound vehicles used these crossings—a figure largely unchanged from both last year (when adjusted for leap day) and pre-pandemic levels.
