Airport Fees on NYC Trips: How Many Trips Pay Them

In short: In TLC's trip records for September 2025 to August 2026, about 20.9 million Uber and Lyft trips and about 3.0 million yellow taxi trips carried an airport fee. The amounts recorded add up to about $61.9 million on app trips and $5.7 million on taxi trips. App trips pay the fee at both ends of an airport trip and at all three airports, so drop-offs at LaGuardia were the single biggest group. The number of fee trips barely moved after the Port Authority raised the fee in March 2026, but the app fee dollars did.

Our counts come from TLC's trip record files, read October 12, 2026: every trip row with an airport_fee above $0, by pickup date. TLC records the fee in its own field, separate from driver pay.

The numbers at a glance

Two different fees

The trip files use one field name, airport_fee, for two different charges:

The yellow data dictionary describes the field as "for pick up only at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy Airports." The HVFHV dictionary says "$2.50 for both drop off and pick up at LaGuardia, Newark, and John F. Kennedy airports." That amount is from before the March 2026 increase in the Port Authority's approved schedule. Green cab files have no airport fee field.

App fee trips by airport and direction

Three things stand out:

• Drop-offs outnumber pickups at both JFK and LaGuardia. Every app trip to the airport is charged the drop-off fee too.
• Newark is drop-off only for NYC app trips: about 1.87 million drop-offs with a fee and 10 pickups. Few NYC-licensed app pickups at Newark show up in TLC's records at all.
• Almost every app airport trip carries the fee. Of app trips starting in an airport zone, 99.2% had one; of trips ending there, 99.4%.

Taxi pickups vs drop-offs

For yellow taxis the fee shows up only where it should: at pickups. About 1.75 million fee trips started at JFK and 1.17 million at LaGuardia, with about 94,000 in other pickup zones that we don't interpret. Not every taxi pickup at JFK shows it: of yellow trip rows starting in the JFK zone, 92.6% had a fee above $0, compared with 97.5% at LaGuardia. The files don't say why. Taxis also logged about 83,000 rows with a negative airport fee, which look like reversals.

For context, here are all airport pickups and drop-offs, with or without a fee:

Monthly counts

Airport traffic as a whole, per day, is in the next chart. January and February are the slow months.

Fee amount distribution

After the March 2026 change settled (April to August 2026), these were the amounts in the records:

Nearly all $7.00 app fees were on trips between two airports: a pickup fee plus a drop-off fee. We don't know why some trips show $1.75, and TLC doesn't explain it, so we don't interpret it.

Who pays

TLC's fare page lists the taxi fee among the charges on the passenger's fare. For app trips, we did not find an official source that says who bears the fee inside the app's price. The HVFHV records keep airport_fee in a separate field from driver_pay, which TLC defines as "not including tolls or tips and net of commission, surcharges, or taxes." For what this means on a receipt, see the airport fee on an Uber trip.

What the data can't tell you

• Port Authority revenue. These are amounts recorded on trips, not money the Port Authority reports receiving.
• Black car, livery and limo trips. Only Uber, Lyft and taxi trips are in these files. Other FHVs also pay the for-hire fee, but they are not counted here.
• Fees drivers paid out of pocket. The records don't show who bore the fee.
• Final numbers. TLC publishes about two months after a month ends and can revise files.

For scale: in our 12-month trip summary (dataset trips-summary-by-sector), 8.3% of yellow taxi trips and 8.3% of app trips touched an airport. More: airport fee rules and future increases, airport trip economics, yearly airport trips, Port Authority TLC summonses, congestion fees on TLC trips, congestion charges on pay statements and JFK vs LaGuardia vs Newark.

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