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In short: At JFK, app pickups build through the afternoon and peak late in the evening (10–11 p.m.). Yellow taxi pickups peak in the afternoon (3–5 p.m.). At LaGuardia, app pickups stay high from 9 a.m. to midnight, then almost stop between 3 and 7 a.m. Sunday and Monday are the busiest days at JFK. At LaGuardia, Saturday is much quieter than any other day. These are pickups counted in TLC's trip records for September 2025 to August 2026. They are not wait times.
The numbers at a glance
JFK: pickups by hour and industry
The two industries move differently. App pickups at JFK keep rising through the evening, and more than 700 a day happen in each hour from 8 p.m. to midnight. Yellow taxi pickups rise sharply from 2 p.m., peak at 4 p.m., and stay at about 300–350 an hour into the night. Both are near zero at 3–4 a.m.
LaGuardia: pickups by hour and industry
LaGuardia has a real overnight gap. Between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., app pickups average under 30 an hour and taxi pickups under 5. Uber's driver page lists its LaGuardia waiting areas as open 6 a.m. to 1 a.m., so Uber's airport queue there is closed for most of that gap.
How concentrated the peaks are
Adding up the hours shows how much of the day's business falls in a few hours:
- JFK app trips: about 27% of the day's pickups happen between 8 p.m. and midnight (2,992 of 10,927 a day).
- JFK yellow taxis: about 40% happen between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. (2,019 of 5,010 a day).
- LaGuardia app trips: about 88% happen between 9 a.m. and midnight (11,944 of 13,497 a day).
These shares come from the same hourly counts as the charts above.
Weekdays vs weekends
The zone datasets split each airport's hourly pickups (all industries together) into weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays:
The average day of the week tells the same story:
Month by month
Monthly totals for each airport and industry over the full year are in trips-airport-pickups: JFK had 1,828,649 yellow and 3,988,508 app pickups, and LaGuardia 1,175,670 yellow and 4,926,495 app pickups.
What the data can't tell you
- No queue data. No official source publishes JFK or LaGuardia hold-lot or staging-lot wait times.
- Pickup time is clock time. Hours use the meter-on or pickup timestamp in the record, grouped by clock hour.
- Black car and livery trips that are not high-volume (Uber, Lyft) are not in these counts.
- Newark is not shown. NYC-licensed vehicles recorded only about 6,400 pickups there in the year (
trips-airport-pickups). Newark is in New Jersey, and NYC yellow cabs have no hail rights there under Port Authority rule V.D. - Data lag. TLC publishes trip files about two months after the month ends and can revise them.
Related
How much these trips pay is on airport trip economics, and where the people heading to the airports come from is on where airport trips start. Year-by-year totals are on NYC airport trip statistics. Before you join a queue, read the rules: 80-19(f) for app drivers and 80-19(a)(4)(i) for taxi drivers. The fees are explained in the access fee and the airport fee on an Uber receipt. Compare the airports in JFK vs LaGuardia vs Newark, and see LaGuardia Airport and the airports topic.
Frequently asked questions
When are JFK pickups busiest?
In TLC trip records for Sep 2025 – Aug 2026, app pickups at JFK peaked late in the evening (about 784 a day in the 10 p.m. hour). Yellow taxi pickups peaked in the afternoon (about 379 a day in the 4 p.m. hour). The quietest hours for both were 3 a.m. to 4 a.m.
When are LaGuardia pickups busiest?
LaGuardia app pickups ran at about 600 to 900 an hour from 9 a.m. to midnight, peaking around 11 p.m. Between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. they fell to under 30 an hour. Yellow taxi pickups peaked around 2 p.m.
Which day is busiest at the airports?
Sunday and Monday had the most pickups at JFK for both yellow taxis and app trips. At LaGuardia, Monday was busiest and Saturday was far quieter than any other day.
Does more pickups mean shorter waits in the lot?
Not necessarily. The trip records count pickups. They do not show how many drivers were waiting, so they can't tell you queue length or wait time.
Sources
Last reviewed against the official sources on .
- NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 nyc.gov
- TLC Taxi Zone Lookup Table d37ci6vzurychx.cloudfront.net
- Uber: Driving at LaGuardia Airport (driver information) uber.com
Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we'll check it against the official source.
TLC Help is not a law firm and is not affiliated with the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission or OATH. Explanations on this site are general information, not legal advice. Legal representation is provided by independent attorneys and OATH-registered representatives in our network.