London got it right. LA didn't.

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Not all multi-airport cities are created equal.

Some metros have built sprawling networks that make getting anywhere seamless. Others have fragmented systems that confuse travelers and duplicate infrastructure nobody asked for.

And a handful of booming destinations are desperately overdue for relief.

Let's break down who nailed it, who overdid it, and who needs to start pouring concrete.

THE GOLD STANDARD

London's six-airport system sounds excessive until you use it.

Heathrow handles long-haul heavyweights. Gatwick absorbs leisure traffic and low-cost carriers. Stansted and Luton give budget airlines room to operate. City Airport serves business travelers who need to be in Canary Wharf in 20 minutes.

Even tiny Southend has a niche.

The genius is differentiation. Each airport has a purpose, a passenger profile, a reason to exist. Combined, they handled 178 million passengers in 2024.

Tokyo executes similarly.

Narita takes international long-haul. Haneda handles domestic and regional flights plus premium international routes. The split is clean, the transit connections are world-class, and passengers rarely question which airport they need.

New York works despite itself.

JFK is the international gateway, Newark captures United's hub traffic and New Jersey demand, and LaGuardia (finally renovated) serves domestic. Three airports for 20 million people in the metro actually makes sense.

THE OVERBUILT

Los Angeles has five airports within the metro and arguably needs two.

LAX is a behemoth that handles most traffic. But Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, and John Wayne all compete for scraps, none achieving the scale needed for efficient operations.

Ontario was supposed to relieve LAX for Inland Empire passengers. Instead, people still drive 60 miles to LAX because that's where the flights are.

Too many airports, not enough coordination.

(Sometimes the best move is skipping the airport chaos entirely and hitting the open road.)

The San Francisco Bay Area runs a similar problem.

SFO, Oakland, and San Jose all serve overlapping populations without clear differentiation. The result is three mediocre airports instead of one great one.

DESPERATELY NEEDS MORE

Sydney has operated at crisis capacity for years.

Kingsford Smith is landlocked by Botany Bay, curfewed at night, and choking on demand. Western Sydney International opens late 2026 and cannot come soon enough, with Qantas, Jetstar, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand already signed on.

Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji serves a metro of 22 million and has run at breaking point for years.

Navi Mumbai International finally opened in December 2025 after decades of delays, with capacity for 20 million passengers annually.

Atlanta, the world's busiest airport, somehow operates with just Hartsfield-Jackson.

It works because Delta runs it like a machine with 108 million passengers in 2024. (I wrote more about how Delta became the most dominant U.S. carrier.)

But a single point of failure for that much traffic is genuinely risky.

THE TAKEAWAY

Multiple airports work when each one has clear identity and purpose.

They fail when cities build redundant infrastructure hoping demand will follow.

And they're desperately needed when geography, politics, or poor planning forces 50 million passengers through a single chokepoint.

Next time you're cursing a connection at a cramped regional airport, consider: maybe the problem isn't too many airports.

Maybe it's not enough purpose.

Until next Thursday,

Jeff