This week the New York/New Jersey region will play host to what will be a historic Super Bowl. Super Bowl XLVIII, featuring the Denver Broncos versus the Seattle Seahawks, will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, marking the first time the Big Game is hosted by the Big Apple and having the distinction of being the first ever played outdoors in a cold weather city. The New York metropolitan-area airports are gearing up to receive the thousands of visitors that will be flying in over the next few days to attend the weeklong festivities leading up to the NFL’s showcase event.
New York City is well-equipped to handle big events and its airports are accustomed to handling large volumes of passenger traffic. That said, the Port Authority will be adding extra staff and volunteers from the NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee will be on hand in all airport terminals to assist passengers as they arrive. Additional resources will also be on hand for snow removal in case a winter storm comes through. While the region is well-served by both domestic and international airlines, additional seat capacity will be added to the cities whose teams are participating in the game. United will be adding flights from Newark Liberty Internatonal (EWR) to Denver (DEN) and Seattle (SEA) this week, including upgrading equipment on some flights to the 777. JetBlue will be adding extra sections of their own to those two cities from JFK on the Thursday and Friday prior to the game and the Monday after the game. Additional charter flights carrying fans of both teams should also be making their way to EWR and/or JFK although we haven’t seen any specific on that as of yet. As for the two teams, the Broncos and Seahawks team charters arrived at EWR yesterday with each team’s aircraft being pulled into a hangar.
New Orleans Lakefront Airport during last year’s Super Bowl. (Photo: Jay Taffet/JMT Aviation and Hawthorne Global Aviation Services.)
The most notable increase in traffic will be at the region’s reliever airports. The Super Bowl attracts a large number of business aviation users as many corporations, sponsors, and other well-heeled travelers regularly attend the game. Although a considerable portion of this traffic originates from New York, it is expected the region will still receive an estimated 1,200, business aviation flights. The primary destination for much of this traffic will be Teterboro (TEB) due to its proximity to Manhattan and it being a long Peyton Manning pass away from MetLife Stadium. TEB, already one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country, is expecting to accommodate up to 600 business jets on its ramps. Because of this anticipated demand the airport will be implementing a reservation system starting the Wednesday prior to the game and ending the Tuesday after, for all arrivals and departures.
Although TEB’s very close proximity to the stadium makes it attractive, there is a downside in that a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) will be in effect on Sunday starting a few hours prior to the game and ending shortly after the game ends. TEB would effectively be shut down to all traffic during this TFR. Once the TFR is lifted postgame, TEB expects to be extremely busy as a few hundred bizjets line up to leave town overnight. Other airports in the region also plan to receive a fair share of Super Bowl related traffic, including Westchester County (HPN), Morristown (MMU), Essex County (CDW), and Republic (FRG). Even far-away airports like Trenton (TTN), Allentown (ABE) and Stewart International (SWF) expect to receive some overflow bizjet traffic. EWR also expects a higher volume of business aviation traffic, and the local FBO Signature Flight Support recently built a new terminal just in time to accommodate the increased demand.
Stay tuned to our Twitter and Facebook feeds for updates on Super Bowl-related traffic. Got any intel? Share it on our forum.
It was all a dream, he used to read Airways magazine. Now aviation is both a hobby and a profession for Nate Anderson. He occasionally still reads Airways.
