LaGuardia Airport sinkhole forces delays as Memorial day weekend travel begins

Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News on May 22, 2026

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NEW YORK — Repairs and additional inspections sparked by a sinkhole discovered on a LaGuardia Airport runway will cause delays that will hamper travel on Memorial Day weekend, officials said Friday.

LaGuardia Airport said it expects runway 4/22 — one of the airport’s two main runways — to be out of service until early Saturday morning as they continue inspections sparked by a sinkhole discovered Wednesday.

A crew found the sinkhole around 11 a.m. Wednesday during a daily morning inspection of the airfield, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.

But, as a repair team worked on the problem, more issues were discovered, airport officials said.

“During investigatory inspections of LaGuardia’s airfield pavement Thursday using ground-penetrating radar, possible areas of concern were identified and proactively repaired,” the airport said on X. “Out of an abundance of caution, engineering crews are conducting additional inspections that necessitate the continued closure of Runway 4/22.”

The runway is expected to reopen 6 a.m. Saturday.

The airport is open, but “flights may be affected due to the runway closure,” the Port Authority said.

According to the airport’s website, departure traffic is being held up by an hour and a half. Arrivals are being delayed by about 15 minutes.

The sinkhole was discovered two months after an arriving Air Canada jet slammed into a Port Authority firetruck on LaGuardia Airport’s Runway 4, killing the two pilots and seriously injuring flight attendant Solange Tremblay, who was found alive strapped into her jumpseat — which had been ejected — more than 320 feet across the tarmac from the mangled plane.