NYC airport food is about to get even more expensive
Food, drinks and snacks purchased at NYC airports are already expensive, but the cost of the goods is likely to increase even more by 2025 if a new proposal by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy actually goes through.
According to the New York Times, the governmental agency hopes to cover rising costs of labor at LaGuardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports by allowing on-site restaurants and shops to raise their prices and add a 3% surcharge to their sales. If the proposal were to go through, travelers could be hit with a 7.5% increase in prices by January 2025.
At the moment, airport concessions are allowed to charge up to 10% more than “street prices” for their products. The new policy would up that to 15% by the beginning of 2025, also allowing the operators to tack on a 3% fee to all bills as part of an “employee benefits and retention surcharge.”
In addition to that all, the agency is planning on increasing wages for airport employees, who are currently getting paid $19 per hour. The paper reports that the first such raise would come in January and amount to an additional 75 cents an hour. Similar raises would then occur again in July of 2025 and January of 2026.
“Starting in January 2027, the minimum wage for the airport workers would rise annually at the rate of increases in the regional Consumer Price Index, according to the proposal,” reads the report by the New York Times. “The wage would rise to $25 in September 2032 if it had not already reached that level, the proposal said.”
For the proposal to go into effect, all of the Port Authority’s commissioners will have to approve of it. Considering that they are appointed by the governors of New York and New Jersey, both behind the effort, we suspect changes are soon coming.