If you’ve flown through Newark Liberty International Airport’s Terminal B recently, the age is getting hard to ignore. The terminal opened in 1973 designed to handle 6.8 million passengers a year. In 2025, it handled 11.5 million—and upgrades are long overdue.
That’s about to change. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved a $75 million first phase of a $200 million, three-year upgrade program for Terminal B on Thursday, according to NJ.com. Work is set to begin later this year.
The upgrades will target the things travelers actually notice: gate seating areas, restrooms, lighting, flooring, elevators, escalators, and passenger boarding bridges. HVAC systems, baggage handling, and ADA accessibility improvements are also part of the plans.
“This investment goes directly at the things customers encounter on every trip: the gate areas where they wait, the restrooms they rely on, the escalators and elevators that move them through the building,” said Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia in a statement. “We’re replacing what’s worn, upgrading what’s outdated, and making targeted improvements that will be immediately noticeable.”
Terminal B serves JetBlue, Delta, Allegiant Air, some United flights, and several international carriers, as well as U.S. Customs facilities—making it one of the airport’s busiest and most critical terminals.
The $200 million investment is a bridge measure, intended to maintain operations and improve the passenger experience while a full Terminal B replacement is designed and built under the Port Authority’s EWR Vision Plan. A new Terminal B is expected to open in the mid-2030s, modeled after the award-winning Terminal A that opened in January 2023.
For anyone who regularly flies in and out of EWR’s Terminal B, the improvements can’t come soon enough.
The New Jersey Digest is a new jersey magazine that has chronicled daily life in the Garden State for over 10 years.