Inside MSY: A New Orleans Airport Layover

The 2019 terminal at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport runs three concourses off a single security checkpoint, with a beignet counter frying behind glass in Concourse B, Leah Chase’s kitchen on the way to Concourse C, and a live music stage down in the check-in hall that needs no boarding pass.

The live oak printed across the check-in hall

Cesar Pelli drew the terminal that opened here on 6 November 2019, and its plan is a shallow arc, a curve meant to answer the bend the Mississippi makes eight miles south. Inside, that reads as one long hall with a skylight running the length of it, white ribs arching across the ceiling and a glass wall at the far end instead of the low, sealed box the old terminal was. One column carries a full-height photograph of a live oak trailing Spanish moss, lit from behind, which is as close as an airport gets to the drive in along an avenue of them.

The Jazz Garden Stage stands in this hall, below the escalators that carry everyone up to security, and it is the piece of programming worth knowing about: the airport books live acts onto it through a residency run with the city’s Mayor’s Office of Cultural Economy, three-month terms, at least one two-hour set a week, jazz preferred but blues, zydeco, funk and soul taken too. Nobody at the foot of the escalator checks a boarding pass. Two more stages operate past the checkpoint, so a set is possible on either side of it.

One checkpoint serves all 35 gates

Fifteen screening lanes feed every gate in the building, which is unusual enough to change how a connection works here: once you are through, Concourses A, B and C are all open to you on foot, six gates, then fourteen, then fifteen. Nothing is stranded behind a second checkpoint and there is no train or shuttle to wait for between them.

What that also means is that the Jazz Garden Stage sits on the wrong side of the only barrier there is, so going back down for a set costs a second pass through those fifteen lanes with everything you are carrying.

Airside, the food is the reason this terminal gets written about. Cafe du Monde has a counter in Concourse B with a window onto the fryers, running 4am to 9pm, a shorter day than the original stand on Decatur Street, which does not shut overnight at all. Leah’s Kitchen sits between the checkpoint and Concourse C, named for Leah Chase and cooking to the register she was known for: gumbo, red beans and rice, fried chicken, barbecue shrimp. Emeril’s Table is the other full-service room, built around an open kitchen and a bar that goes the whole way round. The chains are here, but they were given the smaller frontages.

The 202 Airport Express is the only city bus out of the terminal

Buses pick up on the airport’s ground transportation level and cost $1.25, the same fare as a streetcar downtown, running out along Interstate 10 to stops on Poydras Street and the Union Passenger Terminal bus bays. The ride is about 40 minutes. What decides whether it is usable is the gap between departures: roughly 70 to 90 minutes, so a badly timed arrival can wait longer than it rides.

A taxi from the rank is the other option and the fare is fixed by city ordinance rather than a meter: $36 into the Central Business District or the French Quarter for one or two passengers, $15 a head once there are three or more, 20 to 30 minutes each way before traffic.

Under five hours, none of that is worth starting. Past five, it is, and the walk through the French Quarter is what the time is actually for: Jackson Square, the cast ironwork on Royal Street, and the museum on Andrew Higgins Drive, whose tickets are worth holding before you land rather than queueing for on the day. Leaving a bag in town rather than dragging it back out here is the difference between a walk and an errand.