Start with the thing nearly everyone gets wrong.
Port Authority police at JFK and LaGuardia do not write Port Authority summonses. They write TLC summonses, under the same rulebook that covers you in Manhattan. They are heard at OATH’s Taxi and Limousine tribunal.
The Port Authority’s own airport rules have no fine list at all. Fines there are left to the airport manager and never published.
Why this matters: everything you already know about a TLC summons still applies. Same points, same licence risk, same right to bring someone with you, same tribunal. What changes is which rules they enforce at the airport, and a few of them cost far more than drivers expect.
The airport pickup charges
| Charge | Rule | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Picking up at a NYC airport without a dispatch from your base | § 80-19(c)(2) | $500 first. $750 second in 24 months. They take your licence on a third within 120 months |
| Soliciting or picking up without a dispatch, generally | § 80-19(c)(1) | $200 to $350 first. $350 to $500 and up to 30 days off, second in 24 months. Licence gone on a third in 36 months |
| Taking a dispatch while parked at JFK or LGA outside the pickup area | § 80-19(f) | $250 |
| Picking up at a taxi stand | § 80-19(d)(2) | $350. $500 second in 24 months. Licence gone on a third in 36 months |
| Taxi cruising or soliciting at the airports | § 80-19(a)(4) | $100 if you plead before the hearing. $150 if you lose after |
| Taxi stand queue position | § 80-19(d)(4) | $100 / $150 |
| Bringing passengers into the holding area | § 80-19(e)(2) | $50 |
| Taking a long haul on a short haul ticket, or the reverse | § 80-19(e)(3) | $100 |
Read that top row again. Ten years. The third-violation window on the airport pickup charge is 120 months, not the 36 months you see almost everywhere else. A ticket from eight years ago still counts.
The one thing that cuts most fines, and where it doesn’t
The TLC rulebook prices nearly every violation twice. One amount if you plead guilty before the hearing, a higher one if you lose after it. The gap is usually a third to double.
Standing violations run $100 against $200. Moving violations, $200 against $300. Overcharging, $350 against $500.
But not the airport pickup charges. That $500 and that $250 are single flat numbers with no early-plea discount. On those two, pleading early buys you nothing. So if there is a defence, those are the ones worth actually fighting.
Two charges that end careers
Tipping a dispatcher is $10,000 and you lose your licence. The rule bans giving any gift or anything of value to anyone at the Port Authority working in ground transportation information, dispatching, security, traffic and parking control, or baggage handling. Slipping a starter $20 to move up the line is not a grey area, and it is not a small fine. You have to appear.
Overcharging by $10 or more means automatic revocation. If you charge, or try to charge, $10 or more above the proper rate, or above what the base quoted for a prearranged trip, they will take your licence. And revocation on these charges carries a one year ban on getting any TLC licence.
The charges written after an argument
A good share of airport summonses come out of a dispute with an officer or a dispatcher, not from driving. These need you to appear, and they carry points:
| Charge | Rule | What it costs | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Threats, harassment, abuse | § 80-12(e) | $350 to $1,000, and/or 5 to 30 days off | 3 |
| Fraud or theft | § 80-12(c) | $350 to $1,000, and/or 5 to 60 days off, plus paying it back | 4 |
| Acts against the public interest | § 80-12(d) | $150 to $350, and/or 5 to 30 days off | 3 |
| Using or threatening force | § 80-12(f) | $500 to $1,500, and/or 5 to 60 days off | 4 |
Every one of those is a range. That is exactly where turning up with someone to speak for you changes the number.
Refusing a fare to Newark is a refusal. The rule says you have to take a passenger anywhere in the city, Westchester, Nassau, or Newark Airport. Refusals carry a set ladder: $700 for a second in 24 months if you plead early, $1,000 and possibly 30 days off if you lose. A third in 36 months costs you the licence either way.
There is no fix-it option
Nothing in the TLC rules or OATH’s rules lets you fix a driver violation and make it go away. The correction options that exist for Buildings or Fire have no version here. Nobody should tell you to fix something and watch the ticket disappear.
What does exist is a reduction in the interest of justice. A hearing officer can lower a fine for compelling reasons, weighing nine listed factors including your history and what the fine would do to you.
A reduction is not final for 20 business days. In that window the TLC Chairperson can put the full fine back, or raise it. Drivers who are told at the hearing that their fine was cut, then get a bill for the whole amount, are not looking at a clerical error. That is the rule working as written.
Four rules worth knowing before your hearing date
- You get 90 minutes. You are on time if you are there and ready no more than 90 minutes after your scheduled time. Traffic does not automatically lose you the case.
- If TLC doesn’t show, the summons is dismissed. If they fail to appear within 30 minutes of you being there on time, and have not properly asked to move it, it gets dismissed.
- The three hour rule. If the hearing has not started within three hours of both sides being there, it gets dismissed.
- They have to produce the witness against you where that person’s credibility matters. If they cannot, they have to explain what they tried. If the hearing officer thinks they did not try hard enough, the summons is dismissed.
If you already missed the hearing
Two things every driver should know.
You have two years, not one. You can file to undo a TLC no-show decision within two years. The 75 day and one year figures quoted all over the internet are the general OATH rules. The TLC track has its own, longer deadline. Inside 75 days a first request is granted without any reason, so speed is still worth everything. But being past a year does not mean it is over.
What really bites is the suspension. If a fine is not paid by the due date, TLC tells you your licence will be suspended in 10 business days until you pay.
And note the trap. Miss it a second time on the same summons after getting it reopened, and that decision is final. No further request, no appeal.
You do not have to pay to appeal. You are not required to pay the fines in order to file a timely appeal. This is a TLC exception to OATH’s usual rule, and drivers get it wrong constantly.
The airport permit you think you have
You don’t have one.
The FHV Privilege Permit needed to work at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark is held by your base or the company you drive for, not by you. They supply a Federal Tax ID, a W-9, corporate signing authority, a state registration certificate and insurance. Then a list of plates and driver names. Your name sits on somebody else’s permit.
So a summons cannot “suspend your airport permit.” There was never a personal one to suspend.
The airport access fee is not a fine either. It is a per-trip charge added to the passenger’s fare, collected and passed on by the operator. It has nothing to do with a summons.
Here is what can happen separately. The airport manager can pull a vehicle’s permission to work at the airport, or take back an Airport ID, under the Port Authority’s own rules. That is their decision, not an OATH case, and you get no OATH hearing on it.
Losing at OATH costs you a TLC fine and TLC points. OATH cannot touch your airport access, and airport access decisions do not go through OATH.
Newark
The question people ask is “does a Newark ticket go to OATH.” The question that actually answers it is what is printed on the paper, because one trip to Newark can produce two different documents that go to two different places.
A New Jersey summons is never an OATH case. If what you were handed charges New Jersey law, it is answered in New Jersey. The teeth there are N.J.S.A. 32:1-146.6 and 146.7: soliciting business at a Port Authority air terminal runs $500 to $1,000 for a first offence and $750 to $1,500 for a repeat, with jail exposure, heard in the Superior Court or the municipal court where it happened. Newark’s own city code is a second route, at $100 to $1,000. Read the statute and the court printed on your summons. Do not assume.
A TLC summons about Newark conduct is an OATH case. TLC’s rules reach its own licensees wherever they are. Soliciting at Newark Airport is a TLC violation at $100, or $150 if you lose after a hearing, and TLC’s own rulebook names the forum: the Taxi and Limousine Tribunal at OATH. The duty to cooperate with law enforcement covers Port Authority police at Newark too.
So forum follows the charge, not the geography.
Two things worth knowing before you go there at all. The Port Authority’s own airport rules say a TLC taxicab licence authorises unarranged pickups only at air terminals within the City of New York. A medallion is not a Newark pickup licence. And the Port Authority’s rules carry no fine or hearing of their own for the airports: their enforcement is proprietary, meaning they withdraw permission, take an airport ID, or act against the base’s FHV permit.
One honest limit. New Jersey attached those penalties to specific listed Port Authority rules, soliciting among them, but not to the prearrangement rule. So an unarranged pickup without soliciting sits in a genuinely different position, and we would want to see the paperwork before telling you which one you are in.
And yes, we can appear for you
Registered representatives can appear on these on the same terms as any other case at the Hearings Division, and the Port Authority has no different rule.
Most of the charges above say “appearance not required.” That means the summons gets decided whether or not anyone shows up for you.