San Jose: for the smallness/incompetence of it.
Oakland: Maybe it’s just the gates where JetBlue flies from, but the furniture/carpet dates from the seventies and looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since then. Plus it’s insanely crowded and they often have 2 flights exit from the same gate (no jetway; you walk out under these plastic sheeting canopies and get to a point where you turn left for one flight or right for the other).
Dulles: way the fuck in the middle of nowhere, complete maze with no good food options. I only fly out of here if the discount warrants it.
Like:
Denver: pretty decent food…there’s a good bar there where we always get food on our layover. Lots of room to walk around too–this is normally a stopover point for me, so it’s great to stretch between long flights.
San Diego’s airport is very lopsided. Terminal 1 is a festering pile of shit, which is a pity because the most efficient airline (Southwest) flies out of there. Whoever designed the bathrooms in that terminal should be shot because there are not nearly enough toilets for the number of asses that pass through that terminal on an average day. And for some reason, they only seem to get cleaned once a day. If you feel the need to move your bowels while transferring in that terminal in the late afternoon or evening, you better hold it, because you will be greeted with four disgusting stalls that each have a flotilla of turds covered in used toilet paper someone felt wasn’t worth flushing. Sure, you could flush it and use the stall, if the whole thing also didn’t look like the splash zone at SeaWorld, assuming Shamu swam in urine. Meanwhile, over at terminal 2, there are tons of bathrooms with new fixtures, and enough cleaning staff that there is never a problem. They also have a CPK and other food choices that barely exist past security at terminal 1.
My biggest beef with ORD is that I’ve never had a flight leave there (or leave for there) on time. My biggest beef with MDW is that the Orange Line is so ridiculously difficult to get to when you’ve got luggage.
Charlotte - clean, breezy and good eats
Schipol - clean and friendly
Barcelona - spanking new
Madrid - spanking new
Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 - BA actually is less than painful in T5
Denver - as long as you are connecting through it, and not trying to get into/out of it
SeaTac - good eats, free wi-fi and reasonably clean
Boise - small and friendly
Richmond, VA - ditto
SFO International - The Virgin lounge is especially nice
Sucks Donkey:
O’Hare - busy, dirty s***hole
Heathrow T1-T4 - Godawful
LAX - More godawful, gives me a headache just thinking about it
Bologna and Verona - need to get into the 1980’s sometime soon
JFK - the worst of the worst
Newark - Maybe worse
Philly’s American terminal - Probably worse than that
Jan Smuts (JoBurg) - blech, make sure you don’t get killed going to your car
SFO Domestic - showing its age
Beijing. I had a long lay-over after arriving from Qingdao for Tokyo last January. It was about 14C in the airport. I sat with my winter coat on, glad of my laptop on my knees to add a little warmth. I can’t complain about the price of food there, although I’m sure it was expensive by Chinese standards. Don’t even get me started on the officious security personnel and their grim demeanour.
O’Hare. In fairness, I think I’ve only ever flown into Chicago as a destination a few times; usually, my experience has been on a connecting flight, and two of those were in October and November of 2001 – so, not exactly seeing the airport at it’s most efficient. Still, every trip has been an arduous experience, with long waits at security and inadequate directions for connecting flights. And, that’s even discounting the experiences of two of my colleagues who were stuck at O’Hare during the 2003 blackout.
Ambivalent:
Narita. Superb efficiency, relatively short distances between the landing gates and Immigration, and your luggage never takes very long to show up. And tons of stores and restaurants for while you’re waiting. On the other hand, it’s more than an hour by express train from most parts of Tokyo, and it costs more than $20 to get there. I never have the patience to take the regular trains, especially after a 14+ hour flight.
Pearson. The new terminal is a vast improvement over the two it replaced, but as noted above it’s often a long hike to your gate, even with the super-high-speed slidewalks.
Vancouver. By far one of the most attractive airports I’ve ever been in, but often inefficient and seems to require connecting flights be as far as possible from each other. More than once, my connecting flight has been held up because dozens of people on my flight couldn’t get through security and Customs in the hour and a half or so allocated. I’ve also missed my connecting flights more often in Vancouver than any other airport.
Like:
Toronto Island Airport. The new terminal for Porter Air is comfortable, has free coffee, juice and pastries for everyone, along with free newspapers. The waiting areas are designed so that you’re often shielded by plants or dividers from most of your fellow travellers, and yet there are bright, clear flight boards everywhere. Of course, Porter is a tiny airline that only flies to a dozen or so cities in Canada, the US and Caribbean, and only with regional prop planes.
I hate CDG. I haven’t been there in a couple of years, but I remember it being filthy, smelly, and smokey…did I mention smokey?
I actually don’t mind DFW, but I’m usually just passing through via a connecting flight, in which case I just take the Skylink to my connecting flight’s terminal, which only takes a few minutes. For trips where Dallas is my final destination, I usually stay at the Marriott DFW, which is right at the airport, and I’m shuttled back and forth, so it’s not bad at all.
Best - Palm Beach International Airport. Small, but good amenities, and easy parking.
I actually really like JFK’s Jet Blue terminal. They have some good restaurants and places to hook up computers. The rest of the airport can suck donkey balls.
Denver’s really spread out, but it looks nice at least. Long security lines, though.
Newark isn’t so bad since they redid Terminal C.
Philadelphia is the worst. Horrible, smelly airport and terrible customer service.
I don’t mind Newark. Whenever I fly it’s on Continental so I always depart/arrive from Newark. My flights have always left on time, if not a little early, and the security there has always been a breeze to go through (unlike Heathrow, where I had to wait an hour for my luggage to be hand searched because I had bought a tiny souvenir snowglobe while on vacation in Wales. :rolleyes:) The only things I don’t like about Newark is that they do not have free wi-fi, and if your return gets in at the wrong time you may end up waiting a while for NJ Transit back into the city.
I’m guessing you flew in to Terminal C, the one where you had to walk across the tarmac to the terminal? They’re tearing that one down to make more parking now that Terminal B is finished. So, no it doesn’t.
The new terminal has free wifi and comfy chairs with plugs built right in.
I dislike Miami’s international airport. I haven’t had to take connection flights in a while, but I remember that they had no shuttle, and just signs pointing to the route to take for different terminals. Also, I remember they included the minutes left if you were walking. Something like 15 minutes for some terminals! And the walk was all through a covered, zig-zagging, weird hallway with white walls and occasional nonworking workers.
Also, it was very lopsided in its amenities, but since going from one terminal to the other was such a hassle, I tended not to leave the terminal. Last time I got stuck with terminal H, I assume standing in for Hell. No wi-fi, no amenities, and stale food counters.
In contrast, I do like Atlanta’s. Lucky to not have had bad things happen during the chokepoint. Love the tram system. It is still a bit lopsided in terminal design, but with the trams, it is not so bad to move over to another terminal if there is time. I can always go to terminal E to eat or go to another terminal to shop. Plus you can sleep in some of those chairs!
I usually fly between Raleigh-Durham and Philadelphia. I like RDU; there isn’t much food, but it’s quiet and everything makes sense. Philadelphia pipes in music - usually classical, but the other day it was some awful saxophone-and-synthesizers rubbish - and it irritates me because I’m a musician and have trouble ignoring it. And one time a few months ago, my flight to RDU inexplicably left from the ass-end of the international terminal.
One airport I didn’t see mentioned, that I like, is Pittsburgh. Nice selection of shops, and just the right balance between small and large.
Bad:
LaGuardia - Old, overworked and undersized, and terrifyingly short runways. On the plus side, it has a Nathan’s.
Atlanta - An utter nightmare for changing planes. Could be used as a test maze.
Reagan National - DC’s version of LaGuardia.
Logan - For the reasons mentioned by others
Philadelphia - Ditto. They also never seem to have gates available for newly arrived flights.
Good:
Manchester, NH - Good size. Could use more food options, though.
Charlotte Douglas - Pleasant for an airport, with an excellent food court.
Louisville - See Manchester comments.
Akron - Small. Pricey parking for the size and location, though.
Islip - Shockingly laid-back for a New York-area airport. Still the best option in the area.
Baltimore - Nicely updated. Thanks to Southwest, always seems to offer good prices.
Re the OP: I just flew into and out of McCarran and it was “meh”. The slot machines everywhere were odd but not unexpected given that it was, well, Vegas. The rental car pickup was OK, but the dropoff was a bit annoying - I dropped the rest of the family off near the departure lanes then went to find the rental return. Missed the (one small) sign once and looped all around, then saw it the second time around. It involved getting BACK ON THE INTERSTATE. Oooookay.
I dislike Dallas-Fort Worth (well, last time I flew through, which was the 1990s) because it’s so huge and spread out.
Dulles used to be a pain with those moving things to go to the remote terminal. That may be better (I gather they’ve put a new system in).
BWI (Baltimore-Washington International), if it were closer (it’s an hour away from us) would be my favorite because it’s reasonably well laid out. And if you go for shorter-term parking they’ve got a great system that shows you how many spaces and WHERE THEY ARE.
My all-time favorite at present is Orange County / John Wayne. Very small, only 14 gates, and the rental cars are walking distance. The only think I disliked about it was the noise-abatement takeoff procedures - the plane would take off hard and steep - then seem to CUT ITS ENGINES. We weren’t really falling, but it sure felt like it for a few seconds. Apparently all the rich folks living around there had complained about the noise. Once, the pilot got on the blower and encouraged us to all write our Congressmen to complain about the procedures.
A close second, even though I’ve only used it once, is Providence RI - similarly small and I’ve walked further to get my car at the mall than I had to to get the rental car at Providence.
:::snerk::: I’ve been through that one at O’Hare. A friend who was flying coast-to-coast had to change planes in Chicago and went down that way in the middle of the night. He said that as sleep-deprived as he was, it was pretty surreal.
I like National Airport! It’s rennovated and small and convenient (15 minute drive, $15 cab fare from my house, also on a Metro Stop). If you are visiting DC, I’d highly recommend it over Dulles or BWI.