Miami sucks all right. Poor design, surly employees, and the stink of mildewed carpet everywhere. Last I came back through there, I learned of a gate change only by happening to hear someone standing nearby mention it—asked a bored-looking gate agent who rolled his eyes and consulted a handwritten sheet of lined notebook paper to tell me where my gate was. Really pleasant when you’re already exhausted and irritable after a 9-hour flight from Brazil.
The amount of “extra” money I’m willing to pay to fly non-stop has increased exponentially. Not every bargain is a bargain.
Designed? JFK was never designed, it grew, out of control, like a cancerous mass. Everytime I travel through it, the airport is in another one of endless re-configurations, like the house in Thirteen Ghosts. Wherever I go, when I return to JFK, I’m embarrassed to see it again in direct comparison to whatever airport I’ve just arrived from.
snerk Well, there’s a reason we schedule ~6-7 am Sunday return trip departure times, and we’re the “get there insanely early in case something happens” types, on top of that. Even with that, we still encounter more cars on the road than you’d think. (All probably going to Logan with the same reasoning in mind.)
I’ve never been to Indira Gandhi airport, but I’m sure Charles de Gaulle gives it a run for its money. Charles de Gaulle airport is appallingly and disgustingly awful. It’s filthy; there’s trash everywhere. It smells. Everyone is rude, almost everyone smokes, and Customs is a bloody nightmare.
Everyone in my organization hates CDG so much that the last time we had to go to France, we flew into Heathrow and took the Eurostar from Waterloo station into Paris.
Heathrow is no walk in the park either, but at least it’s not a cesspool.
I flew through O’Hare every week for four months summer before last. It’s definitely not the worst airport, but I got delayed on every third flight and often had to spend the night at some hotel near the airport.
The plusses for O’Hare is that there are several decent places to eat and decent shops and such. Minuses are the frequent enough delays, heavy traffic, the solar heating that makes it too hot for the A/C to handle in the summer, the layout (especially connecting in through the International Terminal). I thought Logan is much worse.
I was just at Logan on Friday and, for reasons I’m still not clear on, had to go outside to get from terminal B to terminal A (Continental) baggage check. Don’t the two terminals connect?
Long ago I spent a fascinating night in that airport (the place I was staying had no phones and I had no alarm clock, there was way I was waking up for a 5 AM flight). The arrival of a planeload of pale-ass high-school-aged Christian missionaries from Nebraska into that bizarre, grubby barn of lepers and hucksters was one of the funniest things I have ever observed at 4 AM.
(And of course my flight actually left around an hour early. It was unsurprisingly mostly empty. That’s one way to fix a bad on-time record.)
Of all the airports mentioned in this thread, I admit Kathmandu is not very great shakes, but the view of the Himalayas from the plane makes it all worth it.
Honolulu Airport, however, we quite enjoy, possibly because it’s the portal to our beloved Hawaii. I even like the way the airport smells! We did have one bad incident on a trip there 4-1/2 years ago, but it was not the fault of the airport. We were returning to Thailand on China Airlines, and our flight was delayed something like 10 hours. Something was wrong with the plane, and they had to fly a new one in from Taiwan! My Thai wife had already passed through passport control and been stamped out of the country when we learned of this. Myself being an American, I could have just dumped my bags with her and said: “See ya in a few, Babe. I’m off to Waikiki.” But I hung out there with her. Since we’d arrived very early in the morning, we were a little groggy, but renovations going on made it hard to sleep. We thought about checking with Immigration to see if she could be stamped back into the country – she does maintain a 10-year visa in her passport at all times – but decided it would be too much trouble, what with having to go store our bags somewhere and then having to get back into the city and then back out to the airport, so decided to tough it out there. Luckily towards afternoon, I discovered the bar in the airport is rather decent.
If Charles De Gaulle Airport really is that bad, then I feel doubly sorry for Merhan Nasseri’s ordeal.
I can’t imagine how Narita didn’t make the worst list. LAX is a smooth experience compared to the other end of my flight leaving or coming to Japan.
Immigration is a fucking nightmare sometimes. The processing booths are usually understaffed and if more than one flight arrives close to another, there’s a huge mess while everyone tries to figure out how to line up since there are no clear guidelines and the intake hall is shallow and long. Everything clogs up right where you enter. You could easily be in line for an hour or more during busy times if you’re a regular tourist. Even with a return-entry permit, my wait is not inconsiderable. Getting your luggage is a similar mess, due to both poor layout and lack of space.
The only place I’ve had to walk farther to get from one place to another is in the gignormous Houston horseshoe. Plus, it’s out in the middle of nowhere, with an hour train ride to Tokyo. Outgoing, there are two terminals, so you’ve got to double check to make sure you’re going to the right one for your airline. Japan does lots of things right, but as the only international airport for most flights, Narita makes an immediate bad impression that gets reinforced with repetition.
Schiphol: I almost got mugged there once, so it goes on my ‘worst’ list.
BWI: I got screwed (figuratively) by the parking lot guy. In my haste, I parked in short term parking on a long term trip. I had to pay $100+ for parking for four days. I offered to bribe the parking guy to ‘lose’ my ticket, as a lost ticket was only $40 or so. He didn’t do it and made me pay full price. I suspect the bastard pocketed the extra cash. Baltimore sucks.
SATEX International Airport: The two terminals don’t connect, but I understand they’re doing construction nowadays, so maybe they’ll fix that. Then I can go home.
What’s so wrong with Logan? I’ve been through there a bunch of times, never had a problem.
I don’t think of Heathrow as bad, just weird. My first time there we landed early and had to shut off the engines and be towed to the gate because of the noise rules. Then it was a bus from the international terminal to transfer to a plane to Germany. On the way back, it was unusual that there were no seats at the gate. I wish I could remember which terminal so you’d know what I’m talking about. The only place to wait seemed to be in the center of the terminal where all the shops were, and then when they called the flight, walk out to the gate. Which was kinda strange, but nothing actually wrong with doing it that way.
Frankfurt seems about half as big as it ought to be. Gotta be bussed to where the planes are parked and climb the stairs, I hadn’t seen that in years. And when I thought I’d been through security, I walked a quarter mile and had to do it again. (Probably for a stricter screening to fly into the U.S.) Connects right to the rail system, though, which is nice.
My lasting memory of Schiphol is the fly in the urinal.
I can’t think of any that have been really bad. I like travelling, so it would take a truly sucky airport to bring me down. My one time through JFK was when Jet Blue was redoing the old TWA terminal. I wish I’d seen that building in its heyday, but I’m glad they’ve kept it in some fashion.
You probably had to use a QWERTZ-keyboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Germany.svg, but it should have shown the @ underneath the Q. I’m using a QWERTZ keyboard right now, but I get used to switching back and forth, since I only have QWERTY keyboards at home.
I was really impressed with my last trip thru SFO. Using the train to/from the international terminal is easy and the train stops right at the car rental desks. When checking in for my return to London there were 2 people in front of me at the Virgin bag drop, and nobody at all in front of me at security!
I’d swear it wasn’t there, but in the panic of the moment and the anger afterwords I certainly could have missed it. I’ll see if I can remember to check when I go through Frankfurt again next month. Thanks.
I don’t know why everyone likes Schiphol so much. I had make a connection there once and it was like, two miles from point a to point b. It was fucking ridiculous. I mean, it wasn’t hot or cold and the people were nice enough, but that just struck me as terrible design. Is there no train system? I was carrying a bunch of heavy stuff, including my traumatized cat, and it was just a huge pain to lug everything that far.
The Charlotte airport doesn’t have enough plugs. I had a layover there last year and I found one plug around my gate. A bunch of us sat on the floor and took turns charging our iPods and computers.
