I haven’t been to a ton of airports, but for me the best has been BWI. It’s reasonably convenient from my home in suburban DC, they have parking garages that tell you where the free spaces are, the shuttles are easy to use and come when they’re supposed to, the airport is clean and bright and easy to navigate. Never had a problem there. PDX, MSP, and DCA get honorable mentions.
The worst, hands-down, is LAX. What a shithole. It’s filthy and old, the traffic is beyond terrible and I felt like I was going to die every time I drove on airport property, you need to park in private lots if you ever want to reach your car, and the terminals are insanely far apart with no convenient way to traverse between them. The security line for Terminal 7 is in the breezeway to the parking garage with buses belching exhaust underneath. It’s the only airport I’ve ever been at where there was no screen in the American baggage claim area telling you which carousel your bags were coming to. And it’s just so, so DIRTY. You half-expect to see rats running up the escalators. The best part of not living in LA any more is not having to use LAX. It made me pine for Dulles and its stupid mobile lounges.
The last few times I’ve been through MIA, they were the only domestic airport that wouldn’t let you through security with an electronic boarding pass. I had to walk all the way back to the thingy and scan the barcode off my phone and print a paper boarding pass to get in. What is this, the middle ages?
And of course I forgot about that the next time I went through Miami and had to do it all again. Everywhere else I’ve been accepts electronic boarding passes at security now.
Interestingly Wichita just completed their new airport and opened earlier this month. I flew into the old airport. It was a horrible mish-mash of 60’s/70’s architecture, narrow walkways, dark hallways, low ceilings, cheap upholstered seats, etc. etc.
When I left the town, they had closed the old terminal so I flew out of the new airport, which is a new bright terminal, very spacious, glass-walled jetways, clean, etc. etc.
Another shout-out for my home airport of Denver. Clean, bright, easy to navigate and plenty of shops. I wish it was a little closer to Denver, but the E-470 tollway makes it easy to get in and out while avoiding the worst of Denver traffic.
-Detroit
-Burlington, VT. I’ll second the nod to it being chill. They’ve got rocking chairs, forpetesake!
-Kansas City. I love the simple horseshoe design. I don’t even mind having to leave the terminal for food or potty breaks. It’s easy to get through security.
-BWI. Nice selection of food, easy to access.
Worst:
-Reagan/National.
-Atlanta
-LAX
-O’Hare
-Las Vegas. Damn slot machines. I would have the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ dingly jinglerunning through my head for months after spending any time more than an hour there.
Best- Atlanta, I remember even passing through customs wasn’t too bad. And the terminals themselves are awesome, easy to navigate, if you have time you can eat at a different terminal from your plane.
Worst- Miami. The customs part is horrible, even for a citizen, and the layout is not much better. So much wasted space!!!
I travel a lot. Domestic only. It’s important to me to be able to get off the plane and into my rental car as quickly as possible. Small airports often have the rental lot right across the street. None of this shuttle bus nonsense. None of this light rail nonsense. No walking a mile to get to the front door of the airport.
I like small airports.
I flew in and out of DTW last week. You can’t even walk across the street to the rental car shuttle. No crosswalks there. No, you have to go upstairs, across a bridge, then downstairs to wait for a bus. Staying in the DTW Westin but arriving at the other terminal? That’s a 20 minute combined wait and bus ride.
But fuck LAX. I’m having a beer right now and I raise my glass.
Sydney International is pretty good, easy to get around and well signposted.
My favourite airport in Australia is probably Alice Springs. The approach is great fun - on a good day the thermals coming off the desert bounce the plane around like AA fire and the hard right turn just before landing to avoid Pine Gap and the MacDonnell Ranges just adds spice to the arrival The terminal itself was upgraded a few years and is a nice, clean, open affair.
The worst I’ve been to was New Delhi Indira Gandhi Airport. Landing at midnight after a long flight may have coloured my views but they were doing renovation work at the time and it looked like the place had been bombed.
Lights were out, wiring was hanging from the ceiling, wall panels were broken or missing (and that was on the walkway from the aircraft to customs). The customs area was bare concrete floors with puddles of water in the low areas and the occasional rat running through the exposed metal ceiling rafters.
Newark’s Terminal C isn’t that bad…that checkpoint is one of the quickest I’ve ever been through, and they have a Starbucks post-security. Terminal A is horrible. Flew in there one time around 9 or 10 PM; the place was virtually deserted and horribly outdated.
I’ve only been to LAX once; the plane had to circle on the ground for almost an hour because there were no available gates. I almost missed my connecting flight. I don’t remember a thing about that airport, other than the lines out the bathroom entries.
I had to run the length of Concourse C/D at Dulles once to make a connecting flight. The designer of that place needs a good slap upside the head.
I love SFO’s Terminal 3…I was there in April, and got to see a huge Art Deco artifact exhibition there, including a gorgeous Pierce-Arrow. Their Airtrain has some nice views, too.
RDU did a very nice job with Terminal 2…it’s probably not intentional, but they have a couple of resident song birds. Haven’t been to Terminal 1 in ages though.
Charlotte is very nice! The rocking chairs are a nice touch.
Hate FLL, (Fort Lauderdale )what a dump. Well ok, never mind, worse is FAY. (Fayetteville) God, I hate Fayetteville. Caters to the military, so they just don’t give a fuck. Fayetteville, where the DASH 8’s go to die, and you can still smoke in a cage.
WLM and MYR are both new and clean, easy to get in and out of.
Japanese airports are by far the cleanest airports I’ve ever seen, domestically or internationally.
The rest just blur together in a neutral, time warped purgatory.
Orange County (California) - John Wayne Airport is wonderful and horrible, at least based on my experiences of flying into it almost weekly for 3 months.
It was small - 14 or so gates. The rental cars were a very short walk away. It was the first totally nonsmoking airport I’d ever flown into. It was easy to get to.
But the thing that made it horrible? All the rich people in that part of the county didn’t like the noise - so they got noise-abatement procedures mandated. The upshot was, you’re taking off at full throttle, that feeling of being pressed into your seat… and then it stops. It seriously felt like the plane was going into free fall.
I had no clue what was going on, until one time the pilot got on the loudspeaker and explained it. They had to use enough power to get off the ground, then QUIT CLIMBING until they were out of earshot of the rich folks. The pilots didn’t like it (less control over the plane), and the passengers were terrified. He encouraged us to write to Congress to complain.
San Francisco Airport was a pain (literally). I flew through there in the summer of 1989, a few weeks after a nasty ankle sprain. It was horseshoe-shaped (it seemed to me, I may have been mistaken), and I landed at one end of the horseshoe, and had to make it to the other end to catch my flight on to Hawaii. With a sprained ankle. No moving sidewalks, and the one golf-cart thingy I saw was loaded up with other people. Ouch. On the return trip, I landed late enough (after 5 hours with nothing but airline “food” from Hawaii) and was hoping to buy dinner, but all the eateries were closed. It was at the latest 10 PM. This was in a major international airport with flights at all hours. I think I made do with peanuts or something.
HAHAHA - I’d actually forgotten: it was at SFO, on that return flight from Hawaii, where we were landing, then all of a sudden we were climbing like a bat out of hell.
I believe there was another plane on the runway we were slated for. I’m glad the pilot decided to abort that landing!!
There is also a 10pm curfew, that is no take-offs or landings after 10pm. If your late evening flight gets delayed: outgoing is cancelled, incoming get diverted to LAX. Not fun.
Fort Hope, Ontario. While landing, our plane got shot by hoods in the woods, resulting in a long delay while a mechanic flew in to check out the damage and patch the holes in the wing.
I don’t like airports where there is only a slight difference between landing and being shot down.
I don’t know how I could’ve left out my absolute least favorite airport of all time: Miami. I would fly into Ft Lauderdale and brave the heinous traffic south before I would ever fly into Miami again.
The terminal itself was upgraded a few years and is a nice, clean, open affair.