Yep, if you slap a noisy airport down in the middle of paradise, you get a pretty nice airport. And a greatly diminished paradise.
NO JETS T.O.!
My worst airport experience was flying into Sarajevo in the summer of 2005. The airplane smelled of cigarettes (minor quibble), but the airport smelled of pee and there were suspicious puddles in the corners.
I haven’t been to a lot of airports, but when my sister and I went to Halifax (eastern Canada,) we really liked the Halifax Airport. It’s very picturesque.
Best:
I’m actually a fan of London Gatwick, particularly the North Terminal; the restaurants past Security are very nice indeed (Jamie’s Italian is highly recommended but there’s a lot of selection). Heathrow Terminal 5 (once it solved its initial issues) isn’t bad either and is certainly an improvement over the older terminals.
I can’t add anything to what has already been said about **Amsterdam Schipol **either - it’s nifty, filled with shops and the train station is right there.
**Tampa **is nice, clean and modern as is Madrid, although changing planes at Madrid can sometimes require a considerable hike.
Worst:
I’ll also ditto everything said about Chicago O’Hare, which I’ve passed through on my way to and from overseas. The nifty lights in the tunnel notwithstanding, you’d think there would be something to do when you’re waiting for 3-5 hours for your connecting flight beyond looking at a few sad little kiosks. If I have the choice I prefer to connect via Minneapolis instead.
And Philadelphia, which appears to be staffed ENTIRELY by large angry black women, really needs to sort out their customs/immigration area in general and their customer service in particular.
Worst:
Bordeaux: if you fly a budget airline, you wait in the budget quonset hut. There is a coffee stand but you won’t reach it through the crowd. There are only about ten seats in the whole place.
Cleveland: one hallway, one Body Shop, all day. Screw you, Cleveland.
Philadelphia: holy shitballs, renovated or not, this place should be condemned. I don’t mind surly. Philly surly is my kind of surly. (OK, Delaware surly, but close enough)
Newark: Now this is unpleasant, unhelpful fuckwittery at its finest.
Best:
Charles de Gaulle. I love this place. No, I don’t know why. Stockholm Syndrome?
Heathrow: I don’t hate it.
Hehe, I knew someone would name it. Are you familiar with the white line sketches? It was inspired by Barajas’ yellow and green lines. I doubt most people would be able to even say which TV program it was from, but the sketches themselves were an instant hit.
Barcelona is both a favorite of mine (good since it’s one of my home airports) and a bloody mess. Good food, good shopping, I just love the Botero horse - but whomever named the terminals should be staked outside during the summer. Terminal 1 is the new one (?), Terminal 1 has several subterminals and it’s a couple of kilometers from one end to another walking on the outside (walking on the inside it’s longer); finding the train counts as an exploration adventure unless you happen to get lucky and get debarked in the terminal across from its station.
I had a project in Normandy. It took us a long time to convince our manager to make everybody fly to the same place: the choices were Charles de Gaulle or Brussels. He was the only one who preferred CDG. Brussels had good seats (a serious danger of falling asleep in the recliners), good and varied food, nice and patient security personnel, and it even had clear signs!
Apparently Philly has been refurbished - but back when I was there several times in 2003, it was a cesspit and you could walk directly into the baggage-handling areas without any physical barriers. I was Not Impressed.
I remember that - absolutely terrifying. One person checking claim tickets at the door was all that stopped people from stealing your luggage. It has improved.
Agreed, Atlanta is well set up.
Agree with those nominees also.
The worst one I had repeated experiences with is no longer the horrible place it was at the time, but I’ll put it here anyway as a legacy nightmare: JFK.
In the mid-2000s, going to JFK with ticket and luggage in hand, you’d arrive in an immense warehouse with zillions of airline-specific desks and no Help Desk to direct you. There was no one in charge you could approach without standing in line 10-15 minutes and if you did you’d most likely end up facing someone shrugging and telling you they don’t know where MightyAir’s check-in line might be found.
The place was under construction and half the signs pointing to various things were obsolete and a good chunk of the signs were hidden under black plastic or scaffolding of some sort. Airlines’ desks would be relocated between one month and the next with no posted info at the old location so you’d come huffing and lurching down the corridor to where it was in September and find it empty, or get in line only to be told “Oh, you’re on MIghtyAir, this is FlyByNight. Umm yeah they got moved… I think they’re over there in the north 40, take the 4th left 2nd right go straight until you get to where United used to be, duck under the cables and ask someone in that section…”
That must make the sign on the roof on the Milwaukee airport’s landing path all the more fun.
This brings back a nice memory from the early 70s of when my uncle took me up to its control tower where he worked. 
Franz Kafka International airport
Never Mind - misread the post I was responding to
I’ve only used the international terminal. Which one is that?
**Siam Sam **depends on airline – the ostensible “International Terminal” at JFK is T1 bit the international half of T4 has many more airlines and passengers, and most of T7 is as mentioned an international terminal.
huh-wha-wait-errorerrordoesnotcompute… someone *likes *SJU??? ¡Avísenle al secretario de prensa de la Oficina de Turismo!
Oh… you must have flown through the *new *terminal. That one’s pretty good, as you say, airy and bright. And the remodelling of the B/C terminals should mean the non-moving people-movers have been dealt with after 12 years’ wait. Though getting to ground transportation can still be an annoying schlep depending on what baggage claim you wind up at. And the way they remodeled the JetBlue departures concourse so you have to walk through the middle of the DutyFree shop to get past TSA and to the gates really just makes the management company look like moneygrubbers.
The new private management seems to be getting the place squared away. Maybe the day will come that I’m pleased with it.
Correction: PanAm Worldport. I was a bit nostalgic for the very identifiable architectural derelict but that’s a good summation of the condition after they had wrecked its design integirty during prior expansions and remodels. Though I did get to fly to London out of T3 once near the end so I did not miss it.
The old TWA terminal by Saarinen was preserved for its architectural value – well, the landside part of it – and is now surrounded by T5; the JetBlue and PANYNJ brass have been scratching their heads for a decade as to what to do with the saved monument… new landside lounge/elite check-in? museum? hotel? World’s Largest Starbucks? I had the privilege of using it in TWA’s last days and enjoyed the heck out of the acid-trippy architecture: that may have “dated” it, but at least it was not boring and institutional and was a lot more pleasant to use than 6-years-“newer” T2.
AA’s old Terminal 8 was still around in the mid 2000s and that was 20 years too late…
T2 needed to go the way of old AA T8 at about the same time.
We flew China Airlines, Taipei-New York-Taipei. Whichever terminal serves that one was rather dull.
According to the PANYNJ site, that would go into the international gates of T4.
Remember to adjust for the amenity expectation level of Americans at their airports, though 
I agree completely re: McCarran. It’s not overwhelmingly huge, either.
I liked San Francisco International when I was there in 2005. Cool place, nice eats, museum exhibits, charging stations, spacious.
Best: Key West, Florida. Utterly charming, and recently updated so that passengers have access to restrooms after going through security. Home of the fabulous Conch Flyer Restaurant.
Worst: Heathrow, London. I don’t want to relive the horrors I’ve endured there by typing them out. Suffice it to say I try to avoid Heathrow whenever possible.
I also feel that if an airport is easy and relatively cheap to get to with public transit, it can’t be that bad. For instance, my wife and I had a layover in Philadelphia and we were able to jump on the SEPTA train, grab a cheesesteak, see the “Rocky” steps and the Liberty Bell, then get back in time for our connecting flight. That’s better than the Honolulu airport where there’s a city bus that takes you directly there…but you’re not allowed to board it with luggage.
Out of the airports listed so far, Charles de Gaulle was pretty bad. It was so poorly organized and the line for the ticket counter was so slow that I thought we would miss our flight. But fortunately for us, it turns out that the security line for our flight had some kind of work stoppage, so nobody else was boarding the flight on time either. Hurray!
At Puerto Plata airport in the Dominican Republic, we had to deal with aggressive porters at the door of the airport. One grabbed my suitcase from me, carried it ten metres and then demanded a tip!
The airports I’ve flown to in Beijing and Shanghai were okay, but it’s always depressing to get off the plane and take my first breath of Chinese air that smells like stale cigarette smoke and farts.
My least favorite is Kansas City. Not that the terminals are crappy per se, just that the way they were designed back in the day is totally incompatible with modern security requirements. each cluster of gates has its own TSA checkpoint tacked on, and the result left most all of the accommodations like food and restrooms outside of the sterile area. So if you need to go take a leak, you’ve got to go through security again.
My son just flew out of KC. His comments exactly.
Read the Wikipedia page on the airport. It is a hoot. It seems the design of the airport was dictated by TWA. Even before the airport opened TWA realized there was a problem. Soon after opening TWA demanded that the city rebuild the airport so that it actually worked. When the city pointed out the airport was built that way at the insistence of TWA and the city refused to rebuild their new airport-TWA left.
Note too that it was kind of the luck of the draw, DFW is designed in the same basic pattern, but at DFW all the room is behind the security, at KC all the room is before security. Both were designed long before the thought of security checkpoints occurred to anyone.
