I loved Albuquerque airport when I was there in the 80s. I had a nearly 3 hour layover and I walked all over. Very cool. Plus you had to walk on the tarmac to get to the plane. I enjoy not having to use the jetway. I hear it’s been completely rebuilt however.
The Presque Isle ME airport was absolutely precious. They had just gotten their teeny little u-shaped conveyor built shortly before we were there, and the staff were inordinately proud of it.
RDU (Raleigh-Durham). It has just two terminals and the parking deck is halfway between them. Terminal 2 (the most-used one at present) is just one long (big) corridor. One of the cool things about the main lobby of Terminal 2 is that it is designed like the cross-section of a wing. RDU does not have lots of shops, a bookstore, or any other fancy features, but TSA is easy to get through and I can be at my gate within 8 minutes of parking my car.
OTOH, it is not a major hub, and you frequently have to make connections through CLT (which is NOT one of my favorites) or ATL (the less said, the better).
Like others, I have to give a shout out to the airport I learned to fly at: Houston County Airport
Also, have to mention OSH, which is the busiest airport for one week a year (EAA convention) – never flew in/out commercially, but did ride there and flew back. What other airport has attacted all living Apollo astronauts, the Concorde, and a Vickers Vimy replica?
I have fond memeories of Austin Struable – the fisrt airprt I flew out of. I rememeber being intruduced to French Dip sandwiches at the restauarant there.
Brian
In Indianapolis there is a big concourse outside of security, with lots of shops and restaurants, and plenty of stuff inside security also. Best of both worlds.
Not from North Andover (where I went when I worked for Bell Labs) you aren’t.
I lived in Cambridge for 4 years, two of them with a car, and lived in Waltham over the summer. I’m no stranger to Boston driving.
I’ve only been once since they finished the Big Ditch and I admit it seemed a tiny bit improved.
My office mate who had worked in Boston before coming to NJ showed off the Boston driving book - called “Wild in the Streets.”
I did drive up for a course once in my old pretty much rusted out Datsun. Having nothing to lose made Boston driving a lot more fun.
I’m not a frequent flyer, but I love Detroit Metro. Always easy to get around in, never had a problem, and the challah bread at Einstein Bros is life-affirming.
That’s a great one too. I love that the (admittedly most expensive) parking garage directly abuts the terminal, so you can leap out of your car and potentially be in line in four minutes.
Travel + Leisure today named Portland the top U.S. airport for the 7th year in a row, based on reader votes.
I meant for how you seem to want the security screening to work in the absence of such a layout. Like it sucks that bathrooms and refreshments are outside of security, but I’m not sure why you thought the TSA person was being personally incompetent and tyrannical, just because he didn’t memorize which individual people were just getting snacks or going to the bathroom and give them exemptions from going through any kind of screening.
Terminal A in Lambert-St. Louis is an architectural beauty on the outside, but absolutely sucks in servings as a 21st Century airport. Terminal B, which was built essentially for Southwest airlines, has 33 gates, convenient short-term parking, a light-rail terminal in the parking garage, and generally short walks. The only problem with it is that during peak hours it becomes a seething mass of humanity. But I guess that’s true everywhere.
I am gobsmacked that we’re so far in and nobody has mentioned Denver International, which is haunted! And guarded by Blucifer!
(See, there’s some weird rumor about the illuminatti operating in the basement, or something. Since they’re renovating, the signs play up the possibility of some conspiracy going on. There’s also a gargoyle.
And Blucifer is the blue horse statue (anatomically correct!) with the glowing red eyes that greets you when you drive up. Apparently, it once killed its creator!)
Moriarty, I was at Denver this past week, the terminal is beautiful and most of it is designed to move folks along, but if you have a commuter flight (like I did) out at gate A87, you are in for a long, long walk.
Rapid City was mentioned earlier, I was also there and concur with the writer, very easy to get into and out of, but like most small airports you going to connect in Chicago, Denver, or Salt Lake City in most cases.
For me airports tend to blur together (I’m up to 110 visited to date), but my votes are:
USA:
BIG AIRPORTS–Atlanta, for all the complaints, moves massive numbers of people efficiently and well, with plently of amenities at all the terminals.
MEDIUM AIRPORTS-Birmingham, AL and Hartford, CT both have reasonable walks to the gates, good selection of shops past security, and not many holdups.
SMALL AIRPORTS-Like Rapid City above, my hometown airport of Huntsville, AL has only 8-10 gates, is easy to get to, and besides the major hubs, it also services Washington, DC.
INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS–Singapore and Amsterdam have been mentioned before and all I can do is second them both. And regarding public transportation to airports, most European and a lot of Asian airports have such transportation–In Shanghai you get to go 420km/hr on the Maglev train to the airport.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS: IN the USA, LaGuardia; Overseas Paris Charles DeGaulle. You have been warned.
I recently had to transfer at Istanbul airport.
I had no idea what kind of airport it was and it turned out to be brand new and ginormous.
It was one hell of a long walk from my arrival to departure gate, but I enjoy the spectacle of a grand airport, and didn’t mind the walk after already flying for 10 hours, and it had a unique character / architectural style.
I feel your pain - literally. With a case in Montana, I had to fly to Grand Rapids about a half dozen times. My gate was next to yours, and the suit bag I brought was heavy! I am being sincere when I tell you that I had to take a couple of pauses when getting to the gate.
I’ve never been an arriving or departing passenger there, so maybe it sucks for them, but I’ve had fairly good experiences connecting at Detroit, compared to the other nearby options.
Even if it wasn’t for that, airlines don’t want hubs in medium-sized cities any more. America West tried a hub here for a few years in the 90s and it was a miserable flop. Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Memphis have lost theirs, Cincinnati is a shell of what it used to be, etc. (And a hub isn’t exactly great for budget-conscious travelers either. I remember people driving from Cincinnati to Columbus to fly back to Cincinnati to connect.)
I liked Frankfurt airport (Frankfurt am Main). Once you have your luggage you can just go downstairs and get on a local train, or an inter-city express train to wherever you want to go to in Germany.
Been through Detroit a zillion times. Always feel like I’m in a scene from Logans Run when I pass through that weird light tunnel.
I liked Incheon when we were there in 2011. We were super impressed that we landed at 5:25 AM and were through immigration, had retrieved our bags and were waiting for my sister and brother -in-law to pick us up by 5:50 AM. On the return we were wandering trying to find security and they opened up a closed one for us with a big smile.
It’s amazing and there is an area where you can go out in a butterfly garden and breathe fresh air. By fat the best airport I’ve ever seen.
The mention of Rapid City reminded me of a funny story I read once. The person who wrote it had spent several months flying to different client’s sites, I think something to do with Y2K. He was mostly flying to bigger airports, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and such. And then he gets to, I think, Rapid City, or at least some smaller city, I’m pretty sure in the Dakotas. After checking in for his return flight, out of habit he asked the agent “Which gate?” The agent’s reply was something like “The one on the left; it’s the one with a plane parked at it.” After getting through security he realized unlike all the other airports he’s been to recently, this airport only had like two or three gates.
