I will have a 1 hour layover at the Atlanta airport (ATL) in the early afternoon. What should/can I do that would be interesting?
Is this a joke? The only thing you should do is wait an hour for your next flight.
Big airport. Pray that an hour is enough time to get to your gate.
Considering that you board a half-hour before your next flight’s departure time, you’re only going to have a half-hour to deboard your first flight and find the gate for your second. You barely have time enough to pee.
Go have a couple of beers.
ETA: Well, that’s what I’d do.
All of these answers conform to what I would have said. An hour in Atlanta goes by really fast.
You could watch some CNN or Weather Channel and feel some sense of closeness to the origination point.
Shit into a Ziploc bag. Put in carry-on bag. Hilarity ensues.
Joe
Yeah, that’s 15 minutes to get from one gate to the other, a half an hour for the boarding process, and 15 minutes slack to allow for contingencies, and maybe grab a snack or a bathroom break.
On the bright side, you’ll have managed to see everything worthwhile about Atlanta.
Go see Savannah, it’s pretty nice.
Seriously, an hour is the bare minimum safety zone for Atlanta. I prefer at least two.
If you can hit the bathroom on concourse A next to gate 17 you can kill 5 minutes. Go to the bathroom stall at the far end. Hang your carry on the outside of the door. When somebody asks if this stall is occupied you reply “not enough sailor”. Be there 15 minutes past the hour. Enjoy.
And remember, wide stances take too long to implement. You’re only there for an hour.
It might behoove Atlanta to post signs to the effect that unless you have a longer layover than one hour, you might as well head to the restroom.
Assuming there is no line, all the urinals are working, your flight arrived on time, and your new gate isn’t on the other side of the airport.
OP, have you actually flown anywhere in the past 20 years?
A few years ago I had a maybe 3 hour layover at JFK. I asked a few people what sights I should see in the city. After the laughter died down, I was made to realize that the airport was not, in fact, in midtown Manhattan.
And my connecting flight was delayed by several hours. God, that was boring!
Heh. JFK is the middle of nowhere. I know, I once delivered mail to a route right on the boundary, and could count the rivets on the 747s flying over.
I wonder which airports are close enough to something interesting to make it worth leaving with a 3 hour layover, ignoring security. San Diego certainly. LAX, though I’m not sure there is anything close by. Maybe Logan and Reagan, since they are on subway lines. None of the New York airports. Not O’Hare. Midway is on an actual street, but not one that is very interesting. Not SO, Oakland or San Jose. Any ones that would be good?
You can take tours of the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City. The LDS Church provides shuttle service to and from the airport for just this reason.
Definitely Logan. You could spend an hour at Quincy Market.
The Denver airport has the impressive giant tent thingy covering part of it. But that part is not in a secured area. I had a short layover there once about 3 years ago. Walked out of the secure area, did some looking around, then went back through security to catch my plane. So there is one airport that has something interesting to see for a bit before you catch the next leg.
For some bizarre and twisted reason I’m tempted to ask which major airport is closest to its city’s dump/landfill.