I agree about Logan. I use Providence which is infinitely better. The masterminds of 9/11 picked Logan as a departure point for some of the terrorists for a good reason. They knew that if any of them were hesitant about hijacking a plane and flying it into a building that day, they wouldn’t be after they had been through Logan. I have had the same impulse when I was forced to travel through there.
Good news on the Pearson front:
a) There is now a train linking Terminal 3, Terminal 1, and a distant parking lot on Viscount Road.
b) Terminal 2 will close at the end of January.
c) There is now apparently WiFi in Terminal 1, at least. I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a laptop.
Now the bad news:
a) Yes, there is a train, but the type of train they chose!
The “Airport People-Mover” (APM) is a cable car made my an Austrian ski-lift manufacturer, DCC Doppelmayr. It seems to run quietly and all, but the ride is horrendous: it shakes and judders as it moves down its track.
Part of the reason is that it does not move on rails, exactly; its rubber tires ride on flat beams. Underneath the cars are guide wheels that prevent them from running off the track. The airport authority claims that one reason for choosing that system is that snow and ice will simply fall off the track, and no clearing is needed.
Since it’s a cable car, the wheels need provide no traction, either; the pull comes from the car’s gripper on the cable. There are two completely-independent trains on two separate and parallel tracks, with no connection between them.
The stations, however, are spacious and well-lit, with platform-side doors that match the doors on the trains, and they put the Toronto subway to shame (not difficult at times).
b) Terminal 2 will close at the end of January, when the big addition to new Terminal 1 opens. Terminal 2 will be demolished. The shuttle busses that link the terminals will apparently be discontinued. Not a big deal, because there’s the interterminal train? Perhaps.
Just one minor detail. Those shuttle busses also pause at the only place where you can easily (that is, merely inconveniently) get to the airport terminals from the bus stops on Airport Road.
For people riding the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) bus #58 from Malton, this is the only way to get onto the airport. (You can take the City of Mississauga bus #7 from Malton, which does go onto the airport grounds.) TTC buses coming from the other direction all go into the airport grounds and stop at all the terminals. There’s even a frequent and direct express bus from the subway.
All this is by way of introduction to the fact that public-transit connections at Pearson airport are terrible. The buses stop out in the open on the lower levels of the terminals, and there is no real bus terminal: no transit ticket agency or transit-ticket machine or helpful transit staff, not even a real waiting area, just a shelter at Terminal Three and some chairs under the concrete roof at Terminal One.
I can get there, but then I’m a transit geek and an airport geek. For travelers unfamiliar with the area, it must be bleakly-confusing. But then this is not surprising with the TTC, which remains blissfully-unaware of anything resembling high-quality marketing or customer service.
Now, the train. For many years, there have been tentative plans to connect the airport to the city by some sort of train. At one point the TTC even started building a subway west along Eglinton Avenue, but the plug got pulled by the provincial government.
The intersection of Renforth Drive and Eglinton, southeast of the airport, has always been intended as a key transfer popint for people going to the airport from future transit lines. Northeast of the airport, the Georgetown train line passes within a few kilometers of the airport. It would seem to be logical to extend the APM to new stations at Renforth and on the Georgetown line.
In the airport’s official 1995 plan, the APM is shown as being extended from the airport to external transit interchanges. But can the train they chose be extended in this way? I suspect not. The length of track required would be two or three times that that exists. The station on Viscount Road does not seem to be designed to let the tracks be extended.
There is a plan to built yet another train to the airport, separate from existing regoinal trains on the Geaorgetown line, and from the APM. This is bogged down in endless discussion, and I for one can’t see how they would thread it in among all the existing roads and bridges and freeway offramps that serve the airport. And it would be significantly-less flexible than an extended and more robust APM that would connect with other transit at both ends.
Shagnasty , lets keep TF Green under our hats, okay? No sense letting it get all crowded with Logan refugees.
I don’t see where the hatred for DFW comes from. I’ve probably flown through there about 200 times. Delayed flights seem no more prevalent than any where else. And as Campion said, the layout is really quite good. It’s quite fast getting around, especially with their new people mover. I’ve rarely not used it as a connecting airport, so I can’t say much about security, access, etc.
Yeah, maybe the restaurants aren’t fantastic, but they aren’t bad either.
I have only been to about 21 airports.
La Guardia is the worst I have been to. Its problems have been well covered above.
Cincinnati (in Kentucky) was the second worse. Easy enough to get to, but a really crappy layout with buses between terminals and very poor signage. I was greatly underwhelmed by the entire setup. Getting to the ground transport was also a pain in the neck.
I actually like O’Hare; I have flown in and out of O’Hare fairly often. I am surprised by the dislike. It is well laid out and has plenty of facilities. Of course, I never made a connecting flight in O’Hare. Maybe this is why my experiences are better. I have had delays at many airports. O’Hare is no worse than most.
I will not fly out of Kennedy or La Guardia; I stick to Newark, Atlantic City and occasionally Philly.
I do not recall Burbank to be very pleasant, but I do not remember any details at this point. {Probably for the best}
Jim
I am very happy to see that Heathrow is not featuring prominently in these complaints. There is always a long way to walk, one has to go through extra security, and they never tell you your gate until boarding actually starts, but–it’s a fun airport. The shopping is great.
The worst security I’ve ever been through, aside from LaGuardia on the morning they arrested all those plane bombers in the UK, was Domodedovo in Moscow. It was in May 2005, two days after the whole city had lost power because of the heat, and the security line like the rest of the whole damn country was not air conditioned. It took nearly an hour to get through. On a day when nothing special was happening. It didn’t help that I had a bad case of food poisoning and there was nowhere to sit.
I hate LGA because flights are so often delayed both into and out of it. It is exceptionally bad. Just because it’s so exceptionally busy, I guess.
Charles de Gaulle, aside from being mofo ugly, is basically not a functioning airport because every time they find a piece of unattended luggage–which in my experience is literally every fifteen minutes–they have to close down that whole section of the terminal until the security guys finish their cafe and croissant and can be bothered to go look at the luggage. By which time, its owner has shown up and is extremely unhappy, and all traffic behind that section in the terminal is backed up, sometimes to the point where the security line stops.
Philadelphia has to have the worst luggage handling system in the US. You can easily wait 30-45 minutes for your bags… I believe there have been numerous issues with no-bid contracts for various businesses building the new terminal as well as retail shops fo the other terminals…
USAir uses Philly as a hub but has had major problems hiring workers and managing operations… the Philly Inquirer ran a series on October on this mess.
I think you meant LAX = Los Angeles, Ca. 
LAX isn’t always that bad, I’ve flown out of there a bunch of times. We’ve only had to wait an excessive time (over 2 hours to get from walking in the terminal to gate) once. Usually we get through rather quickly but then, we tend to fly very late evening. I like the layout of LAX, just that big circle with lots of parking in the middle.
I do agree about Cleveland, it’s a tiny and sadly outdated airport and the rental car facilities require a rather long shuttle ride. In its favor though is the fact that it’s small, easy to get in and out of and pretty convenient to the highways. I’m hoping traffic isn’t too bad thursday, I’m flying in there and driving to columbus.
Maybe you can explain the logic then? I’ve gone through there several times and hated it every time. I can imagine it’s a good airport if it’s your home or destination airport (because all gates are close to the access road). But the gates are arranged linearly, so if you need to get from gate 12 to gate 32, you have to walk past gates 13-31. That’s a long walk. I also seem to recall waiting forever for a shuttle to take me to another terminal.
Sounds like Heathrow. Which is a great airport if you get to use Terminal 4 (the new shiny airport), and a shit one if you use Terminal 1 (the oldest of the airports on the site).
What’s more, the Underground link to T4 included a large loop to accomodate the anticipated construction of another new airport called Terminal 5…which is now being built in a different location entirely, so trains will run to either “Heathrow T1-4” or “Heathrow T1-3 & 5” :smack:
The best description of Logan International I ever heard was:
“It’s an enigma wrapped inside a landfill.”
True. Apparently the mayor’s brother was a consultant to all the businesses that did get contracts. :dubious:
And despite all the things wrong with Pearson, it’s still better than it was. Old Terminal 1, now demolished, was described as being “like the Third World with carpets”. It was an excellent piece of early-sixties architecture that was simply too small for the planes and the crowds it was forced to serve.
It depends on the airline. I flew out on USAir earlier this year, which is at one end of Terminal A, and they have a lower level with a couple of gates for boarding the USExpress turboprop planes. There are bathrooms down on the lower level, so you don’t have to go back out through security.
the pros of Burbank are that it is small and easily accessable. You can drive right up to the entrance and say goodbye and walk right to check in. The security line is rarely long, the baggage collection and exit from the airport is fairly quick, I can step off my plane and be in my rental car in the city insidei 20 minutes, (It’s also 6 mles from my friend’s house!). The cons are like many small airports, no food or bar once you are past security.
Even flying a connection as opposed to non-stop to LAX I’ll take Burbank.
Don’t forget about the utter lack of gas stations anywhere near KCI! I came from Topeka last year, and didn’t see any gas stations within 5 miles of the airport. I ended up paying the fee for turning in the rental car un-filled.
That, and the multiple security gates stuff is retarded in this day and age. They made me put my doughnut through the x-ray machine, in spite of the fact that I made it through the walk-through x-ray holding it.
I started a long rant about how you must be nuckin futs, then goggled for a photo to illustrate my points. never mind
DFW used to have concourses that went, it seemed, for miles, and terminals with no secure-area transport between, so you often had to re-clear security when making a connection (a small hassle, I admit, pre-9/11/01). You’d arrive at the far tip of one of those freaking concourses just in time to hear the announcement that your flight had been reassigned to the far end of another one. Fark, but I hated DFW.
Still, from the photo, you can see that there are bottle necks in the taxiway system at the north and south ends of the terminal group. This causes huge delays if (when) gates are reassigned, and aircraft land on the “wrong” side of the terminal. In a dozen or so trips, I don’t think I’ve ever spent less than 20 minutes taxiing to an arrival gate, and several times it was more than an hour (admittedly, these may have been prior to modernization)
This structure also requires you to use the slow and (IME) unreliable trams between terminals. The last time I went through DFW, I had to take the little train between terminals. A train failed, blocking the track, freezing the system, and stranding about 200 passengers for 45 minutes or so. What should have been a simple no-brainier layover turned into a sprint to the gate, with them literally closing the hatch behind me, and pushing back as soon as I fastened my belt…other passengers glaring daggers at me. I talked to the attendant, and it turned out that due to a computer glitch they were unable to determine if I had checked baggage. (I didn’t) If they were sure I had not, they would have left without me.
I was trying to be silly.
Thursdays are pretty good, just aim for the 71 south, which is very close to the rental car lot, and enjoy your visit.
El Paso. A relic of the 1960s, with absolutely, positively nothing to do except eat at a family restaurant, or look at knives in the gift shop.
Actually, there’s service station at the airport complex. It’s on one of the streets (Paris St., Bern St., etc. - I don’t know which) crossing the main approach road. Sorry you missed it.
The one they build by you.