Here’s another thread of mine inspired by a pit thread on the woes of airline travel. A lot of people used this thread as a forum to discuss the inadequacies and deficencies found in many large, busy airports. I imagine some smaller airports also suffer from shitty design and planning or have since become so busy that they are no longer as efficient or functional as they once were or were intended to be.
Even though I book air travel as my primary job duty I have done relatively little air travel myself. I’ve only been in a handful of airports, but I know the collective SDMB readership has been all over the U.S. and the world to report their experiences on airports here in the U.S. and abroad.
There’s so many ways an airport can be “worst” that it’s unfair to limit it to just one.
Worst weather delays?
Worst at mishandling bags?
Worst lines at security?
Worst in-concourse amenities? eg: you’ve got an hour to kill on a layover, but the restaurants are all on the wrong side of security.
Worst parking? (Far-flung, slow shuttles, expensive, incomprehensible layout)
Worst public transit access?
Worst gate layout? (C-23, C-25, C-29, C-31…where’s C-27???)
Logan before the Big Dig was completed Logan was awful - unless you were going north on US1, you could count on an hour+ of traffic just to get out of the airport, and then you were in Boston! I haven’t been there since the project was done.
For scary approaches, St. George, UT was carved out of the side of a mountain. A vertical cliff on one side, a vertical drop on the other.
Kansas City also sucks, because security is at the gate entrance. If you forgot something essential, you have to leave the secure area to get to a store/restaurant.
I’ve been to scores of airports over the years. Sadly, have to nominate Phoenix’s Sky Harbor as the most difficult and confusing in regard to getting to the proper terminal. There are three (2, 3 and 4; don’t ask where 1 is) and multiple lanes on the road. Picking the wrong lane will get you into the garage, the car rental area, the Arrivals if you want Departures or vice versa.
There are an abundance of overhead signs, usually located too late to pick the proper lane. The type used is far too small, the colors making them difficult to read, far to much information on each one, and unless you have one or two eagle-eyed navigators, you may find yourself turned around and going back the wrong way, or worse.
The worst in the world is Templehoff in Berlin. Steep, short approaches, the steward have to strap themselves in with full harnesses and brace their legs, and when you get off the first thing you see is a monument to all the flyers that died in the coldwar Berlin Airlift.
Best: Reno
Worst: Las Vegas (though it’s a close tie with Philadelphia, which is dirty, crowded and, AFAICT, has the same creaky baggage carousels and molded plastic chairs it had when I was a kid – 45 years ago.)
Non-US, I’d say my favourite is Schipol, Amsterdam. A 5-hour layover there just flew past. A couple more hours and I could have taken the city tour bus that leaves from outside the terminal. As it was, there was decent food, a smoking area (in a mainly non-smoking terminal, I must add) and an art gallery.
Worst, probably London Gatwick. Cramped, smelly and full of drunks on their way for two week piss-ups in the Med. The old (now closed) airport in Bankok gets an honourable mention, simply for being so appallingly dingy.
US best is a hard one. I don’t really like any US airports, but O’Hare is at least light and spacious. Any airport where I can watch the planes without being hassled by security is cool, too. O’Hare is, though, kinda confusing.
My vote for worst US airport goes to Dallas/Fort Worth, not because of any features (or lack thereof) of the airport, but because every time I’ve flown through there I’ve been delayed for a minimum of three hours. And I’m not alone in that boat.
Worst non-US was probably Komodo Airport AKA Mutiara II Airport on Flores, Indonesia. Security was interesting: There was a metal detector and x-ray machine, but no staff. There were no counter personnel until 1 1/2 hours after the flight was supposed to have left. Luckily, the plane hadn’t arrived yet. The toilet was everything you’d imagine from a public restroom in a third world country. There were dogs and a goat or two running amok on the runway, but the sound of a plane would scare them off. The plane (not that this is a reflection on the airport, per se) utilized prominently placed duct tape to secure wiring, doors, anything and everything.
Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, it was a pretty cool experience.
LaGuardia sucks. I remember waiting there once and it was like waiting for a bus. All kinds of trashy people waiting to go to Florida
I don’t really like ATL either. It’s too huge, and the food sucks there, and they ONLY have Dasani water, because apparently Coke supplies all of their beverages.
The best airports, are the smaller ones. I always liked the Memphis airport, and New Orleans is pretty much okay too. Just not too big.
JFK is pretty much redeemed to me with the fact that they have Air Train. At least it’s easy to get out.
The Worst in the World? That’s easy. London Stanstead. Mainly because of the fact that you’ll end up having a 12 hour layover there and there’s nothing to do but sleep on the floor with the lights on.
Best in the World? I haven’t been to too many, but I liked Tegel in Berlin. You arrive in the center of the terminal so there’s not a whole lot of walking. This is what pissed me off so much about ATL. I don’t like Copenhagen because they don’t have much good stuff to eat in the actual airport. I like to get a full english breakfast before a transatlantic flight. It really makes it a lot more bearable! Frankfurt has one, i’m pretty sure.
Schipol was also nice, from what I remember. It’s got a very nice sort of dutch efficiency feel to it.
Madrid Barajas kinda sucks, to be honest. It’s very dated, and hasn’t had much of an upgrade in a while.
I have to say that at Dulles I was kind of pissed off. I have no idea why they have those retarded proprietary elevated busses. That’s really the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen. You know how they do that in other countries? They take a normal city bus, very low to the ground, and ferry passengers out that way. Two busses work well, one at the front and rear of the plane. That’s it, yet this idiotic invention probably cost someone a lot of money to have specifically designed and maintained. It’s like a 40 foot high rolling house.
I’m not to sure about domestics but internationally, I’ve got to go with Caracas (mentioned by Una Persson in the previous thead ) and Bagan (Myanmar).
In Caracas, I was robbed at gunpoint by a cabbie, who was in collusion with airport security. I was carrying way too much cash, but this allowed me to keep my backpack by just giving him all my cash. Which was key, because there was not a chance of getting gear anywhere close in quality in South America (except for maybe Santiago, Rio or Buenos Aires), plus I was at the beginning of a 3 month trip. Later, I’m reading my Lonely Planet (I guess I should have done this on the flight) and it mentions this a very common scam. It said that one guy got left naked in a favela (slum).
Bagan has one arrival and one departure a day. The cab drops me off under a tree in a field a couple of hundred feet in front of a locked gate guarded by a couple of soldiers packing AK-47s. I have no idea what to do so I start to worry and wait an hour or two. About 15 minutes before the scheduled departure, a bus rolls up, the driver unlocks the gate and drives in so I go ahead and walk in. They unlock the doors and then turn of the lights like its a diner or something. It really wasn’t much bigger than a diner. Supposedly Air Myanmar had the worst safety record of any international airline at the time but I’m damned if I’m going to take that 20 hour bus ride back to Yangoon. It turns out that I was sold a counterfeit ticket by the travel agent. Fortunately, I was able to buy another ticket. Beautiful country, but really a pain in the ass.
Honorable Mention for Nairobi and La Paz (Bolivia).
Being a transplant to the Boston area, I would nominate Logan as well. The first time I came to visit, I just noticed this mental taint to it and that has never gone away. It isn’t any one thing you can pin the blame on but the whole package stinks like a putrefied body overall. It isn’t just academic interest either. I don’t want my extended family flying into there because the place really disturbs people from other parts of the country and puts them in a bad visiting mood. I got tired of hearing about it so I arrange alternate plans for them.
I have a theory why the 9/11 hijackers responsible for the World Trade Center attacks departed from Logan. Al Qaeda leaders figured that if they weren’t really committed to flying a plane into a building before, they sure would be after they had to pass through Logan. I have had the same feelings myself many times.
Conversely, widespread hatred for Logan prompted both Nearby Providence, RI and Manchester, NH to build airports of their own. They are both new and very similar and also very nice. Parking is easy and everything is nice and airy and user friendly. I would nominate those two to be among the best and I try my hardest to use either of them before Logan.
