Worst airport in the U.S.? The rest of the world?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve been in pretty much every big airport in North America and I’ve frequently cited Logan as the worst airport I’ve ever been in, and I’ll stick with that.

Lots of other airports have bad things about them - Kansas City’s gate-based security, Denver’s being closer to Baltimore than it is to Denver, Sky Harbor’s terribly confusing traffic (Phoenix is in general a terrible city to get around in.) Toronto has the slowest baggage return humanly possibly without actually handing the process over to professional thieves; BWI has nothing to eat or buy; Dulles has those giant buses thing (which they are working to get rid of but the project is over time and over budget, surprise surprise.) LAX is horribly inconvenient, San Francisco’s rental car counters are actually located in the State of Oregon, O’Hare and Atlanta are just too goddamned big, and Minneapolis St. Paul is a topological miracle wherein no matter what airline you flew or what mode of ground transportation you plan to use you will always have to walk the entire length of the airport to get there. I can think of something wrong with every (major city) airport I’ve ever been in, except Tampa. That’s a really nice airport. Vancouver’s not bad, either.

But only Logan is terrible in every conceivable way. Getting to and from the airport is an exercise in frustration and insanity, the airport is dank, dark and ugly, luggage return is slow, there’s nothing good to eat and no good stores, there’s nowhere good to sit and even the first class lounges are substandard. Flight delays seem to be almost as frequent an occurrence as they are at JFK and O’Hare, which is saying a lot. I’m sure there are worse airports in the Third World, but that’s not a fair comparison. It’s disgraceful for a modern, wealthy city to have an airport that terrible.

Overall I’d say the only majhor city airport that compares to it for general awfulness is JFK. And I’d still give Logan the nod.

22

O’Hare gets a lot of bad press, especially if you’re on United, but that’s my preferred airline and airport and I’ve been nothing but satisfied with them both. (Yes, I realize I’ve just jinxed myself.) It is huge as hell but since it’s my local airport I don’t have to run from one end to the other to transfer flights or anything, so I’m spoiled that way. Great shops and restaurants, plus they have banks of seats with electrical outlets and phone jacks for your laptops.

I haven’t been to a whole ton of domestic airports, maybe a dozen or so (certainly under 20), but Logan gets my vote for worst. It seems like United’s terminal is especially shitty, as past security, all there is for amenities is a Sam Adams “bar”, maybe 4 places to get food, and a newsstand. The upside of Logan for my travel is it’s maybe 15 minutes from the friends that I go out there to visit, and I always fly in/out of Logan on Sundays at off hours so traffic isn’t a problem.

I do have to say that Manchester, NH’s airport is probably one of the nicest that I’ve been in. Good amenities for such a tiny airport, very easy access to rental cars, great setup overall, and they had wireless access in the terminal before some other larger airports did, to the best of my recollection.

23

When Dulles was built, it had just one passenger terminal, and a long, low service building (for lack of a better word). The planes would park at the service building. The idea was that those big, custom-designed buses would roll up to the gate, passengers would get on, then it would drive right to the door of your airplane. The original buses (not sure about the current ones) had hydraulic lifts to raise them to the right height for different planes.

I’m not sure exactly why they did it that way. The terminal was 16 gates, maybe. If you parked 16 planes wingtip-to-wingtip, you’d have a very long building. Since each gate only needed to be big enough for a bus, the terminal was much smaller, which saved money on construction and meant less walking for the passengers.

I flew there once in about 1982, and the system worked okay at the time. I just think they outgrew it, and have had to cope with the remnants of that design as they expanded.

24

I’d nominate LaGuardia for the worst I’ve been to in the US. It’s dirty and cheap-looking, and on the approach you dive-bomb the South Bronx so close you can tell which bodega has the freshest bean pies. Although it can’t compare to any number of African airports, especially Dakar, Senegal – a bus station with an extra helping of lepers, more or less.

My favorite US airport in Bergstrom in Austin, Texas, although this may be a function of the fact that it’s pretty empty almost every time I’m there. This summer I swear it was about 20 minutes from the plane touching down to me putting the key in the rental car.

25

For scariest takeoffs and landings I’d have to nominate Logan, LaGuardia and Reagen-National (in any order you like), particularly in the winter.

For most baffling design, I’ll go with Tampa. For some reason, whenever I fly there, wherever I have to go is on a different level and I’ve never figured out how to get from Point A to Point B without having to go through Point C.

Kansas City was a wonderful airport until they had to put the security booths at the gates.

I haven’t used Newark or Houston-Bush in years. They were the most cavernous terminals I ever saw.

I recently flew out of Terminal C at San Jose-Minetta. The entire terminal is under construction. The amenities are nearly non-existent, security and gate areas are cramped and we had to go outside and climb an old-fashioned stairway to get to the plane. I’m sure it will be gorgeous when it’s finished, but right now it reminds me of when my father used to fly out of Love Field in Dallas (20 years before Southwest got there.)

26

There are extensive renovations being done there now, though. By 2009, it should be quite a bit better.

I will admit it is an embarrassment now, though.

27

Free wireless, at that. And yah, Manchester’s got about as much awesomeness packed into its airport as you can possibly squeeze into something that small.

28

Philadelphia International.

I swear every time I go there they’ve managed to change the roads and signs so you get lost.

The cell phone lot is the most useless thing in the world: You can’t find it, and when you leave it, there’s no indication of where the airport is. Cars still stop on the side of the road instead.

The baggage handling was handled for a while by one of the most corrupt, overpriveleged shitballs to ever have a brother as mayor. Yiou are lucky if you even see your baggage some two hours after you land. I’ve been in a lot of airports, and even sleazy ones manage to get your bags to you at some point.

Going out you have one of the worst on-time leaving records.

Worse, the airport management constantly whines and wants to be allowed to destroy Fort Mifflin to make a runway to two a little bit longer.

It looks nice, that’s its only redeeming feature, but it sucks balls for actual function.

29

Domestic:

Detroit’s the worst for being dismal, and there are too many stairs (a real problem when trying to get around with small children, which I was at the time).

Logan is the worst to get in and out of.

I haven’t been to either in about 18 years; ;maybe they’re better.

International:

I don’t have a large sample, but Gatwick’s the worst I’ve been to.

A little of both:

Terminal E in Houston is the most paranoia-inducing space I’ve ever been in. Huge room, no windows, doors locked. You expect the SS to come storming in any minute.

30

Charles De Gaul in Paris is the worst one I’ve ever been to. It has a circular shape and, (according to the only airport employee that would speak to us) you are only allowed to move in one direction. Whether this is true or not I don’t know because the other employees refused to speak with us after figuring out we’re not French, but it cost us a 7 hour delay on our flight to St. Petersburg. We landed from Rome at terminal B and had to take the trolley around terminals C, D, etc, until getting back to terminal A, at which point the plane had already left.

As I mentioned before, the staff ranged from aloof to downright rude and we joined a huge line of angry people at the KLM refund center. It was a generally negative experience.

31

I don’t fly much, and, to tell the truth, have never had a horrible airport experience (Amtrak OTOH . . .). I’ve been in a few of those mentioned but they never impressed me as being particularly good or horrible.

I do like the Albany International Airport near me, though. Small, nice amenities, quick trip through security, fairly new, free half hour of parking for meeting people. There’s even an upstairs art museum and an observation level where they pipe in the tower intercom so you can year the plane arriving. The only downside is waiting for arrivals; after 9/11, the area was much too small, especially on busy days. They’ve expanded it a bit, but there’s not a lot of room.

That’s not something I needed to know. My daughter is flying through Dakar next week on her way to Mozambique, though I don’t think she gets off the airplane.

32

Detroit’s non-NWA terminal is pretty awful. At one point, they had the security checkpoint for about 15 gates stuffed into a hallway about 20 feet wide. And for some reason, you have to go down and then back up to get from the ticketing to the gate. But they’re building a brand-spankin’ new terminal to replace it, so now if I can just postpone seeing my dad’s family until it’s built…

Flying into Toronto from the U.S. was a rather nasty experience last year. You got shuttled to this long Quonset hut of a building, and customs is in the cinderblock basement. Then you get to walk another couple of miles or so to the shuttle bus to take you to your connecting flight. I think they’ve since closed that terminal, though. On the other hand, Vancouver’s airport is one of the nicest I’ve ever been in.

I could understand the hatred for Kansas City if you’re connecting, but it couldn’t be easier for people who live here. You can drop someone off at the gate 45 minutes before their plane leaves and they’ll have time to spare. And since each checkpoint only goes to a few gates, it doesn’t take half an hour to get through security. They did renovations a couple of years ago and added bathrooms and small conncession stands to all the gates, but I can see how it would have been a pain in the ass before then.

I think Tampa is one of the best airports in the country. Ironically, the original plan for Kansas City was to build something like Tampa’s airport, but TWA went with the rings instead to save money. Then, when it got expensive to run once security was required, they moved their hub to St. Louis. (Now THERE’S a shitty airport. Maybe one of these days they’ll take the purple carpet off the walls.)

33

I used to hear that Mexico City was considered the worst by airline pilots. I remember this from back when I was flying into and out of there (as a passenger, that is). This was a long time ago, though, and it may have been improved.

34

How small do you want to go? Sidney, Montana is a small tin building, with three benches, seven year-old aviation magazines and the concessions are a Pepsi machine (but it’s only 35 cents a can.) There is no security, the bags are loaded on the plane and then scanned when you get to Billings. (There’s not a lot of fear of terrorists loading in Sidney, Montana.)

The fourth and fifth pictures show the ashtrays at the airport in MIles City, Mt.

35

I had an unpleasant time in Bucharest, though things may have changed in the last 22 years. Tanks parked on the cracked tarmac, armed and unsmiling soldiers, my passport taken away for my multi-hour layover in the one-room terminal, no food, toilet paper that had to be bought (but no way to change currency to buy it), and pigeons overhead shitting on one.

36

You don’t say. I had to spend 8 hours there, there was one of those insta-strike the French are famous for and I was stuck there. The airport is confusing, the staff unfriendly and the chairs are horrendous. That and the ceilings tend to collapse :wink: And I am a francophile, so this is not gratuitous French-bashing.

Scariest: StMarteen. Just google it.
Most in need of remodeling: Panama City.
Bad staffing: Philly. The cluelesslest security staff. And no decent food.
Inconvenient: San Juan PR. No food anywhere if you fly late (what’s up with that?).

Best overall: Copenhagen. Quiet (no loudspeakers), convenient, great transport system in and out, great service, lots of amenities, great shopping, small and well-designed, great kiddy area, etc, etc, etc. Has been voted best airport in the world in various trade publications.

37

Seconded.

On-time performance is lousy and not likely to improve since there isn’t the land to build additional runways. Build an extra hour into your layovers if flying through there. You’ll need it.

Security lines are nightmarish.

The terminals must have been drawn by the Marquis de Sade. I feel sorry for anyone who has a US Scare connection there. Getting between terminals A, B, C or F can be a chore. Fortunately, Southwest doesn’t have connecting flights out of Philly since you might need to go out past security and get rechecked.

Food selection is pretty weak.

Never, ever check baggage to or from Philly.

38

I think both Boston and Vegas-McCarran are bad, but Vegas’s is especially bad due to the simple fact that their entire economy is built around tourism and they have such an atroicious, eastern bloc-esque airport. You seriously telling that all that casino tax revenue doesn;t warrant an airport upgrade? Maybe you’d have a shot of getting in and out on time too.

39

I can’t believe people are raggin’ on my hometown airport!

Seriously. Even with the new security, I still arive for my flights 25 minutes before takeoff and breeze right in. And like SanibelMan says, they installed bathrooms and concessions at the gates a few years ago, so now if you’re early, you can wait in the gate instead of out in the concourse.

I can join in the chorus bemoaning Philly’s airport though. Lousy traffic; lousy walks across terminals; lousy baggage handling; lousy services; lousy customer service. The works.

People complain about Midway, but that was my airport when I was an undergrad, and I had nothing but good experiences there. Especially since they redid the A terminal.

Ooh! I thought of one. I flew to Maui last winter with my SO, and her flight arrived 8 hours after mine. I had no means of transportation or any place to go until she got there. I made the mistake of leaving security in the Maui International airport, and there are NO services once you leave security except for one tiny hotdog stand selling tiny $6 hotdogs. No restaurants; no bars; no vending machines; and the gift shop was closed. I sat on a concrete bench for the whole day reading and watching bums collect luggage carts.

Why do airports keep all their great stuff inside security? What about the people who are waiting for their rides; don’t they need overpriced Mai Tais too?

40

My vote for worst in the US is Atlanta Hartsfield. (Speaking from around 11 years of experience flying in the US almost every single week from the Southeast to wherever)

Not because the airport facility itself is bad or anything, but because it is so overcrowded, that if you get rain, or even if a baggage handler so much as spits on the tarmac, you have instant grid lock.

I have literally lost count of how many times I’ve missed connections and was even a day or two late bacause ATL had a damn rain shower.

I’ve missed because my originating flight (from VPS–Niceville-Ft. Walton Beach, FL) was hung up getting OUT of ATL, or my connecting flight was delayed/cancelled while I was IN ATL, or I couldn’t leave my assignment location because everything was delayed going IN TO ATL.

Just for one example: I was with PeopleSoft once. As a new hire, I was going from VPS-SFO (San Francisco) for 3 weeks of training. Superbowl Sunday was the day of departure, 2000. PeopleSoft travel could not understand why I insisted on taking a Northwest flight thru Memphis instead of a much better connection with Delta thru Atlanta. But, as the fare was pretty much the same, they let me do it.

I got to Pleasanton CA with no problems, checked in and got settled. Seems, though, that a number of PeopleSoft folk were stranded in ATL due to a whole quarter inch of SNOW. Some of my classmates going thru ATL did not arrive until sometime Tuesday.

I’ve flown in and out of LaGuardia, Detroit, O’Hare, etc., in a good bit of snow and things got slow sometimes, but the planes usually flew. Not Atlanta. No, not fucking ATL.

No kidding, may ATL burn in Hell forever, amen.

(Nothing against the city, understand, or the layout of the airport itself)