6 ms·

The Greatest Airport in America

20 points by te_chris 13y ago

polemic 13y ago
> "Donald Trump, billionaire and professional asshole, recently referred to American aiports as “third-world” compared to Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Mr. Trump failed to realize that most Americans will never be able to afford to go to Qatar and think Abu Dhabi is either a character from the movie Aladdin or something you order at an Indian restaurant. " Well, I would add Frankfurt, Munich, Auckland, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney to the list of airports that are less shit than 99% of US airports.
- eitland 13y ago
  Of all airports I have visited, one of the most impressive in some ways was an American one, Denver. I think I have never seen so many people move so fast through security as in Denver, and still they were the first to find and take away my Swiss+Tech ST66676 Utili-Key :-/
  - ghaff 13y ago
    Try going out of Denver on a Monday morning sometime. I've taken 2 hours to get through security and my understanding is that's not atypical. The (now not quite so new) Denver Airport also has the advantage of being a clean sheet design out in the middle of nowhere--which also means that it's a lot further from the city and the mountains than the old airport was. It's also worth noting that the airport had absolutely horrendous issues with the automated baggage handling system to the point that they eventually pretty much chucked it. Among other things, the system was effectively hostile to an odd-shaped luggage like, for example, skis. (For non-Americans, the Rocky mountains near Denver are one of the biggest US ski centers.)
- Trezoid 13y ago
  Sydney International (after customs) is pretty nice, but Sydney domestic is pretty horrible. No power anywhere, very expensive food, horrible chairs, and it only got wifi this year but it's slow and painful to use.
- iMark 13y ago
  Changi in Singapore was by far my favourite airport. Free console and lan gaming! And a free cinema too.
- ecspike 13y ago
  Seoul Incheon is nice. They even have a casino.
  - pm90 13y ago
    Seconded. One of the most beautiful, cleanest, friendliest airports I've ever been to. Its quite far from Seoul, but there are many connecting bus/trains
- apendleton 13y ago
  I've been through Frankfurt five or six times in the last couple of years, and am distinctly unimpressed. Terminals are poorly connected and sometimes require using weird inter-terminal tunnel things that are poorly labeled, and many (particularly regional) flights require you to take a bus to and from the aircraft rather than using a conventional gate/jetway, which is time-consuming and laborious. Just last week I had an hour between flights in Frankfurt and only just made it because it took twenty minutes after landing for the bus to show up and unload our aircraft, another fifteen to drive through the ridiculous maze of airport-highways, and then I had to navigate the inter-terminal maze. No thanks. (My recollection of Munich is that it has many of these faults as well, but I've spent less time there so would be less confident offering criticism.)
  - polemic 13y ago
    That's all true, and yet, not as terrible as LAX by a long shot. I've transited through Frankfurt around 20 times. It's certainly not a top airport, but for an airport of it's size it's efficient, clean and relatively comfortable. The same just can't be said about (for example) LAX.
- rusabd 13y ago
  US airports are really bad if you included Sydney here.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ecspike 13y ago
I guess this dude has never been to any of the Delta terminals in Atlanta, hard to do given it's a Delta hub. Most gates have a couple of pods to charge USB or plug in a laptop. LAX is fail for me because I've often had to change terminals there and reclear security. Not only is changing terminals a pain but it is magnified when you have to take a bus. LAX feels like LA in general, a haphazard sprawling mess that was just thrown together. Here in Silicon Valley, I'd rank San Jose pretty highly. It doesn't have many lounges but makes up with adequate food options and USB/power plugs at something like 85%-90% of the seats in the terminals.
- Anechoic 13y ago
  I guess this dude has never been to any of the Delta terminals in Atlanta, hard to do given it's a Delta hub. Not really, I've been to/through ATL five times this year, but my flights are on US Air and their gates are a disaster area (partially due to construction, particularly due to neglect). I had three hour wait for my last trip so I wandered over to the Delta gates in search of Shoyu (my biz partner who flies ATL recommended to me) and it is truly a whole new world. But don't automatically think that because you're going through ATL you must fly Delta, that's not true at all.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  Does SJC still have a moldy smell? I haven't flown in there since 2004, but it used to really stand out at me every time I came in.
  - eitally 13y ago
    Yes, the old terminal does.
- tfigment 13y ago
  Just flew through SJC 2 weeks ago and pretty sure the USB plugs in seats don't work anymore. At least last 3 times I've had to use the dedicated charging station rather than the seat but at least that was there. Actually not sure I've ever had them work but food options are decent though I think SFO is better. Flew through LAX during last trip and I wouldn't rank it too badly but then I was just passing through. It also had charging stands available near the seats but not per seat. Having said that LAX has my second worst travel experience which included 3 hours of security lines that extended outside the building. Heathrow has my worst experience which had a 30 minute shuttle from the plane, 2 hours of security and had to leave the airport and take London Underground to next terminal to change planes and reclear security. Honorable mention to Denver (DIA) which is the most boring but clean airport I've had the privilege of getting stuck at.
rayiner 13y ago
Donald Trump is such an epic tool. Yeah, Quatar and Dubai have great airports. That's what you can afford when you're unelected shiekdoms living high on the hog by raping the resources that rightly belong to a people.
- anu_gupta 13y ago
  Your comment seems to imply that isn't what happens in countries like the US. Given the disparity between the richest 1% and everyone else in the US, you should probably start addressing your own country's inequalities before climbing onto your moral high horse.
  - Locke1689 13y ago
    Why? When both are deserving of criticism, both receive criticism.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    There is a mile-wide gap between an employer making a profit off of a worker who entered into a labor contract freely and one who simply exploits slave labor. To compare the two as though they are similar is disingenuous.
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  What? Dubai doesn't have much resources, and the airport is a profitable international transportation hub. It also is one of the few airports in the world with a non-reciprocal open skys policy. The airport and the shipping port are how Dubai got to be so wealthy. Dubai deserves some criticism (particularly around labor rights), but yours makes zero sense.
- ulfw 13y ago
  Hong Kong is a free country and has a WONDERFUL airport. Singapore is great as is Bangkok Suvernabhumi. Even Istanbul airport is awesome for it's size. I'd say Heathrow T5 is also better than anything in America.
  - 13y ago
raldi 13y ago
Horrendous linkbait title. Flagged.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  That's not necessarily what flagging's for, is it?
  - raldi 13y ago
    If not this, then what?
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      I interpret the guidelines as saying that flagging should be used primarily for abusive content, trolling, spamming, egregiously off-topic material (e.g. fall fashion tips for 2013 with no hacker angle), etc.
hawkharris 13y ago
Flying is easy. It's incredibly easy. It gives you a whole day - or a good part of one - to sit on your ass and use a cellphone, laptop or magazine for entertainment. Even if you're traveling for business, you're probably not doing as much as you would in the office. If you're traveling, you have nothing to complain about. Even if you experience relative annoyances such as layovers, you still have a whole day to do nothing, or to do very little. Complaints about the airport are extremely hackneyed, and those who tell "airport horror stories" often sound entitled. The author concedes this point in the beginning, which is refreshing, but he defaults to it in his conclusion by saying that "airports are painful."
- Someone 13y ago
  Not everybody aspires to doing nothing. Worse, few people aspire to doing nothing on somebody else's schedule and conditions. That 'do nothing' looks like this: do nothing here for an hour or so while queuing for check in. Next, do nothing queueing for the security check; after that, do nothing sitting in some lousy chair for an hour (maybe more, but we can't tell you exactly how long), or do nothing time walking around some fairly limited shopping mall; you can't go outside. Now, do nothing for 15 minutes while boarding, do nothing half an hour or so waiting for takeoff (don't use your electronics!). Then, do nothing for a couple of hours in a noisy vibrating, badly air conditioned, crowded room, etc.
  - hawkharris 13y ago
    Just like traveling from New York to California in a cattle car in the 1840s.
    - pm90 13y ago
      Well, if you were in the 1840's, you would have similarly said "Just like going barefoot...." That's not a very productive conversation now, is it? Sure, we enjoy many of the fruits of modern technology, but reducing wastage is also desirable. Especially for people who have to travel regularly for business.
- 13y ago
jonnathanson 13y ago
It's a little silly to compare LAX or JFK to something like the Tallahassee Regional Airport and then make a sweeping conclusion that America needs smaller, more regionalized airports. LAX serves a very different purpose from Tallahassee Regional. It's the #3 busiest airport in the US, and also the #3 busiest in the US by international traffic. LAX sucks, and I say that as a Los Angeles native and lifelong LAX sufferer. It sucks because it's so busy. It sucks because road traffic in and out of the airport can take longer than some plane flights. It sucks because it's filthy, and other than the newer additions to Tom Bradley, most of it hasn't been upgraded since the mid-70s. It sucks because the security line is one of the laziest and slowest moving in the country. It sucks for any number of reasons, but none of those reasons is remotely comparable to Tallahassee. Small, regional airports are great experiences. I lived in Arkansas for a few years, and XNA (Northwest Arkansas Regional) is one of the cleanest, quickest, quietest airports in the country. That's also because the entire population of Northwest Arkansas could fit comfortably into a few blocks of LA. If and when XNA starts to accommodate even 1/10th of the traffic of LAX, I'll compare the two. If we want to make apples-to-apples comparisons, I've been consistently impressed with the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airport. For a regional hub and a very busy airport, it manages really good on-time percentages, it's fairly clean, and the transportation system makes moving between terminals really easy. It's in light of airports like DFW, not the small regionals, that I can say that LAX sucks. (Even Chicago O'Hare, the #2 busiest in the country, seems remarkably more efficient, friendly, and clean than LAX).
- ulfw 13y ago
  Honestly it sucks because it's an airport designed basically 50 years ago. What many American cities (especially including LA) need is a newly built and designed airport for the 2000s. That just doesn't happen
  - ghaff 13y ago
    Where does this newly built and designed airport go? Denver built a new one on largely unpopulated, fairly arid land to the east of the city. Hong Kong built a new airport largely on landfill. But it's mostly pretty hard for existing urban airport (at least in the US and Western Europe) to expand/reconfigure significantly--much less start fresh--if they're anywhere near a populated area.
blackaspen 13y ago
All I have to say about this is DEN.
querulous 13y ago
denver is a terrible airport. it's a 40 minute drive outside the city. it's huge and sprawling. it's seriously lacking in amenities. it's wifi is of the annoying boingo variety

20 points by te_chris 13y ago

> "Donald Trump, billionaire and professional asshole, recently referred to American aiports as “third-world” compared to Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Mr. Trump failed to realize that most Americans will never be able to afford to go to Qatar and think Abu Dhabi is either a character from the movie Aladdin or something you order at an Indian restaurant. " Well, I would add Frankfurt, Munich, Auckland, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney to the list of airports that are less shit than 99% of US airports.

eitland 13y ago
Of all airports I have visited, one of the most impressive in some ways was an American one, Denver. I think I have never seen so many people move so fast through security as in Denver, and still they were the first to find and take away my Swiss+Tech ST66676 Utili-Key :-/
- ghaff 13y ago
  Try going out of Denver on a Monday morning sometime. I've taken 2 hours to get through security and my understanding is that's not atypical. The (now not quite so new) Denver Airport also has the advantage of being a clean sheet design out in the middle of nowhere--which also means that it's a lot further from the city and the mountains than the old airport was. It's also worth noting that the airport had absolutely horrendous issues with the automated baggage handling system to the point that they eventually pretty much chucked it. Among other things, the system was effectively hostile to an odd-shaped luggage like, for example, skis. (For non-Americans, the Rocky mountains near Denver are one of the biggest US ski centers.)
Trezoid 13y ago
Sydney International (after customs) is pretty nice, but Sydney domestic is pretty horrible. No power anywhere, very expensive food, horrible chairs, and it only got wifi this year but it's slow and painful to use.
iMark 13y ago
Changi in Singapore was by far my favourite airport. Free console and lan gaming! And a free cinema too.
ecspike 13y ago
Seoul Incheon is nice. They even have a casino.
- pm90 13y ago
  Seconded. One of the most beautiful, cleanest, friendliest airports I've ever been to. Its quite far from Seoul, but there are many connecting bus/trains
apendleton 13y ago
I've been through Frankfurt five or six times in the last couple of years, and am distinctly unimpressed. Terminals are poorly connected and sometimes require using weird inter-terminal tunnel things that are poorly labeled, and many (particularly regional) flights require you to take a bus to and from the aircraft rather than using a conventional gate/jetway, which is time-consuming and laborious. Just last week I had an hour between flights in Frankfurt and only just made it because it took twenty minutes after landing for the bus to show up and unload our aircraft, another fifteen to drive through the ridiculous maze of airport-highways, and then I had to navigate the inter-terminal maze. No thanks. (My recollection of Munich is that it has many of these faults as well, but I've spent less time there so would be less confident offering criticism.)
- polemic 13y ago
  That's all true, and yet, not as terrible as LAX by a long shot. I've transited through Frankfurt around 20 times. It's certainly not a top airport, but for an airport of it's size it's efficient, clean and relatively comfortable. The same just can't be said about (for example) LAX.
rusabd 13y ago
US airports are really bad if you included Sydney here.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ecspike 13y ago

I guess this dude has never been to any of the Delta terminals in Atlanta, hard to do given it's a Delta hub. Most gates have a couple of pods to charge USB or plug in a laptop. LAX is fail for me because I've often had to change terminals there and reclear security. Not only is changing terminals a pain but it is magnified when you have to take a bus. LAX feels like LA in general, a haphazard sprawling mess that was just thrown together. Here in Silicon Valley, I'd rank San Jose pretty highly. It doesn't have many lounges but makes up with adequate food options and USB/power plugs at something like 85%-90% of the seats in the terminals.

Anechoic 13y ago
I guess this dude has never been to any of the Delta terminals in Atlanta, hard to do given it's a Delta hub. Not really, I've been to/through ATL five times this year, but my flights are on US Air and their gates are a disaster area (partially due to construction, particularly due to neglect). I had three hour wait for my last trip so I wandered over to the Delta gates in search of Shoyu (my biz partner who flies ATL recommended to me) and it is truly a whole new world. But don't automatically think that because you're going through ATL you must fly Delta, that's not true at all.
aaronbrethorst 13y ago
Does SJC still have a moldy smell? I haven't flown in there since 2004, but it used to really stand out at me every time I came in.
- eitally 13y ago
  Yes, the old terminal does.
tfigment 13y ago
Just flew through SJC 2 weeks ago and pretty sure the USB plugs in seats don't work anymore. At least last 3 times I've had to use the dedicated charging station rather than the seat but at least that was there. Actually not sure I've ever had them work but food options are decent though I think SFO is better. Flew through LAX during last trip and I wouldn't rank it too badly but then I was just passing through. It also had charging stands available near the seats but not per seat. Having said that LAX has my second worst travel experience which included 3 hours of security lines that extended outside the building. Heathrow has my worst experience which had a 30 minute shuttle from the plane, 2 hours of security and had to leave the airport and take London Underground to next terminal to change planes and reclear security. Honorable mention to Denver (DIA) which is the most boring but clean airport I've had the privilege of getting stuck at.

rayiner 13y ago

Donald Trump is such an epic tool. Yeah, Quatar and Dubai have great airports. That's what you can afford when you're unelected shiekdoms living high on the hog by raping the resources that rightly belong to a people.

anu_gupta 13y ago
Your comment seems to imply that isn't what happens in countries like the US. Given the disparity between the richest 1% and everyone else in the US, you should probably start addressing your own country's inequalities before climbing onto your moral high horse.
- Locke1689 13y ago
  Why? When both are deserving of criticism, both receive criticism.
- bmelton 13y ago
  There is a mile-wide gap between an employer making a profit off of a worker who entered into a labor contract freely and one who simply exploits slave labor. To compare the two as though they are similar is disingenuous.
jcampbell1 13y ago
What? Dubai doesn't have much resources, and the airport is a profitable international transportation hub. It also is one of the few airports in the world with a non-reciprocal open skys policy. The airport and the shipping port are how Dubai got to be so wealthy. Dubai deserves some criticism (particularly around labor rights), but yours makes zero sense.
ulfw 13y ago
Hong Kong is a free country and has a WONDERFUL airport. Singapore is great as is Bangkok Suvernabhumi. Even Istanbul airport is awesome for it's size. I'd say Heathrow T5 is also better than anything in America.
- 13y ago

raldi 13y ago

Horrendous linkbait title. Flagged.

nitrogen 13y ago
That's not necessarily what flagging's for, is it?
- raldi 13y ago
  If not this, then what?
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    I interpret the guidelines as saying that flagging should be used primarily for abusive content, trolling, spamming, egregiously off-topic material (e.g. fall fashion tips for 2013 with no hacker angle), etc.

hawkharris 13y ago

Flying is easy. It's incredibly easy. It gives you a whole day - or a good part of one - to sit on your ass and use a cellphone, laptop or magazine for entertainment. Even if you're traveling for business, you're probably not doing as much as you would in the office. If you're traveling, you have nothing to complain about. Even if you experience relative annoyances such as layovers, you still have a whole day to do nothing, or to do very little. Complaints about the airport are extremely hackneyed, and those who tell "airport horror stories" often sound entitled. The author concedes this point in the beginning, which is refreshing, but he defaults to it in his conclusion by saying that "airports are painful."

Someone 13y ago
Not everybody aspires to doing nothing. Worse, few people aspire to doing nothing on somebody else's schedule and conditions. That 'do nothing' looks like this: do nothing here for an hour or so while queuing for check in. Next, do nothing queueing for the security check; after that, do nothing sitting in some lousy chair for an hour (maybe more, but we can't tell you exactly how long), or do nothing time walking around some fairly limited shopping mall; you can't go outside. Now, do nothing for 15 minutes while boarding, do nothing half an hour or so waiting for takeoff (don't use your electronics!). Then, do nothing for a couple of hours in a noisy vibrating, badly air conditioned, crowded room, etc.
- hawkharris 13y ago
  Just like traveling from New York to California in a cattle car in the 1840s.
  - pm90 13y ago
    Well, if you were in the 1840's, you would have similarly said "Just like going barefoot...." That's not a very productive conversation now, is it? Sure, we enjoy many of the fruits of modern technology, but reducing wastage is also desirable. Especially for people who have to travel regularly for business.
13y ago

jonnathanson 13y ago

It's a little silly to compare LAX or JFK to something like the Tallahassee Regional Airport and then make a sweeping conclusion that America needs smaller, more regionalized airports. LAX serves a very different purpose from Tallahassee Regional. It's the #3 busiest airport in the US, and also the #3 busiest in the US by international traffic. LAX sucks, and I say that as a Los Angeles native and lifelong LAX sufferer. It sucks because it's so busy. It sucks because road traffic in and out of the airport can take longer than some plane flights. It sucks because it's filthy, and other than the newer additions to Tom Bradley, most of it hasn't been upgraded since the mid-70s. It sucks because the security line is one of the laziest and slowest moving in the country. It sucks for any number of reasons, but none of those reasons is remotely comparable to Tallahassee. Small, regional airports are great experiences. I lived in Arkansas for a few years, and XNA (Northwest Arkansas Regional) is one of the cleanest, quickest, quietest airports in the country. That's also because the entire population of Northwest Arkansas could fit comfortably into a few blocks of LA. If and when XNA starts to accommodate even 1/10th of the traffic of LAX, I'll compare the two. If we want to make apples-to-apples comparisons, I've been consistently impressed with the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airport. For a regional hub and a very busy airport, it manages really good on-time percentages, it's fairly clean, and the transportation system makes moving between terminals really easy. It's in light of airports like DFW, not the small regionals, that I can say that LAX sucks. (Even Chicago O'Hare, the #2 busiest in the country, seems remarkably more efficient, friendly, and clean than LAX).

ulfw 13y ago
Honestly it sucks because it's an airport designed basically 50 years ago. What many American cities (especially including LA) need is a newly built and designed airport for the 2000s. That just doesn't happen
- ghaff 13y ago
  Where does this newly built and designed airport go? Denver built a new one on largely unpopulated, fairly arid land to the east of the city. Hong Kong built a new airport largely on landfill. But it's mostly pretty hard for existing urban airport (at least in the US and Western Europe) to expand/reconfigure significantly--much less start fresh--if they're anywhere near a populated area.

blackaspen 13y ago

All I have to say about this is DEN.

querulous 13y ago

denver is a terrible airport. it's a 40 minute drive outside the city. it's huge and sprawling. it's seriously lacking in amenities. it's wifi is of the annoying boingo variety