This is a passionate topic for many. Lets get to it.
Worst Airports:
Miami. This place has it all. Security is always a disaster. The terminals are miles long with no people movers. The food is atrocious. The rental car place is miles away and accessed only by a terminally broken train. Traffic is always awful. It is always under construction. Many of the gates require you to walk outside, past planes with roaring jet engines and pungent jet fuel fumes. It is guaranteed you will miss the rental car return. There is nowhere to gas up your rental car. The luggage situation is a complete disgrace. There is not one redeeming thing about this hellhole.
LaGuardia. Seriously looks like a fucking third world country. Always under construction but never any better. Terrible security situation, lines galore, awful food options, impossible to get to despite being right next to the city. But most importantly, always massively delayed. I have never had a flight take off or land on time from this airport. It is impossible to leave on time for the airport because you have to drive (HOW THE HELL IS THERE NO TRAIN) and the traffic could be 30 minutes or 3 hours.
Orlando. Do you like being engulfed by screaming children and senior citizens? Do you like standing in a security line for an hour next to said screaming children and senior citizens? Then this is the airport for you. Absurd rental car taxes to gouge the families, nowhere near anything you want to be near, horrible food options. This place sucks.
O’Hare. There are like 20 terminals and the walk to your connection is always 20 minutes plus. Mega-cramped, delays galore in the winter, possibly the worst collection of food options of any major airport. Also, NOT AT ALL CLOSE TO ANYTHING. It is an hour plus to downtown. WTF?
Best Airports:
Atlanta. I know, you’re not going to agree with this take. But this is an impressively efficient airport. The food options are good, the people movers are fast and frequent, planes take off on time, security is fast. It is trendy to hate on this airport but it is really good for what it is.
Vegas. Also mega-efficient. Great trains, super easy to get in and out of, hyper-fast security that doesn’t fuck around. 10 minutes to the strip, tons of flights, surprisingly decent food. Nonstops to everywhere.
Detroit. Again, you would expect it to suck but it just doesn’t. It is super easy to get around, is very clean, has really good food and the security / baggage situation is quite good. If you’re connecting, its great. If you’re not, you’re in Detroit.
+1 to Orlando, one of the worst layouts I’ve ever seen and no good food.
+1 to O’Hare, been through there twice and was delayed overnight both times. Staff seemed to go out of their way to be unhelpful.
Best recent airport experience I’ve had was London Gatwick last year. Fantastic getting through security and customs, extremely well marked, good shops, ok dining, just very efficient and pleasant overall.
Worst always seems to be Toronto Pearson. I never connect through here if I can help it, they’re always understaffed and customs lines have frequently stretched all the way out of the customs area. More than once they’ve had to pick passengers out of line to go to the front because they’d otherwise miss their flight. Surprisingly poor dining options as well.
I agree with all your takes, and like to add DFW to worst. Somehow they managed to find the design that places gates as far apart as possible while not allowing any sort of people moving system (semicircles, lol). Even if your connection is in the same terminal, if it isn’t one gate over, you’d better have at least a 45 minute layover to make it on time.
Adding to best: Charlotte. great retail area and rocking chairs FTW.
Its almost not fair because its so small, but Charleston, SC is phenomenal as well. Small airports is probably a different category, though several small airports are awful (looking at you Columbus, OH).
which is absolutely amazing food. I’ve chosen a connection through O’Hare solely for purposes of getting a sandwich here.
Columbus is whatever. Small enough to be super easy to get in and out of. Also small enough that I almost never get direct flights anywhere. Food choices dreadful.
Flew international to Tokyo from Minneapolis-St. Paul and thought it was class. Great food options (remote/connected dining too!), lots of shopping, bar with lots of local MN beer. Good local coffee shop also.
Now that I think of it, Tokyo Haneda was amazing too. I’ll just chalk that up to the Japanese doing everything perfectly. I remember there was a bar with automatic beer dispensing. Like a soda machine, but for beer. Imagine that in the US? It would be Night of the Living Dead in terminal B.
Another low key WOAT airport is LAX. Absurd traffic 24/7, horrendous lines, and you have to take a fucking bus to/from the ride share pick up/drop off.
If we’re including smaller airports, I have to put in a plug for San Diego. everything is close, the approach is the coolest of any major commercial airport (pro tip: if you land here, sit on the left side of the plane), and the flights run on time because they HAVE to due to our strict noise ordinances and cutoff times for flights.
I tend to agree Atlanta and Detroit are pretty decent. Honestly overall the US airports are total shit compared to most large international airports I have been to. Doha, Qatar was insanely nice compared to what I was expecting. Same for Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok. Amsterdam airport is nice and has a very cheap train station right there that takes you wherever.
I will say the absolute shittiest airport experience that caught me by surprise was Heathrow. It is like an hour from central London and so your fast options to get there are a 100 pound uber/cab or a 30 pound per person train. Fuck that. Not to mention it is a monstrosity and a pain to navigate.
+1 San Diego so easy to drive into and out of and only minutes from downtown or the beaches that you 'd want to be staying at.
+1 MSP for similar ease of access reasons.
It’s interesting that Riverman’s best and worst are all major hub airports within the hub-and-spoke system. ATL is amazingly easy to navigate considering # of passengers using it.
From a cool design and engineering aspect, the best one I’ve been to is Kansai International, which is built on a man made island in Osaka harbor.
This is so accurate. It took us 3 hours from touchdown to getting in an uber when we flew into LAX. LAX sucks anyway, but it’s the only time I’ve had stand in an hour long line just to walk out the exit after clearing customs.
Second Newark and also add Logan to the suckbag list. Also Berlin, Germany is horrible. The apparently built a new airport like 5 years ago to replace it but for some reason to do with fire or environmental permits they haven’t been able to open it.
Seatac sucks. Too small for the crowds. Security takes forever, even with Precheck. They really need a precheck precheck option or something. Always brutal. And from my house, which is an hour away, I have to plan on leaving 4 to 5 hours early from my house because the trip could take an hour or 3, depending on traffic, plus offsite parking.
Portland (PDX), on the other hand, is amazing. The airport owns the offsite parking and it’s cheap. The airport is laid out well and is quick to get to your gates.
I rarely eat in airports so I don’t judge based on that. I only judge based on ease of getting to the gate, and getting out of the airport.
Major +1 to Heathrow sucking. All the London airports are forever away from the city and mega-expensive to get to. Plus there is a massive surcharge to fly either in or out of Heathrow (I forget which), like hundreds of pounds extra.
It’s amazing, the difference between London and Tokyo in this respect. Both have two major airports that are a decent way outside the city, yet the similarities end there. So easy and convenient to get into Tokyo…and London? Not so much.
The Denver airport somehow covers 55 square miles! Seriously, look an a satellite image, it is absurd. It also went like $2 billion over budget, I am 100% convinced there is something under that airport.
I’m biased but Indy as one of the best in the country. I can arrive and be through TSA and at any gate in less than 30 minutes on any given day and any time.
