I’ve never had problems with the Vegas airport, it’s been surprisingly empty on most of my return trips. Can’t really speak for food options because I’m always at Gate D and grab something at the same little sports bar
On the plus side, you walk right out of the parking lot and into your gate - as each small gate cluster has its own security line. It’s not bad unless you have to switch terminals for a connecting flight, which doesn’t seem to happen often. There’s food and amenities, but you may have been in a dead zone.
Apparently there’s another airport with this design in Canada and a couple in Germany (Tegel in Berlin?). It was supposed to be cutting edge for the early 70s. TWA actually asked them to build it like this as a condition for being the main hub. But then when everyone realized how cumbersome it was, TWA picked St. Louis instead.
Interesting. It was definitely easy to get in and out of but the area past security was insanely packed the one time I was there. The interior design was the part that stuck out the most to me as well as the lack of a decent bar to wait at for my flight.
Yeah you have to do the bar then go through security.
Landed at Nassau in the Bahamas, grabbed our bags, went through customs, cab to the hotel. Upon arriving to the hotel and getting into the room my wife (then girlfriend) informs me that the bag she grabbed wasn’t her bag. Facepalm. So we cab it back to the airport across the island.
Upon entering the airport we find an employee, explain the situation, and she very friendily directed us to a section of the airport with the lost/found bags. It was legit just a mountain of 100s of bags out in the open right there in the concourse. She suggested we dig through that and just toss the bag we grabbed into the pile. Been to many US airports but never seen a pile of lost/misplaced bags like that.
So did she ever get her bag?
Ah yeah, last part got cut off.
After about 45 minutes of searching the giant pile we gave up and then got a call from American that her bag ended up in New Orleans not Nassau. Delivered to the hotel like 5 hours later.
Since this was post-9/11, I just thought it was nuts the airport would (1) have a giant pile of bags like that out in the open and (2) be so nonchalant about letting us search through them. Island life and all that I guess.
When I was in college I spent a semester abroad in Australia. I had a rough time getting back - missed my flight home due to an insane customs/security process in LAX on a holiday weekend (I actually got there in time but the stupid airline had already given my seat away to standby, I don’t remember that name but it was abbreviated ATA, glad they went under). Somehow my dad found a seat on a flight that opened up after a last second cancellation going to LGA instead of Newark. When I finally arrived back home my bags were missing. A few days later I get a call from Newark that they had my bags, so we went to pick them up. Unfortunately one was still missing and they had no idea where it was. As I was leaving, I passed an empty, running bag carousel and out of nowhere my missing bag comes out of the bowels of the airport and falls onto it. Like, as I was walking past it at a random time during the middle of the day. This whole sequence was so bizarre I’m still not sure I didn’t dream it.
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The day before Trump was sworn in, I started a long vacation with a transfer through Moscow.
I hear my name on the loudspeaker long after I passed through security. I see 4 agents waiting for me. I think they were CBP but I don’t remember. They take me down an empty hallway closed off from everything. Then, they have me face the wall so they can pat me down. They ask me to turn around to face them again. They check my ID, passport the whole nine yards. One guy fires out questions, another takes notes and the other two make tough guy faces. After some personal questions about who I am and all that, they get to the nut of it
Guy: Why are you going to Moscow?
Me: Well I’m not. I’m transferring through Moscow.
Guy: Uh…oh okay. Why didn’t you show us this?
Me: You wanted to see my ticket to Moscow, not to Larnaca.
Guy: Oh uhh yeah. Can we see that?
Me: Sure. I’m sorry about that. Normally I keep them together.
Anyway, they briefly look at the ticket and hand it back. They continued on pretending that they didn’t just embarrass themselves by asking some other questions before letting me go.
I wasn’t laughing at the time of the mistake and was honestly pretty pissed off for a while. I was so focused during the interview that I didn’t notice what had happened until hours afterward. I was sitting on the plane to Moscow when I put it together. I freaked out everybody around me when I burst into laughter for seemingly no reason. Even if I explained it they’d think I was nuts.
So that’s how an intimidating interrogation turned into lol cops.
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small airports ftw. greenville is great, charleston is great, west palm is great
charlotte and atlanta are good for bigger ones.
newark is the absolute worst place on earth
lga would be fine if it handled 1/4 of the flights it does. comically overbooked.
Newark is a disaster area, but it gets points for being able to leave it so easily on public transit.
Can we do champagne next?
I hate painting Mexico City’s entire airport with a single brush, as it is basically a world unto itself and practically an entire part of the city, but man, that thing is well past its shelf life.
And because AMLO shut down the new Mexico City airport, which was an insane, counterproductive decision, the current airport is going to exist in its completely overextended, underdesigned, and piecemeal fashion forevermore.
The reflection of Mexico City itself and indeed the entire country is almost poetic. It has comfortable areas and rough areas and all sorts of shit jammed right on top of each other in a way you couldn’t fathom. Walking through it, you have no idea the complexity and variety of things that exist around every corner, up every flight of stairs, behind every wall. Everything is somehow huge and tiny at the same time.
This is why I cannot say Mexico City is one of the worst major airports. Mexico City’s airport stands out as being exceptionally appropriate.
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I’ve heard tons of horror stories about MEX, but have had great experiences 90% of the time, so I must be running insanely lucky. It’s also super convenient in that it’s located right in the city, has solid public transport if you need that (but Uber is like $4-8 anywhere in the city), and after grabbing your bags you can walk like 40m and you’re already outside to grab your Uber.
I’m disappointed that the new airport was cancelled. It looked pretty badass in the renderings and would have been a nice first impression of Mexico. I think the next president will probably resume the project, but that will mean probably 15 years from now until it’s finished.
They’re planning to move part of their operations to a converted airbase called Santa Lucía on the outskirts of the city, so it’s not like MEX is gonna continue to soak up all the increased traffic in perpetuity. Alternate airport will begin operations in 2022 supposedly.
My one negative story was as follows: Had a flight to Cancun scheduled for 3PM. It gets delayed and the screen now shows 4:15PM. So I get to the gate at 4PM and they say it took off at 3:30PM. Didn’t even know it was possible to leave earlier than a listed time (even if it was a revised one). Anyway, I explained the situation and they were nice about it and put me on a different flight at like 6:30PM.
I’ve had all sorts of stuff go down.
I’ve had bathrooms randomly run out of water a couple times.
I nearly missed a connection to Morelia because the gate area was chaos with like 20 flights in the same spot and it was impossible to tell what was going on.
I got lost in the military area next to Terminal 2 because the GPS was very confused about where the Avis car return was.
And returning a rental car to terminal 1 is insanity if you’re coming from the north. You have to know exactly which roads to take, and you’ll definitely be thinking this cannot possibly be the correct way to go.
Nothing terrible though–just thoroughly appropriate.
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My negative story is having to sit 8 hours in the business class lounge, which is really just a partitioned-off part of the airport with really crappy AC. The struggle is real.
The Atlantic had a great article about this phenomenon - they call it “premiocre” consumer upgrades.
Did anyone mention the Minneapolis airport? That one’s a gem iirc, really beautiful and lots of good things in it.
Ohare is fine for me but nearly all of the decent or better food areas are relatively obscure in corners or hidden areas.
Dulles probably the worst, no good food that I could find at least the few times I’ve been there.
Reagan is cool that you can hook up on the metro immediately.
Richmond is poor but just whatever really.
Vegas and Denver were so long ago I really don’t remember heh.
Never been to the others in AMERICA yet though. That won’t be happening for awhile.
Seeing pigeons walking among passengers in Sheremetyevo International Airport was an interesting experience.
Looking at half a terminal’s worth of passengers getting hammered (myself included) at 4 AM Moscow time was also very interesting. Was odd to see that bars/cafes didn’t close at night.
Both separate transfers though. Too cheap to not transfer through there even though the airport sucks.