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From my experiences;

MDW; The airport itself is easy to get to. The airport is clean but very bland. Nothing special sticks out about it. The terminals are too small and crowded for the amount of traffic they get.

DAL; I don’t know why people praise this little airport. Just like MDW, the terminals are too small for the amount of traffic they get. You also don’t have the variety of airlines you have at DFW. If anyone can’t tell, I don’t like second hand airports.

MEM; Memphis is a garage. Antiquated and dirty. It may have been nice in 1960 but needs a major revamp.

TPA; I am going to get flamed for this one. I do not like TPA and never have. It’s a bitch to get to if coming from the East (Or even the West due to the causeways). Despite it being “Americas favorite airport”, I find it bland and primitive. There is nothing particularly interesting at TPA.

Let’s hear some more. I can’t wait to hear about New York airports.

From what I remember, PHL wasn't exactly great. It seemed like the idea was you'd clear security directly opposite the finger your flight was departing from, which was fine except it meant you had to cross the main flow of transferring passengers and it all snarled up.

As for the satellite gates at IAD, 4 hours in there with nothing at all to do except join a two-gates-long queue to get into the only pub/restaurant in the entire joint... even the main concourse's Sbarro started to look appealing. IAD in general should not be what the Capital of the Free World's airport looks like.

Of course, I haven't been to either in over a decade, so they're probably worse.

ShanwickOceanic wrote:From what I remember, PHL wasn't exactly great. It seemed like the idea was you'd clear security directly opposite the finger your flight was departing from, which was fine except it meant you had to cross the main flow of transferring passengers and it all snarled up.

As for the satellite gates at IAD, 4 hours in there with nothing at all to do except join a two-gates-long queue to get into the only pub/restaurant in the entire joint... even the main concourse's Sbarro started to look appealing. IAD in general should not be what the Capital of the Free World's airport looks like.

Of course, I haven't been to either in over a decade, so they're probably worse.

I’ve never been to PHL or IAD. PHL looks like a dump in pictures though. Other than the satellite terminal, how is IAD? Do they still have the bus lounge things?

Filthadelphia is absolutely horrid.

Of all the airports that I've been too, I don't think that there is one that I'd purposefully avoid. Granted, I don't have extensive travel experience, but there are a few that stand out as...less than pleasant (no particular order):


DFW - Last visited in 2008
Not really awful, but the original terminals felt cramped. There were, of course, designed in a very different era. Terminal D was wonderful.

LAS - Last visited in 2019
I'm not at all impressed with the casino environment....it's loud and obnoxious...much like the city itself. I take back what I said earlier. I think I would purposefully avoid this airport.

DEN - Last visited 2023
My adopted hometown (commercial service) airport. I'm not going to do what a lot of Denverites do and launch into a tirade about how using the airport is equivalent to warcrimes. I will, however, acknowledge that there are issues. Pena Blvd being one of them. It's sole purpose was to connect Downtown Denver (via I-70) with the airport. When it (the airport) was built, there was nothing out there. There's still not much, but Denver has grown (namely Green Valley Ranch) in that area so now not only is Pena carrying local traffic (which is wasn't designed for) it's also carrying more traffic bound for the airport. It's built to Interstate Highway standards, but don't count on doing the posted limit of 65 during daylight hours. The intersection with E470 is an old-school cloverleaf that causes out-of-towners to panic and slow too much and experienced locals feel they can rip through at full speed. Signage is lacking too.

The train. The only way to get from the terminal to B or C concourses is the train. It's fine most of the time, but gets over-crowded during peak travel times. There was never an alternate method to get to the B or C concourses designed. If the train goes down, you're screwed. A trick I use sometimes is to get off the train at A and walk the rest of the way.

The Great Hall project. It's way over-budget and behind schedule. It shouldn't come as a surprise when you consider that DEN is essentially a city unto itself and improvement projects are rarely without budget and schedule overruns.

That said, I can get from my apartment just north of Parker to the secure-side of DEN in about an hour and a half, largely stress free. Well...most of the time.

JFK - I will never under any circumstances give it another chance.

TUS - randomly closes for hours in the afternoon, no food available when it reopens. Seriously, WTF? Better to use PHX and drive a bit.

MDW - It's been a while, but I remember it being surrounded by hourly no-tell motels and worse and staffed with the nastiest airport police on earth

IAD - used to be on my shit list but much better now that you don't have to take the stupid buses to get to the midfield terminals

ATL - TSA is way worse than a shit show and food pretty much sucks there unless you're willing to pay double normal airport screw prices and hoof it to the international terminal. Also, you are 100% screwed if there's any bit of weather particularly if you're on DL.

MOB - more an issue with the location than anything else. At least they're planning to move to BFM which will make a lot more sense. Let the USCG and cargo take over MOB.

CLT . . . . hands down the most useless AA hub they have. Was destroyed by the merger between US and AA. Crowded, over crowded, and more crowded, regardless of time of day. AA has 8 banks there daily, imagine that disaster.

MCO . . . . standard issue 45-60 minute wait for TSA (30 min minimum even with Pre-Check or time of day. First bank begins at 0530. Brings a whole new meaning to get to the airport TWO/THREE hours early. Let's not discuss the traffic to even get TO the airport.

SEA . . . speaking of TSA and crowds. Oh, and the brand spanking new South Satellite with all those "international" jetways that are too close together to use by widebody aircraft. Virtually every other get must be skipped. Shame if a aircraft breaks t a gate and can't be moved. . . Plus, it is Seattle. Fruitloops, bunny huggers and bums.

IAD, IAD, and again IAD.

Worst airport for connections (had 2.5 hours layover and yet barely made the connecting flight), and worst airport for spotting. Why in the world does this dump need 3 parallel runways, when for the most part of the day not even 1 gets maxed out ...

tangoscar wrote:Worst airport for connections (had 2.5 hours layover and yet barely made the connecting flight)

My last 4-hour connection at JFK was uncomfortably tight. Same terminal. No idea why the hell you get thrown landside and forced to join the main security line; even PHL had that figured out.

LAX.

LAX sucks in every way an airport can suck:

- Getting to it sucks. If you're approaching from the south, the 405->105 route is miserable at any time other than the early hours on a weekday. If you're approach from the north, it's even worse. If you're coming from downtown Los Angeles, god speed in everything that you do.

- The horseshoe shape is an utter traffic shitshow. Wanna get to Terminal 5 or 6? Expect it to take you 15 to 20 minutes to reach that side of the horseshoe once you're at the airport. This also makes the shuttle buses a nightmare, since they're pretty much always full by the time they reach the later terminals.

- Other than the Tom Bradley Terminal, all the other terminals are aged and cramped. Refurbishment work is akin to polishing turds.

- Connections are brutal if you arrive at one terminal and depart from another. There are some airside tunnels between terminals (TBT to 3, 4, and 5), but if you arrive in, say, T2 and depart from T7, you're going to need to exit the airport, cross the horseshoe, and go through TSA again. "Quick" connections at LAX aren't a thing.

- All parking situations are painful. Economy parking is off-site and requires use of the shuttle bus. See comments on shuttle buses above. Short stay is in the center of the horseshoe and is almost always over capacity unless you use the valet service. It also requires you sitting in all the other horseshoe traffic to get in to that parking structure.

- Uber/Lyft/Taxis are all offsite. You need to take a shuttle bus to get to the pickup area. See comments on shuttle buses above.

I avoid LAX as much as I possibly can. SNA is my preferred, SAN is my second. LAX is a distant, distant third.

^^^
Add in landside baggage reclaim, which is a stupid idea.

I was in SEA just a couple weeks ago and amazed at what an armpit the airport is. It made MDW look palatial.

IFEMaster wrote:LAX.

LAX sucks in every way an airport can suck:

- Getting to it sucks. If you're approaching from the south, the 405->105 route is miserable at any time other than the early hours on a weekday. If you're approach from the north, it's even worse. If you're coming from downtown Los Angeles, god speed in everything that you do.

- The horseshoe shape is an utter traffic shitshow. Wanna get to Terminal 5 or 6? Expect it to take you 15 to 20 minutes to reach that side of the horseshoe once you're at the airport. This also makes the shuttle buses a nightmare, since they're pretty much always full by the time they reach the later terminals.

- Other than the Tom Bradley Terminal, all the other terminals are aged and cramped. Refurbishment work is akin to polishing turds.

- Connections are brutal if you arrive at one terminal and depart from another. There are some airside tunnels between terminals (TBT to 3, 4, and 5), but if you arrive in, say, T2 and depart from T7, you're going to need to exit the airport, cross the horseshoe, and go through TSA again. "Quick" connections at LAX aren't a thing.

- All parking situations are painful. Economy parking is off-site and requires use of the shuttle bus. See comments on shuttle buses above. Short stay is in the center of the horseshoe and is almost always over capacity unless you use the valet service. It also requires you sitting in all the other horseshoe traffic to get in to that parking structure.

- Uber/Lyft/Taxis are all offsite. You need to take a shuttle bus to get to the pickup area. See comments on shuttle buses above.

I avoid LAX as much as I possibly can. SNA is my preferred, SAN is my second. LAX is a distant, distant third.

THERE IS NO WORD OF A LIE IN YOUR POST!!! You can smell sulfur at LAX because it is a piece of infrastructure which has broached our realm from the bowels of hell itself.

I don't really have any others that I have a significant dislike for. I always avoided the DEN entrance nightmare by E470 to the Pena train station (cheap parking, covered) and then rode in for free using my CAC.

Oh wait, I hate EWR because it's filled entirely with buttholes.

bhmbaglock wrote:
TUS - randomly closes for hours in the afternoon, no food available when it reopens. Seriously, WTF? Better to use PHX and drive a bit.

I would have said that you were crazy about TUS as I thought that it is a nice airport...

But yeah, I was flying out on Delta to LAX and I got to the airport early as I was going to do some plane watching at the Delta gates where there are tables by the windows. Going to have a coffee and see if any Arizona Air Guard F-16s would take off. Flight was at noon. I arrived at 9am, Delta counter doesn't open until 10am

ANCFlyer wrote:CLT . . . . hands down the most useless AA hub they have. Was destroyed by the merger between US and AA. Crowded, over crowded, and more crowded, regardless of time of day. AA has 8 banks there daily, imagine that disaster.

MCO . . . . standard issue 45-60 minute wait for TSA (30 min minimum even with Pre-Check or time of day. First bank begins at 0530. Brings a whole new meaning to get to the airport TWO/THREE hours early. Let's not discuss the traffic to even get TO the airport.

SEA . . . speaking of TSA and crowds. Oh, and the brand spanking new South Satellite with all those "international" jetways that are too close together to use by widebody aircraft. Virtually every other get must be skipped. Shame if an aircraft breaks t a gate and can't be moved. . . Plus, it is Seattle. Fruitloops, bunny huggers and bums.

MCO was home airport for years. It used to be a really good and efficient airport. I always came from the Southwest side of Orlando so getting to it was not usually a problem. As long as I-4 wasn’t congested around Disney, you could slide onto 417 and take it to Boggy Creek Road without a problem.

I totally agree with the TSA issue. I’ve waited so long in their lines at MCO. I now use PBI, MIA or even RSW because of MCO being shitty. MIA needs some upgrades (Which they are doing) but it is so much more efficient than MCO.