The holidays are coming up, and you're probably busy booking overpriced tickets to go visit family you don't even like. (Tidings of comfort and joy!) And though you never can predict what will go wrong during a week sleeping on Grandma's screen porch, there is one constant: You will not have a pleasant time in the airport. When it comes to picking the world's worst hub, there are plenty of routes you can take.
You could go the Travel + Leisure way, and make a list based on departure and arrival delays. Chris Elliott of elliot.org takes a more comprehensive approach, looking not only at on-time stats, but at terminal facilities, access roads and concessions. Patrick Smith, author of Salon.com's Ask the Pilot column, wrote an eloquent, two-page analysison what he considers to be the world's worst airport, Léopold Sédar Senghor International in Dakar, Senegal. Even Foreign Policy magazine has a list.
When picking my own worst of the worst, I consider a variety of factors — number of hours I'll spend sitting on the runway, likelihood that I'll eat dinner out of a vending machine (Akron/Canton) and feeling that I'm sitting in a crumbling 1950s elementary school that just happens to have departure gates and a baggage claim (Washington Dulles or the Delta terminal at JFK).
Based on where I've been and what I know, here are a few of my least favorites places to fly:
- Philadelphia – It's cramped and shabby, US
Airways' baggage-handling record is atrocious (though improving) and the delays are endemic. One summer I had to change planes in PHL every week, and thinking about it still makes me anxious. - Miami – As far as I can tell, Miami International is always in the middle of a major, disruptive construction project.
Every single time I've changed planes there, I've had to sprint through a maze of temporary hallways to make my connecting flight. - JFK - This airport makes almost everyone's list, and with good reason. You wait on the runway forever, and although the new
JetBlue building is pretty cool, many of the terminals are a disgrace
(especially Delta's). - Pittsburgh - People are going to think I'm crazy, but I hate flying into PIT. Back in the late '90s, US Airways operated 500
flights a day to 110 destinations out of the airport, but since then they've almost completely pulled out. It's a beautiful facility, but passing through these days, I feel like I'm in an empty house that's been on the market for too long. - Las Vegas - The City of Sin often gets high marks for its airport, but every time I've been there I've waited 45 minutes for a check-in kiosk, and another 45 to get through security. Kind of a nightmare, though on my last trip I won $100 playing video poker at my gate.
- Yerevan, Armenia - I'm proud of my homeland and glad that I visited, but passing through the crappy Zvartnots International leaves no doubt that the country was once a Soviet satellite.
That's my list, what's yours? Which airports make you crazy, and why? Can they be fixed, or are they just beyond help?
Photo: TheeErin/Flickr
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