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Best and Worst Airports

Worst has to be my local one, Durham Tees Valley... or as it's commonly known by it's former name - Teesside Airport. They actually charge each passenger a £6 'facility fee' to fly from there.

Hamburg was pretty poor if I remember too - waiting for the return flight from the Germany/Denmark live - I seem to recall the waiting room was just a **** marquee.

I liked Madrid's 'rainbow' coloured supports, don't remember much else about it.

Newcastle Airport has always been a bit of a favourite too, just purely because how superior it is too Durham Tees Valley and it's still local.
 
^I've always wondered, does Mobile get its name from the type of home most people in Alabama live in?
 
Smithy said:
gavin said:
^ Airports ARE simple enough. It's the same system and routine, with a few tiny variations, at every one of them. They seem to turn people into utter **** ing morons though for some reason.

Aye if you plan ahead which now I travel on my own (well, without parents taking care of everything) it's easy enough, I just don't like huge airports with multiple terminals but they're all adjoined rather than a bus-ride away so it's simple.

When I traveled last summer for the first time, I'd never even been near an airport, let alone inside one and yet I found myself having to negotiate one on my own with almost no knowledge of how they operate, where to go or the protocols of security.

It was a piece of piss. Some people are just mongs.
 
gavin said:
^I've always wondered, does Mobile get its name from the type of home most people in Alabama live in?
It really got it's name from some French colonization way back. There are some nicer areas down there too! It is also pronounced like auto-Mobile.

Also, like you Gavin decided I would list them out just to see how many. Didn't bother with all the airport names as that would take me quite a bit longer.

North America
Seattle
Spokane
Portland
San Francisco
San Jose
Los Angeles
Reno
Las Vegas
Phoenix
Salt Lake City
Boise
Jackson Hole
Denver
Colorado Springs
Aspen
Grand Junction
Omaha
Dallas
San Antonio
Houston
Minneapolis/St. Paul
Kansas City
New Orleans
Chicago (Midway & O'Hare)
Memphis
Birmingham
Detroit
Cleveland
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
Atlanta
Savannah
Miami
Ft. Lauderdale
Orlando
Tampa
Charlotte
Norfolk
Washington D.C. (Dulles & Reagan)
Philadelphia
New York (Laguardia & JFK)
Newark
Syracuse
Honolulu
Kona
Cancun
Acapulco
Panama City (Panama not FL)
Bimini
Paradise Island
San Juan

South America
Buenos Aires

Europe
Reykjavik
London (Heathrow)
Paris (CDG)
Naples
Rome
Venice

Asia
Hong Kong
Tokyo (Narita)
Taipei
Peng Hu

Some of my favorites are: Dallas, Detroit, London, and Tokyo. (Comes down to specific terminals though, some can be awful!)
Least favorites: Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Washington Dulles.
 
My list, but I'm not entirely sure, maybe there's more:

Europe:
Ljubljana
Venice
Trieste
Klagenfurt
Paris (CDG)
Lisbon
Rome
Funchal
Las Palmas
Teneriffe
Crete
Rhodes
Frankfurt

Asia:
Singapore
Langkawi

Africa:
Sharm el Shaikh

North America:
Orlando
Miami
San Francisco
LAX

The best for me were the ones in Lisbon and Orlando. I'm not quite sure about the worst one, since all of these were at least decent, but maybe I'd go with Miami, beacouse of ignorant airport staff
 
Let's see... I've been to:

Orlando
Tampa
Miami
Ft. Lauderdale
Newark
LaGuardia
JFK
Buffalo
Ontario (California, not Canada)
San Antonio
Dallas
Houston
Denver
Colorado Springs
Salt Lake City
Atlanta
Cincinnati
Ronald Reagan (Wash. DC)
San Jose (Costa Rica)
Jose Marti (Havana, Cuba)
Nassau

Best would be probably Tampa because its super well laid out, or maybe one of the smaller ones just because they're small (aka San Antonio)

Worst would be Miami, definitely in America at least. Then Havana and San Jose were pretty bad, but that's to be expected considering the countries. I also hated Nassau, it took absolutely forever to get through immigration.
 
I experienced Stansted twice since my last post. What a **** hole. Crammed full, no space to breathe, awful people, rude staff and in what occasionally feels like a giant temporary hanger. Horrid.

I think it's probably as I've finally opened my eyes to airports that my opinion is so strong on how much I detested my Stansted experiences, but yeah, Stansted's the worst airport I've been to.
 
I find Stansted very hit and miss. Sometimes you go and its really quiet and you can wander through security/passport control without any faff. Othertimes you'll end up queueing an hour and fighting for a table at weatherspoons! Its not a bad airport, it can just get too busy. The worst thing about Stansted is the knowledge that you're likely to be flying with either Ryanair or Easy Jet! :p

I'm not going to list every airport i've been to as I really couldn't remember. Most airports blur into one for me as they're all so similar, but my favourite airport goes to Beijing Terminal 3 (the one they built for the Olympics in 2008) just for its size, efficiency and architecture.

The worst airport i've done is Skiathos in Greece. Its a fantastic airport to watch planes as the runway is the length of the island and you can stand at the end of the runway and have the planes pretty much land on your head. However, the terminal building is dire and doesn't feel much larger than a house. Add to this the fact that the runway is so short a Boeing 737 can't take off with a full fuel load, so you have to land on mainland Greece to re-fuel before heading back to the UK! Lots of faff - lovely Island though! :p
 
Some of my favourites:

Singapore Shanghi- works great and feels cosy and also got toast, eggs and coffee for like 1.9£ which is amazingly cheap, considered regular airport prices.
Hong Kong
Münich international (not the **** memmingen one)
Schiphol-I don't exactly know why I like this, I know I really like the area around the airportshuttle train station and they had this cool free area with huge bean bags and relaxing chairs which was great

worst:
Stockholm Skavsta - very small, horrible and stupidly boring. Had to stay there for 8hrs to wait for a flight leaving the next morning, it was dreadful. The prices are also a joke. I've lived the last 3.5 years in Sweden, so I'm ok with the regular price level, but here you pay like 12£ for a **** bolognese pasta or 5.5£ for a tiny additives filled "triangle" sandwich

Hamburg Lübeck is also very small. In fact I think the whole departures area was a huge tent. In fact the whole airport felt like it was going to be removed somewhere else in like two days.

Other mentionings:

I had a layover in Frankfurt on my way to Amsterdam and I had to get some food. I saw this food/restaurant area behind these stall kinds of structures where they had some officials and you showed them you're passport and just walked through and there was no signs anywhere (I know german enough to understand them). I went and ate and figured I can walk back the same way as my gate was like 40ft away. However for some reason you can't and I had to run and do this big loop, which was at least a good 3/4 of a mile long and then I had to go through the security again! which actually made me miss my flight (was there 10mins before departure), but I was so annoyed at the woman by the gate so I got a free ticket to the next flight, which was pretty cool I have to admit.

Hanoi and HCMC foreign terminals: I find it very discriminatory that the prices in the international terminal are like tripled from the ones in the domestic terminal... For example who can afford to pay 13-5$ for a whopper meal in Vietnam (ok technically the airport is no-mans land yada yada, but still), I think that's like about twice the price than in the US? and 3$ for water is pretty standard kind of prices in Europe, but I'm just thinking about the locals.

One great thing about the HCMC airport which I haven't seen anywhere else in the world was that they checked your id and the luggage identification tag before you could exit the airport and looked if they matched, which I think is a great idea (even if it took some extra time of course).

All in all I think most of the airports I've been to are pretty much the same.
 
I've been too
San Fran
Cincy
Ohare
Milwaukee
Atlanta
Denver
Orlando
Mrytle Beach

I was too young remember cincy or MB. San Fran, Atlanta and Denver were probably the best. Ohare and Milwaukee are probably the worst. Milwaukee is a nice small airport but the food and employees are horrible.
 
Airports I've been to that I can at least vaguely remember.

London Gatwick
Manchester
Paris Charles de Gaulle
Riga
Helsinki
Atlanta
Orlando

Riga is a hole (thanks Air Baltic for routing all your flights through it) and my favourite is probably Orlando of that lot.
 
Maybe it's just because they're at home but my favourites are Heathrow Terminal 5 (The BA lounge is amazing) and Gatwick. Madrid is beautiful, but it's so spread out there's never much to do where you are. Barcelona is great too, best McDonald's I've been to.

Coca in Ecuador is the worst, it's so small they can only have one plane in at any one time, and there are no shops and only 1 toilet.

Generally I haven't been impressed by American airports, Miami was horrible, Vegas McCarran is poor and I didn't think much of LAX.
 
Of the ones I've been to
Best: Indianapolis (looking through I seem to be the only one whose flown out from here!) and Tampa Inter
Worst: Kansas City
 
^ I haven't flown from Southend, but it makes sense that a newer airport will be better designed than an older one.

Some of the smaller airports in the UK are a much more pleasant experience than some of the bigger ones. Liverpool is generally quicker and less hassle than Manchester for example.

Obviously, there are fewer destinations though, and prices can vary, so it's pretty rare to actually get a real choice as to where you can fly from.

I'm glad that the rest of the country recognises how **** disgusting Luton is though. Dreadful airport on every conceivable level.
 
I'll add Heathrow T5 into my best airports list. For once security feels like just a small part of your trip through the terminal not some huge hassle, helped by the fact it's completely open up the huge ceiling and merges seamlessly with the departures lounge.

Shopping is good, I only had to stay in the A pier so I didn't see the transit system below. The only thing that might trip stupid people up is that because the gates are in this huge rectangle with all your amenities in the middle, actually finding your gate can take a bit of a roundabout route. But I had no problem because i'm smart. And because I was with someone who works at security there.

Glasgow "International" Airport was gross. Felt like I was in a Birmingham shopping centre. </33
 
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