I have to concur with the previous assessment of ATL - Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is a black hole. Yes, I'm badmouthing my home airport because it is everything a modern airport should not be - dark, dank and a relic from the 70s. Every time I visit some other destination like Montreal, SeaTac, Detroit, O'Hare (and even Midway and Reagan Internation) I sigh in dismay. How did we get stuck with an airport reminscent of a waiting room in Purgatory? ATL - where the the staff is surly (so much for southern hospitality), your flights are never on time, and you get to check your luggage in customs TWICE!

Yes, they're currently laying down travertine tile in the foyers and they've erected dinosaur bones in the atrium. Heck, Delta just got new digs and they were under bankruptcy protection! But what's the old southern saying? You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I know ATL is limited to what it can do considering its status as one of the busiest airports around; but couldn't they at least pop out a few skylights?

I was on a United flight from O'Hare to ATL not too long ago and I was happily listening to the pilots chattering on one of the in-flight channels. As we taxied into place on the runway and readied for take-off, my mild fear of flying had slightly abated at hearing the captain and first officer running through the last second checks.

We roared down the runway and just at the point where I began to wonder why we weren't lifting off the ground I heard the captain (I guess it was the captain) say, "Abort take-off. We're aborting take-off. Something's not right." Suffice to say, I wanted off that plane right then and there.

Very quickly, one could hear the pilots communicating to the tower that an indicator light kept going off and we had to abort the take-off (I had the picture in my head of them thumping on the light trying to get it to go off). We ended up not deplaning and taking off about an hour later after they fiddled around the instruments. They shut off that channel shortly after we left the active runway.