Letters to the Editor
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Other airports
On the hate side, another airport I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned is Seattle. Cramped quarters, not much by way of things to do while waiting for your plane. And then trying to figure out the shuttle service to downtown is vexing -- and time-consuming.
Also agree with the hate on Dulles. I hear the people movers will be going the way of the dodo in 2010. I wish it were sooner. And blame the republican legislators in Virginia for the hold up on building a train to Dulles. They refuse to allow Northern Virginians to tax themselves for such a luxury. The project finally got off the ground, only to be sidelined on whether to be underground or overhead in Tyson's corner.
I hate LaGuardia and don't understand why it's not on the list. It's teeny for the volume of people who use it. Or maybe it's just me using USAir shuttle and flying into that terminal.
O'Hare is America's nightmare. I pay extra $$ to avoid changing planes in O'Hare. I pick certain airlines to make sure I fly to Chicago through Midway, which is no wonderland either.
Loves:
Sign me up on Singapore. And Amsterdam. Don't understand how Siem Reap's airport got ranked so high. To me it was pretty generic. But that was three-four years ago. Phnom Penh's airport, otoh, was pretty cool.
DCA is a great home airport and yes, never call it Reagan to the locals. The exception is terminal A, which blows big time. You have to build a half hour extra time if you fly out of it and take the Metro because the shuttle runs infrequently and the trek from Terminal B must be a mile.
I love Long Beach Airport, too, and if I didn't have to fly out of Dulles, would use Jet Blue more often just to fly into LB.
I rather like Denver, but I've not been into the city through the airport, only changing planes.
And one nice touch Charlotte's airport has: rocking chairs you can sit in and watch the planes take off. More airports should have those homey touches.
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LAX - Just yesterday....
Just had a four hour delay at LAX yesterday. It was a miserable experience. The security line set-up was really bad; once you waited in one long line, you were then shuttled to an even longer one. The United worker at the gate (let's call her Gigi) was rude and refused to tell me why she had called me up to the podium. Yeah, she called my name out and then refused to tell me why. (I asked to speak to a supervisor over Gigi's rudeness and I'm pretty sure he tore up any record of my complaint as soon as we boarded the first time. Patrick, do passengers who complain get put on some kind of permanent "trouble-maker" list? In these Big Brother days, one wonders...It's as if we have to just "take" rude treatment out of fear)
And then boarding us twice when mechanics were STILL in the cockpit trying to fix something having to do with the computer--always comforting. At least they let us off the plane both times. Nowhere to plug in comfortably--not enough chairs for all the passengers. The bathrooms were being mopped down both times I was in them, so I guess that's good.
TSA is especially discouraging at LAX I've found. At Christmas they stopped my husband for carrying a Jill Goodman 2007 astrology calendar (a gift he had purchased as a stocking stuffer) and 7 pens. They thought the calendar was a symbol related to Islamic art (due to the Taurean bull) and why would anyone have so many pens in a backpack? (I'm not kidding. This is why they detained him for fifteen minutes while 5 people interviewed him.)
They stopped me in March because my clothes "were too big. You have to wear more form-fitting clothes. You could be hiding something there." I almost said "Yeah, it's called fat." But personally, I'm afraid to joke with TSA people these days.
On a more positive note, I went to Montreal's airport for the first time this year and I thought it was nice.
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CDG-no
As Patrick mentioned not too many people complained about Paris but I will. North American arrivals and departures plane and enplane on a jet bridge from a 747-400. You are shuttled around on a confusing combination of buses and corridors until you are spit out at the end. My fiance and I arrived 3 hours before departure. There are 5 Air France terminals and the cabbie was literally pissed off that I didn't know which one I was supposed go to. We arrived at our depature lounge 2 1/2 hours after we began. Carry on baggage was checked three times and it was clear the last search was more as punishment for either being subjects of Bush43 or simply a make work program for the French. Our boarding pass/passports were verified no less than 9 times after we cleared security. Yes we had been in France and Paris but one would hope that a country with that much art and culture could do a better job at their international airport than that.
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Perhaps written by a person with limited traveling experience?
Ontario, Calif. (ONT)
"When flying through Ontario in order to save $15 by avoiding LAX, be aware of the following: Once baggage is checked, you join a throng of frustrated cheapskates waiting to drop their luggage at the bomb scanner. You then graduate to a longer escalator line, which leads to an M.C. Escher maze through security. Finally in the concourse, enjoy the low ceilings, buzzing fluorescent lights, and $10 burritos."
The only reason I can understand why Ontario even exists is that it must have been funded by a congressional earmark. The place is a ghost town. Flying in and out during "business" hours, there was virtually no one there. Half the gates were shut down as were most of the service facilities. We never waited on line for anything because there were never enough people there to form a decent line nor was there all that much open to even line up for.