Best and Worst Airports

[Bronzy]

Philly and BWI (international terminals) because they are home (I lived about 1/2 way between them, but usually used Philadephia).

Hate with a flaming passion Orlando. Not keen on Gatwick. Really hate flying between the pair of them.

This reminds me why I'm glad I'm flying to Tampa from Gatwick instead of Orlando.

I probably would have ended up an octogenarian before I would have managed to get through Orlando's bloody security.

[MidnightShambler]

Liverpool airport is great. Minimum of fuss, security only takes 5 minutes no matter what time you're there and everything except the Burger King is quite reasonably priced. No complaints at all.

Every airport in Eastern Europe I've been to has been similar, no messing, just in and out. Although the brutalism around Vilnius is a bit depressing if you arrive in the evening because the whole area is very dreary, it's much nicer in the day and anyway, that's not the airports fault. Oslo Torp is the opposite, lovely and picturesque with loads of woodland and iced up waterfalls.

Heathrow is obviously the worst airport in the world and people should just stop pretending otherwise.

[thenoise]

Not really...airports good and bad. You do know travelling can be a tiring, dull, painful experience. A good airport is a boon, a bad one brings you closer to death

Boo boo we used to go to the airport just to watch the planes.

[Bazooka]

Worst: All of them.

Any airport, where you queue to get on a shuttle bus from the plane, when the airport is in pissing distance.

[MidnightShambler]

Dubai airport is quite nice though, they  have a Shake Shack and you can get 200 fags for a tenner. Plus I like transiting through it these days without having to actually go in to Dubai itself to see my ex and part with a couple of grand for standard foods and drinks. And be surrounded by twats.

[Bazooka]

Dubai airport is quite nice though, they  have a Shake Shack and you can get 200 fags for a tenner. Plus I like transiting through it these days without having to actually go in to Dubai itself to see my ex and part with a couple of grand for standard foods and drinks. And be surrounded by twats.

Dubai airport, has some of the friendliest staff, mostly Filipino.

[Consignia]

Haneda has this really horrible faux historical Japanese villiage area, which really looks terribly cheap and tacky.



This barely show naff it looks in person.

[Ferris]

Worst: All of them.

Any airport, where you queue to get on a shuttle bus from the plane, when the airport is in pissing distance.

Don't worry, La Guardia has that. Both ways!

Washington DC-Dulles also does that, but only 1 specific chap can drive it to the terminal so you get off the plane then all pile into a shit mad airline bus from the '70s and sit there for 20 minutes looking at the terminal out the window until yer man decides to come and drive you the 30yds to the gate.

[chveik]

Berlin-Schonefeld is awful.

hope this helps.

[Beagle 2]

Brussels is the worst. Got stuck there for eleven hours once through no fault of my own. Then the next time I was there I missed my flight through entirely fault of my own and had to stay in a stinking budget Ibis. Back for a third bite of the cherry, I put my phone in to charge and the plug socket exploded, giving me an electric shock. I tweeted about this and was immediately contacted by the security services because of the explosion/airport content of my tweet. It's like fucking Mordor, that place.

[Z]

Worst: Any airport that doesn't provide a water fountain, twice as bad if it doesn't provide one after security

Seattle was pretty fucking boring and had a feeling to it that made it impossible to feel okay sitting in one spot for more than about 30 minutes.
Vegas too, although that one had a kinda cute super tiny airplane museum bit to it too, and was only about a 30 minute walk from the strip iirc.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Here's another bit of luton cuntery for you; they don't give out those little bags for make up and liquids like plenty of other places do, instead they make you get them from a gumball machine, 2 for £1. Of course you're only allowed one aren't you.

And because the whole experience is so debilitating it naturally turns people into bastards, so they don't leave the spares on top of the machine, like nice people do with spent tube/rail tickets at train machines.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Brussels is the worst. Got stuck there for eleven hours once through no fault of my own. Then the next time I was there I missed my flight through entirely fault of my own and had to stay in a stinking budget Ibis. Back for a third bite of the cherry, I put my phone in to charge and the plug socket exploded, giving me an electric shock. I tweeted about this and was immediately contacted by the security services because of the explosion/airport content of my tweet. It's like fucking Mordor, that place.

Brussels International, or Charleroi?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Here's another bit of luton cuntery for you; they don't give out those little bags for make up and liquids like plenty of other places do, instead they make you get them from a gumball machine, 2 for £1. Of course you're only allowed one aren't you.

And because the whole experience is so debilitating it naturally turns people into bastards, so they don't leave the spares on top of the machine, like nice people do with spent tube/rail tickets at train machines.

Not true, as I found in October when I grabbed one for free from the several black dispensers near check-in.

Additionally, pretty much every airport you go yo will dole them out for free at the actual conveyors just to help save time.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Worst: All of them.

Any airport, where you queue to get on a shuttle bus from the plane, when the airport is in pissing distance.

Broke the record at Bratislava last Friday, 150 metres.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Additionally, pretty much every airport you go yo will dole them out for free at the actual conveyors just to help save time.

This has been my experience in every airport apart from luton. It was a few years ago, granted.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

My England airport experiences:

Heathrow: oh god windowless purgatoric fuckhell
Luton: surprisingly alright, partly modernised, relatively compact
Leeds Bradford: pretty harmless, sometimes bad for landing/fog and wind
Manchester: T3 pretty good, know my way around well. Quite expensive everywhere except Spar. A bit daunting on first visit. Taxi and takeoff sometimes seems to drag
East Midlands: Small but a pisstaking badly connected little shithole
Doncaster Airport: Genuinely terrific no-nonsense, compact, clean, spacious. As most airports should be.
Liverpool: Quite good. Similar to Donny. The gate areas could be better though

[Sebastian Cobb]

People seem to hate Aberdeen airport, but basically it's quite wide, at the back, out the way there's a dixons and a boots that you can ignore, at the front there's loads of seats and at one end there's an ok pub/bar and the other end a coffee shop selling coffee and cakes.

What else do you need?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Dublin airport: Can't remember much about it so it's probably alright.
Brussels Charleroi: Nice enough airport but maybe struggling with capacity and short on seating, also expensive long bus journey to Brussels
Schiphol: Slick right up until anything goes wrong, then an absolute cluster fuck. Enormous, perhaps too big ultimately to ever be good
Cologne/Bonn: Modern, clean, pleasant but a but soulless, also not enough ticket machines for the ubahn - common problem
Hannover airport: Literally cannot remember a single thing other than difficult to get ubahn tickets into town
Nuremberg: Nice airport but be careful not to go through passport control too soon. Sometimes slow with customs. Shops are surprisingly shit given its Bavaria.
Frankfurt: Slick. A decent operation

[Sebastian Cobb]

Oh that reminds me, I got sent to Cork for work one time, via Heathrow.

It turns out the Ireland depature lounge is a circular bit on a stand in the middle of the roads around Heathrow, and connected by tunnels.

Basically a human form of an 80's rotastak.



it has a basic bar and only serves soup.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Barcelona BCN: quite well connected, large, most of the time in an unnecessary sense
Palma di Mallorca: Also incredibly large. Frightening amounts of dead space and lots of walking
Santiago di Compostela: Great airport. Airy, calm, low stress, modern, efficient
Madrid: very big, imposing,. But quite well designed and joined up with transport...acceptable

Lisbon airport: cannot remember a single thing
Porto airport: Modern but subway is an irregular connection and the ticket machines and layout are a joke. Big queues

Malta airport: Pretty good all-round. Quite modern, not mega stressful, pleasant enough forecourt

[Sebastian Cobb]

When I was in Greece I set off a metal detector and had to get frisked by a security guard. His hands were half-way up my thigh when he stopped and asked me whether my baggage was to the left or the right. I, half asleep and hungover, assumed this was the traditional tailor's question and mumbled 'it's all a bit bunched up mate' while re-arranging my knob and bollocks. To which he replied 'No. Your bags, right scanner or left scanner?'

I mumbled 'left' and he walked off shaking his head.

[ToneLa]

Nice airport was shite. Queues everywhere, and it had virtually nowt of use there be it shops or food or anywhere to sit. Considering the expensive high standard of life in Nice itself it was a wee bit jarring!

[a duncandisorderly]

most of the airports I've been through are better for leaving from than arriving into, & I'd include such relatively decent ones as philly, heathrow T5, madrid barajas. I reserve special disdain for vienna's schwechat, though. a properly shit experience both ways.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Trieste airport: Small, very continental and 90s. Likeable but some home comforts lacking
Pisa airport: One of my faves. Great fly-in, super quick through customs, out within walking distance of the centre. Charming little terminal with 80s/90s kiosks.
Bologna airport: Also very Italian, a tolerable one

Zadar airport: Modern, tiny, slick, everything you want from an airport. Quick, easy, comfy, safe
Split airport: unmitigated crowded Yugoslav era shithole but I hear it has received an overdue revamp

Tivat: Yugoslav - smokey, dirty, 90s. Functional at best

Bratislava: other than the stupid buses this is one of my preferred airports. Modern, simple, well designed, processes everything efficiently

Budapest: A hulk these days and quite far from the centre. Some of it is very badly designed. It's quite good to arrive at though.
Debrecen: Tiny, epoch shatteringly small airport that makes you reassess the pomp and ceremony of major airports. Basically an airfield with some small offices.

Cluj: Quite stereotypical Eastern European. 90s style funky design that's dated badly. A general Days Are Gone sense. Very draughty gate area due to automatic doors, pathetic bad design.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Frankfurt seemed alright. Big and airy, easy to get a drink. It had these bus shelters with negative pressure you could smoke in, which I didn't but my mate did. Just generally Germanically efficient.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Prague: A familiar airport and a generally smart, well designed efficient operation. For a larger airport, a good one.

Wroclaw airport: Beautiful modern EU money, slick operations, no bullshit
Lublin: same as above, save for the annoying holding pen area
Rzeszow: Quite a good one. Not too pokey, easy to get too, airy inside
Poznan: can't remember too much, was probably good in that case
Krakow: very decent modern medium sized airport with a good connection into the city
Gdansk: bit of a trek via public transport and not my favourite. Passengers seem an almost imposing inconvenience for them

Lviv: Better than it first appears. Functions smoothly, well appointed, surprisingly modern in places

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Riga: some charmingly old touches which add to the Baltic experience I suppose.

Vilnius: modern enough inside but not much to look at outside. All aspects of the bus and rail connections are unnecessarily confusing

[MidnightShambler]

I only ever take hand luggage anywhere these days (even when I was doing a few months in Thailand a couple of years ago I only took a little rucksack) because I just can't be fucked checking anything in and then waiting for the carousel, so my opinion of airports is based around how quickly you can get from the plane to the street outside and how good the transport links to the city are. On that score, Budapest is the best I've been to lately, I arrived at 1am and I was on a bus outside by twenty past. The buses are 24hr too, which isn't the case in a lot of places. Mostly if you aren't there by midnight you're fucked if you haven't already sorted something.

Christchurch airport in NZ was a fucking nightmare I never want to repeat though. Had to have a case cos it had all my tools in it because I was working there but even if i'd had just hand luggage i'd have had a birthday by the time I had my Visa stamped. Took 6 hours to get through immigration and my luggage off the carousel. Still not as bad as Heathrow though.

[The Culture Bunker]

Helsinki - bloody huge. Not a place for someone who needs pre-flight Dutch Courage.
Istanbul - security very tight (for obvious reasons)
Boston Logan - pain in the arse getting out of, massive queues.
The Berlin one that isn't the main one - bit out of town, but fine enough.
Belgrade - security escorted my partner by gunpoint to the gate due to her Iranian passport. Yay!