Which city has the worst airport and why is it Los Angeles?

Havent been through LA but Abu Dhabi has got to be a contender had to pass through it last year twice. Dont use your credit card, even at the official duty free, it'll get skimmed

Houston IAH.

It’s an endurance test.

DFW made a lasting and unfavorable opinion on me.

[quote]Havent been through LA

LAX is grotesquely large and takes forever to navigate. Half of your trip to SoCal will be spent in the damn airport.

Newark is no picnic

LAX is only a problem if you're changing airlines or are running late for a flight on United (the last terminal on the roadway).

ATL has very long concourses, slow security, terrible food choices and you're likely to get mowed down by the golf cart things that ferry around the old and lame.

Newark has recently been redone and is no longer like a bus station.

Houston is confusing and immigration is very slow. FW isn't confusing but it takes forever to get anywhere.

Dulles has been retrofitted with a Metro stop and an underground air train, but there's altogether too much walking.

R6 Glad Newark has improved. So right about it having been a bus station. Even Charlotte has gotten bad. Too many damn flights taking tacky people to all inclusive resorts to eat microwaved taquitos and slam rot gut rum runners and margs.

Chicago Midway ain't no walk in the park.

What I hate about LAX is the long walk or shuttle ride just to reach the Uber/taxi stand.

Why are there so many trashy people riding planes now? Where are they going? It's basically Greyhound with wings.

Heathrow.

I don’t mind LAX. It’s a very quick time from getting to your terminal to getting to your gate. Absolutely bizarre that there’s no metro connection but once you’re at the airport I think it’s pretty great. Baggage claim very slow, but nothing compared to the mess that I always encounter at the east coast airports, which also are in such a state of disrepair.

I've heard the worst ones are actually in very poor cities in the developing world, like Lagos. This is hardly a surprise.

Lately, I've found Schihpol in Amsterdam overcrowded and stressful.

The NYC ones used to be the worst in the US, but they've finally mostly been pleasantly upgraded.

My favorite in the USA is still Portland, which is an especially peaceful and clean large-ish airport.

Any airport at which one airline operates out of more than one terminal when you have to take a train or “people mover” to get from one terminal to another. Thankfully LAX is not among them, but DFW, ATL, and ORD are. I avoid these unless it is my destination.

The worst overall experience airport is Dulles. Even with Global Entry, TSA Pre Check, CLEAR, etc., it takes forever to clear security going in and immigration, baggage claim, and customs going out.

Any airport that forces you to leave airside for a connection.

r13 how could I forget Schihpol? A friend was stuck in a line there for FIVE HOURS last summer.

Newark is the worst on the planet.

R14 - Dulles concourses always feel like temporary structures to me. Hollow floors and bad carpet.

Heathrow. Always a disaster.

The food court options at Darfur International are nothing to write home about.

Newark is terrible for it's meager shopping and dining options in addition to being extremely dingy. I haven't been since the big renovation though.

Vancouver and Incheon are the nicest airports I've visited.

Phoenix is a nightmare, especially when making a connection.

Their “people movers” are a joke…my late grandmother could walk faster.

Has anyone been to the Orlando airport? I always imagine that being a terrible experience.

I just flew in and out of Delta and American terminals at LAX. They are perfectly acceptable. The time it takes to exit the terminal to the curb was minimal. The rental car shuttle was not a problem. It will probably be more irritating when you have to walk over the pedestrian bridges to the new monorail to go to the new Consolidated Rental building.

The winner is Atlanta. It is simply UGLY. And CROWDED. The food choices are terrible. Anyone actually checking in at Atlanta must wait in one of the largest queues in airport existence, which frequently sees passengers spilling out into the parking lot on weekends.

And did I mention how ugly it is? Like a second rate suburban mall.

I came from Germany to LAX and it was nice. It was only one big room, then there was the luggage room and then I found the taxi stand.

R4 don’t be stupid…LAX has one of the smallest terminal footprints of any major airport in the world. The knock on LAX is that it is too crammed together not that it is too big.

Orlando has a new terminal that is beautiful but also massive

I missed a flight here because I did not anticipate how far I would have to walk from the parking garage to the gate.

It’s about half a mile. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking. If your flight is at the furthest gate, it probably is a mile.

I haven't flown for work in about 20 years and I remember Atlanta as by far the worst. It was dingy.

Dingy and oddly sticky.

I flew out of Newark last week and it blew me away. Clean, modern, great dining and shopping options. I shit you not. Run, don’t walk.

The new Terminal A at Newark is nice. The Port Authority recently upgraded LaGuardia and Newark Terminal A.

Terminal B at Newark is still really crappy.

My main problem with LAX is getting to the airport sucks. Traffic is terrible and there is no train.

The worst airport by far is Prague's Franz Kafka International.

Minneapolis is laid out in a very confusing way.

R10 People dressed nicely. Didn't smell like shit. Were polite. The airlines treated you well. Plenty of room, meals and drinks were better, could smoke a cig, no security getting on the plane. Why do people we fuck everything up so bad.

Schiphol was fine when I connected there twice over the past few weeks.

Newark Terminal A is new and nice. Terminals B and C are neither.

I can't believe no one's mentioned O'Hare.

Maybe Chicago is a flyover city.

As was mentioned above, LAX is squashed together in a small space... for a major international airport. At one point (70s?) they were going to build a new and improved airport on the edge of the city... not Lancaster, but pretty far out there. And they decided not to build a new airport, but rather to rebuild the airport where it is. And they've been rebuilding/remodeling ever since. Given that, it's not a bad airport.

Lisbon is confusing. Heathrow is oddly organized. De Gaulle is huge and baffling, even having gone through there multiple times. Honolulu seems like it's a swap meet. Denver seems like a theme park in the middle of nowhere. Singapore, Portland, and San Jose are attractive and uncrowded (because of the design). Especially San Jose is easy to use... I think it was built large to handle a huge amount of traffic in Silicon Valley's future. Future hasn't come yet.

Singapore is overrated. I was there when it was fairly new and then again shortly before COVID. They must have added to it, because it had unused areas and parts were poorly organized.

The international Bangkok airport is sprawling but pretty well organized.

Denver is too long, even with all the moving walkways.

O'Hare is usually disliked because of delays, although I've had worse luck with Atlanta (I've lived in both places) and changed dozens of times at O'Hare. The United concourse is welcoming on a sunny day, but the gates can be tight. The American terminal is a big improvement over the way it was in the past.

I eat all the way up and down the terminal at O'Hare.

Chicago Dogs, Garrett's, whatever else catches my eye and stomach.

[quote] The winner is Atlanta. It is simply UGLY.

Hideous.

[quote] And CROWDED.

Extremely. At any time of day.

[quote] The food choices are terrible.

Bullshit. There are very legitimate criticisms of ATL. This isn’t one. The food choices are extremely varied, always expanding and many are excellent for an airport.

[quote] Anyone actually checking in at Atlanta must wait in one of the largest queues in airport existence, which frequently sees passengers spilling out into the parking lot on weekends.

From bullshit to horseshit. It doesn’t even reach this hyperbolic level the day before Thanksgiving. It is an ugly, huge and exhausting airport, but keep the criticisms factual.

^yeah I've never seen such a thing. Not even sure how that would work considering the layout.

It's ugly and huge, but it works well enough. The "plane train" is damn near omnipresent, so getting from one side to the other never takes too long ime.

Did we fuck it up so badly, r34? International air travel is now within reach of anyone with a full time job. You can fly to Paris or Tokyo from the West Coast for about $700. So what if people are wearing sweatpants and you can longer smoke?

I hate LAX.

It's a slippery slope, r43 populated by the exceedingly stupid m

Because smoking on airplanes is the height of civilization!

And the food in coach has never been very good.

R41 clearly you have never checked in at Atlanta for a redeye on a busy weekend

This is a known flaw

The airport is not designed to handle a city with a local population the size of Atlanta today

And it is not designed to handle security in the post 911 world

Nearly all airports have multiple terminals with their own TSAs

An airport with a single choke point to access all terminals can only work if the airport is small

The rotunda was designed as a place for Atlantans to dine and shop before going to their flights

It no longer serves that purpose because it must hold the passengers queue for TSA, which in the AM starts beyond the rotunda in the concourse beyond checkin

Of course one can use the international terminal, but only if you are flying Delta or don’t have bags to check if you are flying through another carrier; but you cannot take MARTA or any pre-security people mover there

What Atlanta could do is reorient checkin along the length of concourse T for all non Delta carriers

They would have to build over/into the parking garage and reorient the circulating roads but they could create anywhere from four to six additional checkpoints

Although since 80% of ATL flights are Delta the cost and inconvenience would not make it worthwhile

So they must find some other solution

N ewark!

Second by Atlanta

I flew from ATL to LAX to SEA. My plane to LAX was two hours late so I had less than 6 hours until my morning flight so I decided to just hang out in LAX. But my terminal closed so I had to take a shuttle bus to another terminal that was open all night and join hundreds of people sleeping on the floor for five hours until my terminal opened back up and then take the shuttle back. I found it hard to sleep amongst the mob on the floor, so I woke up late and almost missed my flight. Of course this was 20 years ago, but I thought it odd all the terminals weren't open all night.

any airport where once you go through security you have to go through security AGAIN if you head to another terminal. looking at you, logan, LAX et al. . .

Speaking of Atlanta back then you had to get your bags, go through immigration and then recheck them and recover them at the domestic baggage claim.

It used to be that the North Concourse, which has all the non-Delta carriers had its own security line. Even with the growth of the cheapie carriers, it usually was a breeze. I flew United a lot for international work and for trips to their hubs, so I took to using it all the time, even when I flew Delta. Then they consolidated everything. The one relief valve should be the TSA Pre line, but it is not well marked. Another problem is that Delta seems to put their most inept people at ATL---I've dealt with sharp, helpful gate agents and check-in folks working for Delta in other cities, but ATL is sheer torture if you need to make a routine change of any sort. The other airlines seem to find competent people, but not Delta. My nickname for Atlanta is "the city that doesn't work" and that certainly fits the airport.

The one nice thing about ATL is that it has a post office---handy for dropping off stuff you forgot to take to your local post office.

R53. At LAX T2, T3 and Bradley are all connected airside, after security.

Miami is a complete dump. They keep adding a gate here or there, but it’s straight out of the 1970s.

Another vote for Houston (Bush). They ripped out all of the people movers because they couldn’t keep up with maintenance. They have been remodeling terminals D and E for 2.5 years, so three terminals go through one security checkpoint in terminal C. And when that renovation is complete, the only thing they will have accomplished is to delete 3000 parking spaces (former D/E garage). It’s a mess.

Miami’s new terminals are gorgeous. Don’t know how much the older terminals are being used.

Houston Bush has nice terminals with massive amounts of walking required. But the terminals I have used were all very nice and modern.

Coming from Australia, it is recommended by travel writers to fly to Vancouver or San Francisco if you want a connecting flight to east coast USA, so as to avoid having to go through LAX when you're already exhausted. SF is certainly a much easier task than LAX, and of course has the BART right from the door into the city if the layover is long enough to utilise it.

I found the labelling of ground transport services from LAX extremely unclear for a newcomer, and there was nobody to ask where I should stand. Even the Disneyland shuttle stand wasn't clearly marked, which astounded me.

[quote]Which city has the worst airport and why is it Los Angeles?

This has to be under consideration for best thread title of the week.

You can actually fly direct from Australia to Dallas now.

Of course Dallas is also terrible.

I am sure it’s improved since I last flew into this one

Dong Ha 1967

It was an almost hostile experience

OP, my friend spent two weeks in Japan and when she landed in LAX, it was a wake up call to her regarding how chaotic America is in terms of transit, efficiency, etc. She cried and wanted to go back to Japan.

Most airports are shit. LAX? If you are flying into LA and have to rent a car add another 90 minutes to hours to your schedule.

It's probably easier to name airports that work well:

All of the SF area airports are easy to manuever and easy in and out.

Portland OR San Diego Dallas Love FIeld Palm Beach FL Hartford CT

Hong Kong Budapest

R61 what astounds me is that anyone would consider taking a shuttle bus directly from LAX to Disneyland.

LAX is a dream compared to any of the NY airports, particularly La Guardia which has always been a shit show, not to mention landing and taking off is terrifying.

R66 the new consolidated rental facility at LAX is almost complete….there is also a Metro connection there . The only hitch is that the people mover into LAX is behind schedule—it will open next year. Virtually the entire LAX map will have been remade well ahead of the Olympic Games.

LaGuardia is beautiful now.

I love the Tampa airport! Easiest airport to negotiate I have ever been in.

R68…nope, not even close. LaGuardia has been re-built from the ground up.

JFK has two new terminals underway—which means all will be of recent construction; further, the entire road system is being simplified and renovated.

LaGuardia is VERY nice, I visited NYC last year and I was impressed. Definitely beats O'hare.

[quote] For a very long time, New York City’s LaGuardia Airport felt like the intricately dressed set of an apocalypse film. Spread across its terminals were abandoned check-in stands gone feral, floors damp with discharged moistures, low ceilings looming over dark corridors. Now, near the end of a nine-year, $8 billion rebuild of its main terminals and roadways, LaGuardia has become an unexpected hero for American infrastructural renewal. It is an incredible airport.

There are brand new terminals at Salt Lake City, Kansas City, and I think Portland, OR too. Has anyone been through those?

The new LaGuardia is beautiful. Though it now has the issue that your gate can be a very long walk from security.

Kansas City is the nicest in the country now

I've never had problems or issues with LAX. It's definitely not the best, but I've never thought it was that bad.

I think LAX is the most miserable of the big city airports. It feels like a jail. That was back in 2015 though, not sure if it's still the same way.

You'd be surprised, R67. People really do.

In my case, I had an extra day to kill when returning to Oz from the east coast. Having heard about the direct shuttle, it seemed like a reasonable way to spend a spare 24 hours. Of course, it was not. It did open up for me the mystery of how, for decades and decades, children could have been fooled into thinking it was a fun day out to stand repeatedly in lines for 45-90 minutes to get to rides that last no longer than 3.5 minutes (and again to get lunch or dinner). I ponder that business model a lot. No wonder Disney had to practically invent marketing.

I grew up in LA. I loved Disneyland no matter what…visited 30+ times when I was younger. What I never did is take a bus from LAX (which was less than 2 miles from where I lived)!

Echoing R38, San Jose really is a gem. It seems like you can just drive right up to it off a city street instead of entering an "airport area" a few miles out and then dealing with lots of interchanges and feeder roads, etc. I visited my sister who lives in Monterey last month and she greeted me at baggage. I wondered where she parked, thinking it was far away. But there was a short-term lot right out the door from baggage.

I love airport talk.

I was looking to experiencing the Minn-StPaul airport but it was not nearly as friendly as I was told. Kind of a let down.

It's fair silly to compare major hub airport to these small regional airports.

Obviously tiny airports are going to be a more pleasant experience to navigate than major airports.

R85: Not necessarily. I had miserable waits in Green Bay and Asheville. The smaller hubs and former hubs usually are more navigable, but not always---Cleveland can involve a lot of walking. BWI remains pretty miserable (you pay for wifi, food choices are limited and the ground transportation involves lots of noise and fumes).

I must be lucky because I’ve never found LAX, ATL, ORD, all 3 NYC area airports, LHR a hassle. Denver was challenging because our plane was late and I had 10 minutes for the connection and both gates were at the complete opposite ends of the airport, so everyone literally ran for what seemed like a mile to get the connection. I love Oakland and Burbank, but I seldom get flights to/from there anymore. And I love NRT for the solid food and shopping.

The worst airport was somewhere in Thailand, close to Krabi- it pretty much was an open air terminal, no a/c, all the fumes from the planes billowing into the waiting area. You also couldn’t flush any toilet paper down the toilets in their bathrooms. I also was violently motion sick from the one hour taxi ride to the air, so that didn’t help.

On Reddi, which had a similar thread last week, it seems that CDG is the clear winner.

If you were staying at Disneyland and had no plans to see anything else in greater Los Angeles I don’t see why a shuttle wouldn’t be a good option. An Uber to Disneyland is at least $100.

LAX is fine and well organized if you need assistance. ATL is a dumpster fire and no amount of money thrown at it by Delta can help. The security lines are intentionally long and understaffed so the dogs can sniff around dirty hippies and unsuitable negroes and everyone remembers they are still in the south. CLT is awful for connections. IAD has helpful staff but awful signage. OAK is as good as SFO is terrible. BHM is surprisingly easy and has better connections than you might think. LGA is great now that the renovation is taking shape. I would take MDW over ORD any day and obviously DAL over the dreadful DFW. SNA is the easiest and best airport I frequent.

FRA and AMS are also awful but I don’t mind Heathrow - long waits but plenty to distract.

An exceptionally niche comment:

The best gluten free baked goods I've ever had ANYWHERE are in Terminal E of the Minneapolis airport.

Schiphol: The transfer point from EU to non-Schengen flights is downright terrifying on a busy day …Near-riot conditions.

Outdone only by NCE while exiting passport control for the “extra” security gates. I was once in a huge line with passengers for flights to KENNEDY, ATL, Moscow and Algiers when the computers went down. The Russians broke through the lines in the face of intense yelling from rednecks and wailing from Algerian children, while the New Yorkers demanded the cops. I kid you not: a passport officer in one of glass booths came out and pulled his pistol—ready to fire in the air!

[QUOTE]The security lines are intentionally long and understaffed so the dogs can sniff around dirty hippies and unsuitable negroes

Is Earl Butz in the house?

That is a horrible way to fly from ATL to SEA, r52. A six hour layover where you attempted to sleep on the floor on the terminal with a bunch of strangers? I would say that it was not LAX's fault you had a bad time. In 2004 there were probably better options for that trip.

Probably? Just probably?

[quote] I can't believe no one's mentioned O'Hare.

The O'Hare experience improved dramatically when the people mover/tram opened. You can catch the CTA subway AT the airport, although last time I rode it was NOT an express train.

[quote] The airport is not designed to handle a city with a local population the size of Atlanta today

That is the problem with LAX. As far as traffic, it was built when the metro area was 1/20 of its current size.

I don't miss living in the desert, but I do miss Palm Springs airport...small and easy. I hate Chicago and Atlanta airports.

R96 it has been modified many times since the original layout. There are four intermodal options that did not exist back then. Not to mention an entire freeway was constructed just to access the airport .

LAX is just ugly and spread out. It's not like Heathrow or CDG which were hobbled together over time, with additions and renovations wherever space allowed.

My contenders:

Ninoy Aquino International Manila - grossly inefficient at every level, staff everywhere doing nothing, staff actively try to frame passengers for a bribe out, limited food options, bathrooms are always a disaster, scam artists wait outside.

Istanbul International Airport - very new with all the allure that cheap, shiny finishes and luxury retail can evoke, employees are rude and not helpful; we arrived at the airport 3 hours before our flight and barely made it on board because NO ONE knew about where American passengers had to check in even though their special procedures are required by the airport - not even Turkish Airlines for their own passengers.

R99 is an idiot for (1), not understanding that LAX is the opposite of spread out, and (2) not knowing that at IST there is no special place for Americans …you go through questions at the check in counter (if you’re too pathetic not to do it online), and you may go through an extra layer at the gate/on the jetway. IST is no different from MXP, CDG, AMS, MAD etc. in that regard.

The LAX People Mover is coming.. now Oct. 2025. And the K line extension to LAX is still slated for this year. I don't mind LAX that much. There's a shortcut ramp over to terminal 7. The FlyAway bus is pretty Ok because they can use the HOV lanes. It's honestly worse/slower crawling though DTLA on the way back to Union Station.

I don't know why people hate Newark so much. Terminal C is pretty nice. I've seen and experienced things at JFK that were way more arduous including terrible way finding and ridiculous taxi lineups. The train from Newark is easy into Penn.

Newark has awful delays but it’s really not that bad.

I flew out of IST two years ago and didn't have problems. There was a lot of extra security but the airport itself was nicer than anything in the US.

How annoying for R99 that Istanbul airport in Türkiye was unable to cater specifically to American travelers!

One would think that the USA isn’t the only country on Earth! How ghastly!

You're right R103 has regularly occuring delays. Forgot about that. Part of it is the region and volume of traffic?

Newark does have the a bad problem with delays. The airport has more flights than it can reasonably handle, too much demand. United has been cutting back on the number of flights out of EWR to try to ease the problem.

Sidebar.

Regarding Newark Airport.

A friend of mine just got his artwork displayed in Terminal A. There was a countrywide contest for photographs that were New Jersey themed. His got chosen. I believe all the winners' photos are on a digital loop (somewhere) as well as hard framed copies throughout the terminal.

Back to the original topic.

Has the Frankfurt, Germany, airport improved? I haven't been through it since the early 2000s, but I loathed it. The ceilings were so low I felt like I was in a tunnel the whole time.

There’s more than one Frankfurt?

What it's not: Montreal (YUL). Loved that airport. So easy to have a stopover there, friendly people and decent food.

All Chicago airports will make you want to check into a nunnery for a fortnight.

You have to walk a mile to get to the subway at Midway. The fucking parking garage is bigger than the airport, including the runways!

IMO, LAX isn't that bad. I'm usually in the United terminal. The thing I don't like is that you're stuck in that terminal. If you want to go to another terminal (to eat something, etc.), you have to go through security, again. LAX is also *expensive*. I remember paying something like $12 for a large bottle of water and this was a long time ago.

I recently went through Denver for the first time. I don't know if I just got lucky with the placement of the gates, but it was very easy to get off one plane and get on the connecting flight. Food options, not great, though.

The United terminal at O'Hare reminds me of a prison waiting room.

r38 is right about San Jose (SJC), It's one of the easiest hassle-free, crowd free airports I've been to in the US. Security is usually less than 5 minutes and if you check bags, it's also less than 5 minutes before they arrive in baggage claim. If I have to go to San Francisco or anywhere in the Bay Area, I choose SJC over SFO or OAK every time. The only negative is that if your flight is delayed, there's no lounges or any good food options.

The food selections in the LAX United terminal could do with a refresh.

I’m seeing Karen Bass later today—I’ll let her know of concern R118

R71, Tampa is my closest major airport and I completely agree. It's terrific in every way.

Well, except that it is in Tampa. 🤢

I can't disagree R121. I live across the bay by the Gulf, which is very nice. I happen to go to the airport a lot to pick up/drop off friends since I love to drive.

R120^^

r117, has Oakland changed in the past 6 years? It used to be great.

IAH Houston is so huge. And always under construction