TS: American airports vs. European airports

Paris: smoke 'em, and then put 'em out in the potted plants like everyone else does. I had a really weird time on a layover once in De Gaulle airport, although in fairness I'd been travelling almost 24 hours with no sleep by the time I got there, and that was via either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia (both of which I saw on that trip and thought were awful). Everyone seemed to know about gate changes with absolutely no announcements or signs (and I understand enough French not to have missed anything) and were also prepared to mindlessly shuffle down stalled moving walkways in HAL-shaped tunnels knowing not where they headed.

Yes, but it does deter some people (well it and the machines.) Plus I'm sure it catches more people than not searching ANYBODY.

I sort of love/hate airports. I am seeing less of them now than I did 2-3 years ago, so they have regained their novelty.

x-p

Is this true? I sort of don't think it is.

have there been like any studies or anecdotal evidence that a terrorist decided not to try something because of airport security? i doubt it.

Plus I'm sure it catches more people than not searching ANYBODY

i'm not saying some form of searches shouldn't be in place, but airport security is far more about reassuring the flying public more than it is about "catching" anybody (much like the nypd's new "random searches" in the subway). which is fine, but not, like, actually aimed at catching anybody (if you don't believe me, look up an audit on the tsa's stellar job post-9/11 of stopping weapons at checkpoints).

you are forgetting something: europe's super-awesome rail systems.

Mind you - all better than the dump that is Istanbul airport.

but flying can be much quicker and cheaper if you are lucky.

depends where you're going i guess

Also, Daniella from Dortmund.

i'll second that.

1. They say nothing and send me through;
2. they "suggest" I take them off;
3. they "suggest" I take them off, and then get mad when I ask if that means, since I know my sandals/sneakers/etc. have no metal in them, that I can just keep them on;
4. they make everyone take them off, but occasionally don't enforce the demand;
5. they make everyone take them off, no arguments.

This leads me to believe the shoe thing is largely bullshit.

Re: general searches, I also still sometimes get my bag searched, looking for tweezers or scissors in my toiletry kit. Especially annoying, since you're not allowed to just dig them out for them, and must watch as they systematically go through everything. This is also very, very stupid.

I've noticed in the U.S. at least, food and shopping, and particularly the former, has gotten much, much better, no doubt because they barely serve food on the flight anymore, and people stock up on take-out before they get on.

If I remember correctly, the Miami airport smelled like boiled hot dogs. LAX is fun for the occasional celebrity posse hurrying through.

The guy said "why have you come to Norway" and we said "visiting friends" and he said "please have a sfae trip home" then correcting himself with "AFTER visiting your friends I SUPPOSE".

airports i like: jfk (esp. jetblue's terminal), o'hare, the new midway, pdx, madrid.

aw, lga is cute.

that's good. it was DIRE before.

Haha, I waited next to D12 (sans Em) at LAX baggage claim and I still hate it.

the commute to jfk's not that long if you're coming from brooklyn. it's about 50 minutes door-to-door.

i've taken the bus to laguardia with no problems. i just make sure to leave enough time (but then, i'm generally not a "show up at the last possible minute" sort of person).

I'm super neurotic about arriving on time, so the problem for me with something like the LGA bus is that I give myself too much time and end up at the airport for, like, three hours.

Santa Barbara aiport is REALLY cute!

I guess I'll find out next week!

Also, JFK can suck my scrotum. I've been on fast trams at airports, but they don't usually give it a name like the "AirTrain" and charge an extra five bucks to use it. Why not just enforce an airport improvement cover charge instead and admit it, guys? SeaTac and Las Vegas airport have trams as well, and they don't charge the passengers anything.

The only sucky airports I can think of are John Wayne airport in Orange County CA and San Diego Intl. Airport, but that's not completely fair, because they are relatively small airports. Although I HATE landing in Orange County and San Diego because your nose is fucking the back of the seat in front of you by force, literally (i.e. tiny runway) Added bonus in O.C., you get to take off at a 30 degree angle thanks to rich assholes in Newport Beach that force the airport to take noise abatement procedures, which are riskier. Also, I was at Raleigh-Durham airport a few weeks ago, which is just as small at John Wayne airport, and it was soooo much better.

ihttp://www.spielbergfilms.com/images/terminal6.jpg

to be fair, it is kind of a long ride from the howard beach subway station to the airport. not a $5 long ride, though. maybe a $2 long ride.

DFW is the most boring airport I've been to -- wait, it's tied w/ Dulles for most dulles.

yeah, to this i say donut's otm above, the air train sucks. $5 my ass. the shuttle bus from the subway used ta be FREE, motherfuckers.

and the m60 is fine, you're on crack brah. i was dog-sitting in harlem last week, and my mom flew in to visit. her flight got in at 10 to 9 am, we met before 9:30 (plenty of time to beat the rush for brunch at sylvia's).

I was in the international terminal last year. Someone got by security, and the alarms went off. A couple of armed guys took off after him, but the thing that was so nifty was watching all of the security guards - from the cops to the conveyor belt watchers - form a human chain across the terminal entrance. Everything just froze for a few minutes. Passengers were stuck in line at security and the rest of us were "trapped" inside the terminal. The guards eventually came marching back with a sheepish teenager in tow, and folks just kinda looked around at each other, going "Damn!"

Hmm. I've had a bunch of problems with them, but honestly I don't take them enough to claim to have enough experience. I live in Manhattan on the west side, so I have enough subway options to maintain this unreasonable fear.

When I went to Turku, Finland last year there was no discernable security at all. I walked to the baggage area, was met by my contact, and we strode outside to his car with no customs or passport flashing at all. Maybe they trust the Dutch to take care of that at their end. Or maybe that's the EC thing.

I think it's kind of funny that an airport known as LAX has lame security!

had to get that out of the way sorry

Ironically, the A train to connect to JFK on my way back last summer had several problems, and I had to sit on the train for 20 minutes at one station, looking at my watch, going... "ok, when is this thing going to go again?" and then, everyone realized that the train was STOPPED, PERIOD. And the bottom level was where the A train was resuming in the subway station. The train people just never bothered to tell anyone on the upper A train this minor piece of information. I wish I had taken the MTA bus instead.

As for the Airtrain vs. tram thing -- I mean, sorry, but they all seem to cover the same mileage to me, even if there's a large difference in reality. This probably reflects my usually half-awake state of mind when I hop on the tram. Airtrain, Vegas airport tram, SeaTac tram, same thing. EIGHT MILES on the Airtrain?? My commute from Seattle to Redmond each way is just a mile or two longer than that. <BALKI>THAZ REEDEEKULOSS</BALKI>

The airports I like best are the ones that haven't grown to an unmanageable size but still have a decent place to eat and maybe an airline club or two (e.g. Cleveland, Memphis, Milwaukee, Midway). The mega-airports are OK as long as you're flying on the hub carrier, otherwise you're gate's going to be in the next county (e.g., non-NW routes through Mpls and Detroit, CO/NW flights through O'Hare).

The small airports are good for access/egress (nice to be in your rental car five minutes after you land) but forget getting anything to eat if you get stuck.

i like lax.

pdx is the worst, for shoes off and nitpicky searches. that was just on a domestic flight to oakland, horrible!

LAX can be a pain in the ass, but for the number of passengers that go through there it could be much much worse. There's a free shuttle to the Green Line station. Sepulveda to the 105 freeway is pretty quick. I love the Encounter bar in the Theme Building, and there's a pretty great bookstore in one of the terminals.

Fave airport still is the adorable LGB. The terminal hasn't changed since 1947 and still has all the vintage deco everywhere. Good diner upstairs too

This is EVERY airport I've been at since 2002 though. I don't mind PDX. Although there's too much of that dirty aqua carpetting.. but this is just a touchy/feely issue.

pit is ok. i like philly, esp. the int'l terminal. cincy sucks.

Most boring airport: the international terminal at the Tokyo airport that isn't in Tokyo (it's on the tip of my tongue - Narima? Nitsuh?). Everything's in Japanese (duh), everything's expensive (duh), and there's nowhere to go. I had to spend like six hours there once.

that said, i wish you could smoke in american airports. seems like most dont even have smoking lounges. wtf?

MSP - Home of the six-stepped escalator. Nice train system. Buses will take you straight to Mall of America. Post office open twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

JAX - I breezed through security even though the guards teased me for the USAF shirt I was wearing (???)

MEMPHIS - Not too small, not too large. The scent of barbecue wafts through the entire building. This is not a bad thing.

ATL - I don't even remember it. The only reason I was there was to visit a dying relative. I fell asleep on the plane after having stayed up all night before. I was having these weird dreams and the passengers were all laughing every sixty seconds. I finally opened my eyes and realized that they were playing one of those "Candid Camera" type shows, and everyone was listening to the sound on their headphones.

NOLA, LOUIS ARMSTRONG - Never been past the security gate, but it's where I saw my future wife for the first time. The huge interstate ramps outside are cool.

LAX - This place could use a tram. If there was one, I didn't see it. Also, having an international terminal and another international terminal can be a bit confusing to the first-time LAX traveller. I'd love to hang out at that bar in the spider, but I don't know if I would ever make it back.

Also, fuck those pictures of Shrubya and Dick hanging over the hallway into Customs.

OAKLAND - I landed here in October, 2001, which gave me my first look at post-9/11 airport security. I remember walking past the gate and pausing as I watched a man in a business suit get wanded and his clothes searched. It was the first time I had ever seen that.

Then a man wearing camoflouge, holding an automatic weapon, ordered me to keep moving. The baggage claim was still dark from the California brown-outs.

SYDNEY - Long, long hallways. A duty-free shop that I still don't quite understand. An Australian customs agent who claimed to have actually passed through Little Rock, Arkansas. A guy who said "Drop your bag, Mate" as his beagle sniffed me out. Finally getting out into the main area where my future wife had been hanging out with Footie Whatshisname.

It was also weird coming back to hear boarding announcements for flights to Saigon. Not Ho Chi Minh City, but Saigon.

LIT - My home airport. Just one big hallway with pictures of the Old State House on one side and Little Rock Central High on the other. They've recently remodled the place where family and friends who are picking up someone can watch a monitor of the hallway for their arriving loved-one's. This has, obviously, led to quite a bit of tomfoolery.

VEGAS - Always classic. "Area of Safe Refuge" doors, and of course, this:

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/4600/b01e8yj.jpg

By my rough calculations, I've spent about 22 hours so far this year in Newark airport- it's not the worst airport out there, but I almost feel like I live there sometimes.

GRAND JUCNCTION - Empty, lots of Western shit, pretty location, got to walk across the tarmac like I was on the campaign trail.

ASPEN - The security area is like RIGHT THERE in front of the gates. A little cramped. Aspen Water for sale for $3.50.

CAIRNS - Nice shops. Hungry Jack's in the waiting area. Room to lounge.

Oh, and DTW has a very cool HUGE fountain by the tunnel entrance. I love watching the little arcs of water that it shoots up, they remind me of airline route maps.

Thank god they are people oriented.

Yeah, thumbs up to the beagles, thumbs down to the bizarro duty-free shop.

What's so weird about library chest x-rays and elementary school age surgeons?

Oh.

This happens to me all the time (and usually I'm not even sleeping, just buried in a book). The minutes before one realises that the TVs are down and Mr.Bean or whtevah is on = so unnerving.

So....not much European airport talk is there?

I can say with great authority that the Oporto airport is small, and the S.Miguel one even moreso. In fact, it's so small that usually you just walk off the plane and into the airport, which is nice cos I hate those busses.

Frankfurt is very large, and has a tram, tho I usually don't use it and just run through corridors and up staircases for a while. Rolling stairs are often accompanied by nice lights that have been described as "disco", and there's a children's play area that's nice.

If you approach the customs officials in Gothenburg and ask them if they know where one could find a cash machine, they'll search your luggage. But in a very jolly, nonchalant sort of manner.

The magazine shop at the Hamburg airport has a pretty broad selection, and used to be an obligatory stop for me (pre-boarding, post-check in) to get comix and music mags.

Munich airport = weisswurst with german mustard. Yum!

The Lisbon airport is like an old friend.

http://www.ci.seatac.wa.us/images/doctor.jpg
U.S. Post Office

I stepped up, and there was this middle-aged granola-eating lady in the driver's seat. I started to stammer out what my problem was, and she gestured and said to me "Don't stress! Just chill, just chill. Have a seat and just chill."

Welcome to California. My vacation only got better from that moment on.

I have been to quite a few

You DO know there's a shuttle?

But even that isn't true anymore. I know a place.

I quite liked Stansted (nice bars - they had Est Est Est rather than just your shitty Wetherspoons - nice wine and sandwiches are always good) and it's a pleasant place to hang around overnight if need be. Prestwick is horrible - manky coffee, crap public transport access and too much "Elvis was here, once" memorabilia, but not even good stuff, just a cursory nod to the fact that Elvis was there once. Barcelona and Malaga are good, accessible, friendly staff, etc.

The security guards at Agadir are a bit scary, and there are NO facilities to speak of. The rest of them, they're just airports.

I shall report back next year, if I remember, on whether American airports are better (I haven't been to any yet)

Schiphol is the nicest and probably the most secure airport I've been in.

Agreed. Great place. Great food too, oddly enough.

I've been to Gibraltar Airport too. It's tiny, but the runway extends perpendicular to the road that links Gib to Spain, jutting out into the sea at either end, which is cool.

http://www.burksgreen.com/images/airport_image2.jpg

I've also been to Aberdeen Airport, but I've blocked that from my mind.

might have meant cape kennedy/canaveral, no?

In Sydney, they yelled at my wife for forgetting to declare the pack of Oreos she had with her - still sealed, and served to her on the plane! Yeah, that will really upset Australia's delicate ecosystem.

!!!

In the U.S., Portland's is really nice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narita-san

Alternatively, you could vist the Bon Belta department store in the shiny, new part of the city.

http://www.bonbelta.co.jp/top.html

Lyra, that tunnel from A-B in DTW is cool -- I've never seen the ones at O'Hare (primarily because Continental/Northwest are buried at the end of Terminal E at ORD). The DTW tunnel is much better than the one at CLE, for instance.

Josh OTM re: Portland. Pleasant Plains OTM re: Memphis.

The Zurich airport is also very pretty, but I ran out of things to do there while I was waiting for the 6 hours gap between my flights.

The worst airports I've been in are the small Chinese ones, they are tiny, quite disorganised, and there is almost nothing to do there while you wait for your flight. They are more like bus terminals...

I flew into the old HK airport, it was scary as shit. That summer they made the transition to the new airport, so I flew out of the new one.

I like airports that are tiny sheds so Danang wins!

http://geocities.com/baypals/area.jpg

Las Vegas, Nevada. November, 2001.

european airports seem really gross and dirty to me. Narita is definitely the grossest dirtiest airport ive ever been to though. i'll take a US airport w/ long security checks anyday.

grossest: narita-heathrow tie
prettiest: sydney-anchorage-portland-grand junction tie
most fun: cairns and h.island because the tarmac/runway is lines with palm trees and you have to walk out there to board or deboard the plane, just like in the old days and the queensland hot winds are always a strange feeling.
most hours spent sitting on the grass outside trying not to pass out before connecting flight boards: LAX (approx total hours: 90)