SEA-->MKE One of the most pleasant flights I've had in recent memory. Flew for the sixth consecutive time since heightened security regulations with a pocket knife on my keychain. BAD 2 THA BONE
I enjoyed three different airports today! And two other ones before that, earlier this week. Here are my thoughts:
ALBUQUERQUE Pretty mellow and close to town. I can't remember much about it, so it must have been just fine.
DENVER Ugh, I hate you Denver airport! Far from town and traffic can be bad. Extremely slow security line, train to terminals, etc. Wifi not free. So big and harsh. Food options mediocre.
LAS VEGAS Humongous, has gambling which is charming when you are flying in and aggravating when you are flying out and have been listening to the chime of slot machines for days. I saw a vending machine for floral bouquets! Cool. Food options were kinda harsh, but plentiful. Security took a long ass time. Wifi is free, but I didn't have time to use it. Really close to town.
SEATTLE TACOMA Nice one! Inferior to PDX, but a similar vibe. You gotta ride that train around to the different terminals, and the ceilings are pretty low if you aren't in the big open food hall area. Food options are good! I did not go through security. Wifi is free, and faster than some of the hotels I've been at.
ALASKA Awwwwww. There are big photographs of bears and mountain goats on the wall! The walkway to the rental car wing has a charmingly low-fi "Northern Lights" display in the ceiling. Did not use wifi or security or food. Had a very chill vibe.
I used Enterprise for car rental in every city because they often give free upgrades and aren't too sleazy. I received an upgrade in every city except LV. Every Enterprise agent shook my hand.
Isn't it weird that you can't really get food on a plane anymore? I don't miss plane meals, but a lot of the time you can't even get a snack, or if you can it's weird and pricey. Also there aren't movies anymore, just personal video players with mostly television, and they costs money. Booooooooooo
Dude Sarah, so glad to get some additional votes in the "worst airport in America" category for DENVER. Matt and Willow are with me on this I know. It is truly an awful airport. The weirdest thing is that I remember it when it was the old Stapleton airport, and it sucked then, and then they spent a million years making it a new airport, and it STILL SUCKS. How is it possible?
LAX is confusing in that it's huge and complicated, but the flow of humans is done very well so you end up either at your gate or outside the airport pretty quickly.
I'm flying out of Burbank on Monday, which is a fantastic airport because it's pretty small and mellow.
LAX is horrible just because it's sort of a visible nexus of everything that makes modernity so soul-crushing. As an airport, considering the enormity of the metropolis it serves, it's fine, although picking people up at it ought to have been depicted in one of Dante's circles of Hell.
Denver airport has no excuse to be as horrible as it is. It's not just always malfunctioning and running late; it's not just that it completely shuts down for 'weather' when no weather can be discerned anywhere within a 100 mile radius; it doesn't just have the rudest workers; it doesn't just have the most continuous and longest customer service lines in global history; it's also a surreally ugly and grubby airport. Even when it was brand-new, it already felt filthy and crumb-covered. Then a trapped bird comes by and shits on your laptop.
An airport cannot be judged on the size of the city it serves. An airport can only be judged based on the number of passengers it serves. Atlanta is the 9th biggest metro area in the US by population but the Atlanta airport is the BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD by almost 10 million passengers a year. This also applies to Denver. Denver is the 21st biggest metro area in the US but the 5th busiest airport because it is a hub for many airlines. Denver airport is bigger and busier than JFK. I'm not saying Denver (I don't have much experience with it. My airline mileage loyalty has me routed through Salt Lake City much more often) is a good airport, but YTs scale for airport evaluation is deeply flawed.
LAX is really hard to judge as a whole because all the terminals are VASTLY different.
I don't care for Atlanta's airport. Instead of the hub-and-spoke terminal formation commonly found at airports, it uses a spine-and-rib formation. The tram takes you along the spine and then each terminal is a pair of perpendicular ribs. So if you're flight lands at gate E-1, you have to walk half the length of the E terminal (from the end to the middle) and then take the tram over a mile to the main airport area. Unless the tram isn't running, -- which it won't be if your flight lands after about 1 a.m. -- then you get to walk over a mile.
Also, no free WiFi.
On the plus side, you can take public transport (MARTA) and get there pretty easily.
Found out the tee shirts are for charity but that just makes it worse (pandering).
What's worse than Uggs? Folks who take of their shoesies to get cozy. Personal media devices have even become rude; travelers turn the speakers on to share the fun. People are more civilized at the bus stop than on today's U.S. air trip. Flying gives me flash backs to rail-travel scenes from novels written about early Soviet society, when a former landowner is forced to travel in the same car as the rest of the proles. As they witnessed trains covered in peeled potato skins, so I was a silent witness to the crushed tortilla chips of an uncleaned plane.
JUMPING IN TO SAY EFF DENVER when I am in airports I like to take stairs instead of the escalators, it's faster and helps with swollen ankles (or so I tell myself) and Denver HAS NO STAIRS?
like, where there would be stairs in between the escalators there's just...nothing?
WHAT THE EFF DUDE what about if there's an emergency or the escalators stop working and you know those treads are impossible to negotiate when stopped (too high or something) and no one can get to safety/away from the zombies/tsunami or whatever...
I grew up in O'Hare, flew a ton as a kid (plus in high school we used to go hang out there tons at all hours back when you could roll to the gates for no reason, my friend toby would play his clarinet for the dudes waxing the floors) so I know from high capacity airports...AND DENVER SUX.
I used to go to the McCarren Intl (L.V.) outer terminals for kicks. Back when you could do such things. We would go really late at night. You take a mono rail to the terminal, which was a big open hall full of huge sculptures of desert creatures, tortoise, gerboa, and scorpion. We would collect some wheel chairs and do tricks and crash around. There was a giant escalator and we would go up and down those.
it already seems BIZARRE that you could just pop in to the airport and go to all the gates like no biggie. So weird. I really miss getting met at the gate by whoever I'm coming to visit / coming home to.
Jamba at PDX was closed today, and I was really sad. I was going to brave the brain freeze to chug one right before going through security!
And I realized another thing that I really like about the Portland Airport: we have large bathroom stalls, so that your suitcase can roll right in there with you. So thoughtful!
I was on a flight to Africa and all the dudes in the back smoking section (OMG SMOKING ON A PLANE!!! I REMEMBER THIS!!!) were busting out their duty free bottles of Jack Daniels and enjoying one last chance to get guilt-free wasted before returning to Morocco.
Comments
What up 70 degree weather. I mees you.
Home for a week. Looking forward.
Hobbled by a weird fever but pushing ahead nonetheless. Hoping for a white Christmas!
One of the most pleasant flights I've had in recent memory. Flew for the sixth consecutive time since heightened security regulations with a pocket knife on my keychain.
BAD 2 THA BONE
Using free internet at GRR waiting for my flight to Chicago to board.
Super mellow security, I must have missed the gropey/scanny era of American air travel. Do they still do that?
The TSA guy kept calling my helmet a brain bucket, which I found very confusing at first.
See you.
BON VOYAGE
(ironically, i like it a little cooler and cloudy)
Here are my thoughts:
ALBUQUERQUE
Pretty mellow and close to town. I can't remember much about it, so it must have been just fine.
DENVER
Ugh, I hate you Denver airport! Far from town and traffic can be bad. Extremely slow security line, train to terminals, etc. Wifi not free. So big and harsh. Food options mediocre.
LAS VEGAS
Humongous, has gambling which is charming when you are flying in and aggravating when you are flying out and have been listening to the chime of slot machines for days. I saw a vending machine for floral bouquets! Cool.
Food options were kinda harsh, but plentiful. Security took a long ass time.
Wifi is free, but I didn't have time to use it. Really close to town.
SEATTLE TACOMA
Nice one!
Inferior to PDX, but a similar vibe. You gotta ride that train around to the different terminals, and the ceilings are pretty low if you aren't in the big open food hall area. Food options are good! I did not go through security. Wifi is free, and faster than some of the hotels I've been at.
ALASKA
Awwwwww. There are big photographs of bears and mountain goats on the wall! The walkway to the rental car wing has a charmingly low-fi "Northern Lights" display in the ceiling. Did not use wifi or security or food. Had a very chill vibe.
I used Enterprise for car rental in every city because they often give free upgrades and aren't too sleazy. I received an upgrade in every city except LV. Every Enterprise agent shook my hand.
Isn't it weird that you can't really get food on a plane anymore? I don't miss plane meals, but a lot of the time you can't even get a snack, or if you can it's weird and pricey. Also there aren't movies anymore, just personal video players with mostly television, and they costs money.
Booooooooooo
also birds live inside that fucking airport
I didn't know about the birds, and in my opinion they would be a plus to this places many negatives.
I'm flying out of Burbank on Monday, which is a fantastic airport because it's pretty small and mellow.
Denver airport has no excuse to be as horrible as it is. It's not just always malfunctioning and running late; it's not just that it completely shuts down for 'weather' when no weather can be discerned anywhere within a 100 mile radius; it doesn't just have the rudest workers; it doesn't just have the most continuous and longest customer service lines in global history; it's also a surreally ugly and grubby airport. Even when it was brand-new, it already felt filthy and crumb-covered. Then a trapped bird comes by and shits on your laptop.
An airport cannot be judged on the size of the city it serves.
An airport can only be judged based on the number of passengers it serves.
Atlanta is the 9th biggest metro area in the US by population but the Atlanta airport is the BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD by almost 10 million passengers a year.
This also applies to Denver. Denver is the 21st biggest metro area in the US but the 5th busiest airport because it is a hub for many airlines. Denver airport is bigger and busier than JFK.
I'm not saying Denver (I don't have much experience with it. My airline mileage loyalty has me routed through Salt Lake City much more often) is a good airport, but YTs scale for airport evaluation is deeply flawed.
LAX is really hard to judge as a whole because all the terminals are VASTLY different.
JFK Delta terminal also has birds living in it.
that's interesting stuff
Also, no free WiFi.
On the plus side, you can take public transport (MARTA) and get there pretty easily.
SNAP
BURN
What's worse than Uggs? Folks who take of their shoesies to get cozy. Personal media devices have even become rude; travelers turn the speakers on to share the fun. People are more civilized at the bus stop than on today's U.S. air trip. Flying gives me flash backs to rail-travel scenes from novels written about early Soviet society, when a former landowner is forced to travel in the same car as the rest of the proles. As they witnessed trains covered in peeled potato skins, so I was a silent witness to the crushed tortilla chips of an uncleaned plane.
An airplane is not a bed & breakfast.
Yours,
-Michael
GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, travelers of america!
I would also add: anyone who reclines their seat AT ANY POINT on anything less than a 6 hour flight. FUCK YOU.
Do they do it in pdx? Is it easy to get out of?
when I am in airports I like to take stairs instead of the escalators, it's faster and helps with swollen ankles (or so I tell myself) and Denver HAS NO STAIRS?
like, where there would be stairs in between the escalators there's just...nothing?
WHAT THE EFF DUDE
what about if there's an emergency or the escalators stop working and you know those treads are impossible to negotiate when stopped (too high or something) and no one can get to safety/away from the zombies/tsunami or whatever...
I grew up in O'Hare, flew a ton as a kid (plus in high school we used to go hang out there tons at all hours back when you could roll to the gates for no reason, my friend toby would play his clarinet for the dudes waxing the floors) so I know from high capacity airports...AND DENVER SUX.
so much fun was had.
That dino skellington in O'Hare is CRAZY!
It's unbelievable that we could do that! Now you can't even bring a Jamba into the airport...
And I realized another thing that I really like about the Portland Airport: we have large bathroom stalls, so that your suitcase can roll right in there with you. So thoughtful!