Originally Posted by
DCP2016
The major "big" airports in this country are a joke.
From the sweeping generality desk.
A "joke" on what count(s), exactly? Aircraft congestion, poor / insufficient concourse or gate space, not enough ground transport, too far from the city, slow security, too many footsteps to gate, aging / degenerating facilities, poor runway layout, long taxis, weather vulnerability, inhospitable to transfer pax, not enough lounges?
Every airport on earth falls short on some metric or another. I am sure there are FTers who will write off an entire airport as a "joke" because parking is expensive or one concourse is missing a Starbucks, but there are many metrics in play, some not visible to the passenger.
As far as I'm concerned the only US airports that fall short on on every count are LAX and EWR. Many airports I enjoy: DTW, MSP, SLC, SFO, PDX, DFW, IAH, parts of JFK, parts of BOS, PHX. More have some positive qualities and are being improved with huge reinvestment campaigns: LGA, ORD, CLT, DCA, PHL. They are not "jokes." They are hugely complicated, vital pieces of infrastructure comprising a national system that runs pretty well considering the volume they cope with and extreme (and getting more so) US weather.
Sometimes people return from HKG or SIN, get stuck waiting for an arrival gate at SFO, and declare that compared to those other places the US system of airports is a joke. Well, most other countries operate one or two major hubs. The US has 50 or 60 major airports and hundreds more minor ones. Imagine how different AMS, HKG, KUL, or other national showplaces might be if their governing authorities had to operate -- and continually upgrade -- 50 or 60 of them.
I am close to someone in commercial aviation who spends his share of time stuck in long taxis, recovering from irrops, waiting out weather, etc. and he reminds me of two things: the passenger's view of the system is partial and very limited; some airports that passengers can find tedious are actually great for aviating (think ATL). And 80 percent of the time, given the number of passengers and aircraft underway, it is amazing how well the system actually holds up -- amazing enough that all the talk in this thread of incentives to abandon convenient, diverse major airports for dinky, remote alternates is a little bit off base.