BA Loyal

Took two and a half hours from wheels down to leaving the airport at ATL yesterday.

Passport control took 90 mins. Customs 30 mins. Then you have to re-check your bags, take a train to another terminal and wait another 30 mins for bags to come through again.

Total and utter nightmare! Makes LHR seem like a walk in the park.

Smirnoff

I thought this was going to be about FRA. Bad airport.

Smirnoff

TPA has the same system on arrival, except it's 5 mins for passport control, 10 mins for bags, walk straight through customs, re-check the bags, shuttle to main terminal, and 5-10 minuutes lkater get the bags again. Still, a silly system.

G-BOAC

ATL is a dire, vile hole and I have sworn to avoid it if at all possible in future after my one experience which mirrors the OP's. The bag re-check was bad. Re-clearing security was pathetic. I was steaming. I think for the first time I could understand where 'ground rage' may come from!

Horrid, horrid airport.

By contrast, my last FRA experience was very good actually, Smirnoff. Connecting on LH that was - I agree a simple ex-FRA BA flight is a pain, not least due to the stupid double security checks.

Smirnoff

Whatever terminal it is that BA uses is horrid. And connecting there is one of the dumbest transit experiences ever.

FRA has to rank as one of the worst sign-posted terminals anywhere, with B gates signposted in one direction up to 40 (or in other places it says 50), and B gates above 50 in the other direction, except that B gates in the 60s are with the low B gates. And then there are the C gates signposted somewhere else. Oh and lounges are this way. Except for the lounges which are the opposite way, with no indication of which lounges they are talking about. Oh, and very few flight monitors, the only ones I could see were in the middle of the smoking area, resulting in a quick dose of lung cancer to see the gate number. Oh and the lounges are horrid. The CX lounge is an overcrowded cupboard, and the BA lounge a dungeon. And the walk from the lounge, up down, up down, around, back on yourself, through security (again) downstairs, on a bus. Gosh I could have walked home easier than that.

latitude

Agreed, well partially . I head to Frankfurt a few times a year, and most often find the airport fine. Rarely, are there queues at passport control, bags always appear fairly quickly.

There are though, two things that pee me off about FRA:

(1) the worlds slowest lift. My gran could get down the steps quicker than the lift to the lounge

(2) the secondary security check

Other than that, its not a bad place.

iainbhx

Bankfurt is little better from the LH side either. Bus gates abound, especially for UK flight as does Double security. Plus they always seem to managed to get me to connect from one end of FRA to the other.

I'll stick to the very civilised MUC or my new discovery of DUS (downside being Barbie Jets) whenever I can.

Oh and the LH Business Lounges aren't much cop either.

You want to go where?

After hearing about this ridiculous setup, I don't want to hear any more complaints about IAD's mobile lounges. Checking your luggage to get across the airport??? Insane.

AndrewC

The one advantage of Frankfurt is that Lufthansa knows how to treat its F and ultra-elite passengers, and has built them a whole separate terminal to avoid the horrors of the main airport

Can you imagine BA doing that?

USA_flyer

Agree with OP, Atlanta is a serious dogs breakfast.

BAAZ

(1) is only because BA moved out of CDG T1. Before they did, the lift down from Satellite 5 to the BA lounge made the FRA lift seem like a rocket in comparison. Took a good minute or two to swing into action after you pressed the "up/down" button, and then accelerated so slowly that you could hardly tell it was moving at all. Useful if you are carrying a bomb with a motion-sensor-operated detonator, I suppose, but hard to fathom any other use or reason.

pbarnette

In ATL's defense, it is not that bad if you are connecting onward to a US flight. I still prefer to connect within the EU if possible, but any US connection will require bag collection and re-check, as well as immigration, so at least the efficient design of ATL makes it more palatable than a place like EWR.

For me, the worst airport in the US is MIA, just awful.

adrianjc32

Yes, but only after a 15 year planning enqiury, two appeals, HACAN chaining themselves to Waterside and the people of Staines writting snotty letters to the local papers!! Should be open by 2050!!

USA_flyer

gotta love those NIMBYs. If you don't like aircraft noise and don't want to potentially have your house bought for airport expansion DON'T LIVE NEAR A ....ING AIRPORT!

Skimo

What I don't get is, property prices do not seem to be affected by their proximity to LHR. A mate of mine sold a studio flat in Hounslow West 8 years ago for 97 grand, FFS!. So why don't those nimby idiots sell up and move somewhere a LOT nicer, which they could probably afford too.