I agree, the food is pretty bad...mainly due to lack of choices and the choices that are there are pretty mediocre...sad, but thankfully it's not an airport I fly to much....thankfully, I L-O-V-E my new airport...and the food options are one of the best things about it...anyone been to the new Beaches restaurant yet??

Well MSY is my home airport and I have been in and out of it countless times for many many years, my travel times are 99% consistent. I always leave on one of the first flights out and return late, thus I never have to hang around and am generally always in and out, so that may be in contrast to many others. I used to think it was really bad but after many years of travel I now think it is pretty darn good considering the age of the place.

I fly to DEN, LAS and MSY each month, and the latter is by far the worse. The food outlets are bad (I won't eat there) and the service for the most part is poor and unfriendly. As others have stated, several Asian airports such as SIN, BKK and HKG are far superior. However, I think the old international terminal in Manila is as bad as MSY, and more crowded.

Great airports:
DFW D
DEN

International: SIN no question, but I also really like LHR T5

MSY, MIA, IAH B are all pretty equally a dump.

Are you saying DEN is good or bad?

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MSY is indeed pretty awful. I lived in New Orleans for 4 months and was stuck flying out of MSY frequently.

I wouldn't put IAH B on the same level as MSY; MSY is far more a dump than IAH B

I'm in MSY at least 4-5 times/year and when I land, I have a flash back to the old-style B84 gates at IAH. Everything from the bathrooms, the customer service of any of the vendors, getting a rental car, even the smell is horrible.
Seriously, as soon as the main cabin door opens you just get this horrible sewage smell. Makes me want to create an old fashioned "stink shield." Their AVIS station is one of the worst run car rental places I have ever seen. There's always confusion there.

My favorite airport internationally would probably be AMS. Domestically, I find DFW (for ease to get around to different terminals) and DCA (love the fact that I dont need a taxi or worry about parking due to Metro) nice. I recently went to PDX and also thought they had great concession choices, plus the free wi-fi.

That's pretty much the case with many establishments in southern Louisiana. I often see some pretty dirty hotel rooms, even in better hotels, in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Everything runs much slower, and things like rental car and hotel shuttle buses tend to operate on a "we'll get you there when we get you there" attitude. People are generally very friendly, but the slow pace is taken to an extreme in a bad way that often is frustrating to us frequent travelers who just want to get where we're going. I've waited 30 minutes before for National to get a shuttle bus to the MSY terminal at 8:00 PM on a Monday night, and when I complained, was told by the driver "I had to pee and I'm slow." That was pretty typical of what I experienced at that airport during the two year period I was there regularly in 2008-early 2010. I'm going to be working in that part of the country again after January 1, and I'm already dreading it in a way.

Thank you all for your comments. We always encourage feed back on how we're doing. to this end, we have launched a new web site http://www.flymsy.com. Part of this new site is a great page to get you in touch with the correct people to get your complaints/concerns met. Under the Quick Links section on the bottom right-hand side of the front page you will see Customer Feedback. Please use this as much as possible with the specific problems you may have so they can be addressed.

Happy Holidays

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

I really don't understand all the griping in this thread.

MSY doesn't seem any worse than LAX, to me (at least, the bathrooms aren't any worse. I flew into LAX last week and because of a delay didn't have time to hit the lounge; changing in the bathroom by the continental gates was not an experience I want to repeat). I wouldn't want to connect through MSY, but on the other hand I can usually get from my car to the gate in 20 minutes flat, and the airport is 12 miles from the CBD. The USPark shuttle runs about every 3 minutes (I've never had to wait longer than that).

The airside concessions at MSY are, admittedly, awful. The landside concessions are just fine, IMO- there's decent coffee (PJs) and fast food (a popeyes and a sonic come to mind, plus a beignet outlet), and an acme franchise. The problem is if you're waiting at the gate, your options are quite limited- either a lucky dog or an overpriced smoothie. This is the main distinguishing factor between MSY and IAH-B, I think- at least at IAH-B, most (all?) the concessions are airside. Unfortunately, like many airports, MSY was designed before modern security procedures, and all the good stuff is outside. It sounds like the common thread is that frequent flyers tend to rush to the gate then look for something to eat- that kind of attitude will leave you stuck in NO. The design of the airport makes this difficult to fix without basically tearing the whole place down- something unlikely to happen. On the other hand, security is normally a pretty quick process (these new porno scanners are slowing things down though).

In a perfect world all american airports would be like IAH-E or PIT, with lots of check in space and a big open terminal. But honestly, considering the convenience of MSY to the city of new orleans, and the fact that it's so fast to get from check in through security to the gate, I think MSY works just fine.

As to the people who don't like the city of new orleans- well, if your idea of living is highways and "fine dining" chain restaurants, it's just not for you.

I must be flying into a completely different PIT.

Big open terminal, big windows, all concessions airside, all gates easily accessible from all other gates? Been a while since I've flown through it since it was downsized as a hub, but I remember the design of the airport being excellent.

oopsz,

I'm not arguing convienence. I park on the 4th floor next to the bridge, and can usually be at the gate in under 10 minutes with the elite line. It's easy to get there from any part of the city (more of a function of the actual small size on NOLA vs. other cities and our much smaller foot print instead of some great urban planning design). I also don't agree with the posters that bring down NOLA. Not everyone gets it. However, there is no excuse for filth. MSY was so mismanaged for years that the neglect is showing. The structure is what it is. I don't need new, I don't need windows. I don't need anything fancy. What I do need is for the bathrooms to be clean, a non-Pampy run caterer where I can get a cup of coffee if I have a few minutes to wait. Friends of mine own a business here in NOLA (a name you would recognize) and have a small outpost at the airport. They have horror stories of trying to deal with the airport. If you are from here you know of what any kind of municipal facility is like. All of the other airports named do have problems, but not the same kind as MSY. Their problems are in outdated infrastructure and crowding. Ours is in a general lack of management.

MSY is perhaps a bottom 50% airport by U.S. standards, but it's not nearly as bad as a lot of you guys make it seem. Granted, I wouldn't want it for my home airport, but it's not terrible for visitors. My two complaints about MSY are the security setup and lack of airside food options. I prefer MSY to LGA, by far.

For my money, TPA is the best airport in the U.S.