Recently Subway passed McDonalds for the fast food title in the United States.

Over the years many McDonalds have left airports, either outbid by the competitors when their lease or whatever the deal is called was up for rebidding, or because they (airport) raised the price so much they didn't want to stay and a Carls Jr or Burger King came in. In some other cases, it's because a giant company takes over all the food service, and brings in one of their franchises or a franchise they own.

I think McDonalds looks at every location, and if they can't get the deal they need to make the profit they want, they won't bid or won't stay. I think airports, and in many areas highway rest stops, are areas they are getting out of.

I actually need a sausage & egg McMuffin right now...

No kidding. I buy them from the $ menu.

Come to think of it, most Asian airports I know have MC.D's, KFC, Burger King, yet no Subway... Interesting...

Sounds about right, so it must not be limited to airports, then... It must be any locations other than "standalone" McDonald's franchises, you know, the mall-style ones where they have to pay rent to a commercial property manager as opposed to a normal McD's where the franchisee owns the property?

Come to think about it, fairly recently a McDonald's located in a high-rise office building's lobby/food court near where I used to live closed down. Its kinda too bad, cuz it was the closest one too my house.

The reason, I think, that this is so noticeable to me is without McD's around you really start to notice standards slipping. I mean, say what you will about McDonald's, but they've mastered the art of consistency. I've been to some airport Burger Kings for breakfast that have ranged from OK to downright unappetizing *cough*STL*cough*.

Thanks for the welcome! I've been a member for a while, but this is my first post.

Ditto! ^

Those are the ones without the egg. That's how they get you.

Back when McDonalds was a usual stop for me it was Sausage and Egg Biscuits for breakfast, loved those things.

There's a book, pretty sure it's McDonalds Beyond that Arches from the 90's or 90's that talks about the history of McDonalds from the development of the shake machine (back when they used them) to breeding a potato just for them. It talks a lot about standardization. I am pretty sure it's available from some of the free book sites online, and still on Amazon. Back then the standardization was new and different, not sure it would hold the same impact now, but it is a great read for any McDonalds fans.

I'z gonna say ... to the best of my knowledge, ATL, ORD, and LAX are by far the busiest (not necessarily in that order), and all three have McDonald's. What'd be even more interesting than knowing how many airports do and don't have McD's would be knowing total $$ sales of McD's at airports versus other chains. Not, I admit, highly interesting, but I wonder if it qualifies as a "relative scarcity" of McDonald's.

It has actually evolved into a tradition for us to get an Egg McMuffin whenever travelling out of DEN during breakfast hours. Morning air travel is associated with McDonalds for us now. I believe Denver has one on every concourse, but not in the terminal building.

They used to have outlets in all of the major UK airports.

They have since been banned due to the fire risk I believe.

Most large airports have contracts with compannies that manage their concessions and you can only have a certain concession say McDonalds if they have an operating agreement with that company.
Here in CLE we have a issue. A few years ago BAA AirMall toook over
the concerssions management from Marriott Host. They have done a nice job adding many new concessions but we lost out Starbucks since they have no agreemeent with BAA. CLE people ask Marriott if they could keep the Starbucks and they said no. We had 3 of them and they were always busy. I wrote the airport director and BAA and asked how come BAA Airmall mananages the connections at BWI and I know their is a Starbucks in the Southwest gate area. I guess we can have a Starbucks at
CLE but would need a seperate contract and this would cost big bucks.

Seriously?

Interesting to see the list. I believe that there was a McDonalds at MCI a few years ago.

Far from "major", but BOI has a Mickey's