I was in an interesting conversation today (by avgeek standards) about "best" and "worst" airports that I've visited. It got me thinking -- how do I rate an airport? Given that people travel for significantly different reasons, I assume we all have our own rating system. And even then, it probably varies with the type of travel we are doing. So when I travel for work, my rating system is made up of factors like this:

70% - general on-time performance
20% - easy to transit
10% - food options/lounges
0% - ambiance, other factors

But when I travel for fun, internationally, on crazy itineraries, it is probably more like this:

40% - general on-time performance
25% - easy to transit
25% - food options/lounges
10% - ambiance, other factors

I'm probably giving this too cursory of an examination at the moment, but I think it's a starting point. I'm curious about how others rate airports. For the sake of this thread, let's consider leisure travel in general. If someone asks you, "What's your favorite airport?" or "Which is the worst you've been in?" how do you approach it? What factors make up your decision? Specific airports are fine to mention, but I'm really interested more in how you get to your rating of what constitutes best and worst.

So...how do you rate airports?

In that order,
0% (unless I'm flying on a deadline/schedule, which I never am )
40% (Changi's design is excellent for transits, SYD for example is not...)
30%
30% (tarmac views rate very highly in my book )

For airports I am departing from:

Car-to-lounge time and lounge-to-plane time is most important. This is why I like my home airport of BOS, as opposed to ones like ATL, etc.


For airports I am connecting in:

Plane-to-lounge-to-plane time is key, along with a good lounge. Airports like DFW, ATL and DEN score well in this regard, considering their size.



Which is why airports like MUC are so great. A large, easy to connect in terminal (term 2, for LH and *A) and four small, compact, modules in terminal 1 making departing in the other airlines easy and fast.

Interesting thread. Thank you for posting.

I think if I were to rate airports personally, I would have a more generalized system without percentages but more with a ranking type of rating. It would go something like this:

Convenience
Reliability
Attractiveness

For me, ease of transit and getting to/from the airport are first rank factors, so I would rate both under Convenience.

General on-time performance, for me, has something to do with the carriers serving the airport, weather affecting operations, traffic congestion on the ground as well as in the air, etc. All of these factors would go under Reliability.

Finally, I would ask myself questions, such as: does the airport offer a wide range of amenities? Is there a tourist information desk available? Is immigration and security a problem at the airport? Is the airport a great place to wait in? All of these factors I would group under a general factor called Attractiveness.

I've heard good things about MUC. I've been through FRA, but not MUC, and I might need to add that to the agenda next time I'm passing through.

That's exactly what I was looking for. Wondering how else to conceptualize this. These are great general categories.

After reading these, I wonder if my leisure travel would look something more like this:

30% - general on-time performance
30% - easy to transit
40% - food options/lounges, ambiance, other factors

While I do enough domestic business travel that I think I might keep my original categories for airports in the US, I do think that the food/lounge/ambiance (and tarmac views, as mentioned above - thanks belfordrocks!) are all part of a similar experience trying to pass away time to or from a vacation destination. For that reason, FRA rates higher than it might otherwise. I've spent time in the FCL, eating good food in a comfortable chair, with a nice drink, staring out at the great tarmac views.

I'm adding NRT, HKG, CMB, and SIN next April, so it'll be interesting to see where they would rate against these factors.

Thank for sharing your information.

I've passed thru 181 airports in 84 countries in the last 10 years.

I never really thought about rating them. You cant really compare a LHR with a FLL or with USM... they all serve different purposes, have different clientele, etc.


For foreign airports, I like for example, the ease of transport into the city to be high on my priority list.

I get that. I didn't think about it directly very much before, until this latest question. That said, it's not uncommon, in my experience, to be asked about airports I like and dislike. Perhaps a bit different than "rating" them, but it still gets to the same idea -- what makes an airport "like-able"?

I do think that your point about proximity to the city, or ease of getting in, makes a big difference. I'm not sure that's in my original post. It probably should be. If I can take a train, grab a car, or use other transportation and be where I need to be without fighting traffic or wasting a bunch of time, that helps a ton.

I don't travel for leisure, so take what I saw with a grain of salt. I mostly rate airports based on ease of security. So I rate DFW and NRT higher than, say, VPZ, because I am not forced to use scanners at either. Beyond that, I'm really interested in airports that have decent shopping and food options. (NRT of course gets dinged there for the abysmal dining options past security and immigration)

I don't much care about on time performance at a particular airport, especially for business travel - if I don't make it somewhere because the flight was late, I don't make it. My vendors and customers aren't going to hate me because I chose an airport or airline with poor on-time performance.

O&D: How fast from the gate to the city? If the fastest way is a train, how good, fast, reliable, and easy-to-use is the train system? If I need a rental car, is that easy to do? Can I walk directly to a Hertz #1 Club Gold or a National Executive Selection area and get into my car? Or do I have to jack around with a bus? If it's a place where everybody uses cabs, are those easy to get, do they take credit cards, and do people have to queue up to get a cab?

On the return, is it easy to dump the rental car and walk to the gate? Is the traffic to the airport unpredictable? (Assume pretty much all airports are easy if you're using a cab back to the airport.)

Connecting: Is there a good lounge for alliance elites? Decent food, shopping, etc.? I care less about all of this in the U.S. where my connection is likely short and I don't have lounge access. More important on long-haul to long-haul where I might be on the ground for a few hours. Ambiance and generally being in a clean, up-to-date airport become a bit more important.

Does the airport have any unusual but consistent flaws? For example, a known bottleneck at the security checkpoint or a reliance on inefficient buses to move people around between terminals or to/from aircraft. (Trains, like at DEN, don't bother me as much. They're usually predictable and arrive every minute or two.)

Well, my home airport is often ranked at the top of many surveys within the industry and by customers.. and it's a good airport, so I tend to use it as my bar for comparison when thinking about the quality of an airport.

Home airport is TPA - just for reference. I have a flight in a few days out of MCO and i'm -not- really happy about it.

Taking into consideration why I'm not happy to be flying out of MCO and not TPA...

Convenience of Getting In/Out/Through - Tampa's airside/landside system works wonderfully for moving people efficiently. Security is as painless as possible, and the TSA are generally rather polite. At MCO I'm facing a bit of a cluster at the security checkpoint, and parking there is an absolute hot mess with the overpriced on-site lots and the not-at-all convenient offsite lots.

Wait Experience - Waiting is a big part of travel. You end up waiting whether you want to or not, short of having a magic teleportation system. At TPA you're in well designed area with modern touches - very sleek and polished/clean. Also access to amenities that are worthwhile, and they intentionally give young children something to do other than annoy business pax. MCO is sort of ugly, dirty, loud, and there's screaming children just lumped into the gate holding areas (TPA as play areas partitioned by soundproofed glass walls.)

Pride - It's not my biggest factor of course, but that the people at the airport have pride in their workplace plays a role. Dirty and grimy airports that resemble an inner-city bus terminal is not my idea of luxurious travel. To me there's always been this mystique of flight and I feel the airport - even if older - should be kept up to continue that idea. It's like with trains, you can be on an restored antique train for the scenic ride.. or a clunky commuter train with gum on the floor. I think all airports should strive to be have that majestic feeling. TPA is meticulously clean and TPA's tasteful large art installations reflect this in theme. Bronze statues of notable figures from air history and paintings of the golden age really sell the idea.

So, that's how I judge airports. Dirty floors, cramped areas, confusing access/transportation, and a complete lack of pride by the workers will result in a poor rating.

I was just talking about this with my boss - a frequent flyer moaning session.
What was interesting to me was that however you articulate your "rating system" there seemed to be a general consensus of "good" and "bad". My home airports (JFK, LGA and EWR) fare badly (and deservedly so). Nobody likes CDG (in my group). Everybody likes AMS - those with experience of ARN mostly like it. But we do mostly US Canada and Europe. So I have the feeling the if the airport gods try to make it a decent place to wait and have nice ambiance, they are paying attention in sensible ways to things that matter also and that tends to mean that if ones aspect of your rating scale is high, the others will be also. If they think it is ok to herd 3 plane loads of pax into a hallway in the basement for an hour because the lines at immigration were too long to have us fit in the immigration hall (welcome to JFK people) then they aren't going to have much in the way of cool decor.

I rate them on ease of use and general ambience. We were at Dulles for the first time ever earlier this year. What a dump! I would avoid that at all costs. The new (to me) SFO American terminal is heavenly.