The worst check-in I have experienced has to have been at Kabul airport in 1987, when we were all standing around on the tarmac hoping a mujaheddin wouldn't take a pot shot at us from the hills.

Second worst would be any one of the zillion flights I took from DMO (Moscow Domodedovo) in the days before it was renovated. You can still see the old section of the terminal now from the new bit, and every time I look at it, I shudder from the memory...!

Anyone else?

I've got that one beat, hands down. When I stopped by the Starbucks at IAD on my way to catch a flight to LAX, they RAN OUT OF BLUEBERRY SCONES!!! The trauma of that experience has erased what I ordered instead. Top THAT!

Most unusual check-OUT experience for me was leaving the airport at Sarajevo a few years ago. There, they x-ray your luggage to make sure you're not bringing weapons OUT of the airport.

cnk

United 1K line at LAX.

I was in DEL about 15 years ago and stood in line FOREVER to finally get to the front and be told that as a biz class Pax, I needed to go "other there" to the card table. (no signs of course) Wasted 2 hours for northing and then had to start ALL OVER again in the other line since they would not processes me where I was

CDG. Que peut-on dire? Huge lines to check in with United, huge lines to get through the one passport control agent sitting amid 10 empty booths, huge lines to get to the "satellite," confused French people asking ME (an American tourist) how to get to their flights, confused American people asking confused French people how to get to their flights, baggage handlers on strike, airport janitors on strike, and on and on... My impression of DEL was that it's a dingier airport but much less of a pain in the butt.

Wow, robinhood, between the time I saw this thread and time I went to reply, you beat me to it! I was just going to say CDG too. The check-in areas are not sufficient to contain the lines and these lines end up stretching way out into narrow, high-traffic corridors. (Who designed this airport, anyway?) Try spending a half-hour waiting to check in with people constantly bumping into you left and right as they aim to squeeze past. Try bumping into people left and right yourself as you try to squeeze past a dozen other overflowing check-in lines on the way to yours. This is because of the Rule of CDG: No matter what flight you want, you've got to walk past all the other flights first. (The rule works for baggage claim too.)

CDG is just all around the kind of place that makes me say whenever I think about it, "I hate this airport!" CDG: The JFK of Europe.

The worst check-in experience? Heh... that's easy: Cairo International Airport. I was on an EgyptAir flight from Beirut connecting to an OS flight to Europe. We arrived safely to the tarmac in Cairo and bumped down the stairs off the plane. Then, as we entered the airport, a guard promptly confiscated our passports and waved us to an out-of-sight holding pen. Forty uneasy minutes later, the agent waves us over and gruffly ushers us into a bang-trap bus that scuttles about the runways for another 15 minutes. Needless to say, we were very disoriented and on-edge.

We finally make it to what appears to be the international terminal (still without our passports) with no contact with any English-speakers. "Our" guard directs us to a sweaty lounge where he hands our passports over to a guy who looks like he's wearing a janitor uniform. Both of them disappear. Minutes go by... a quarter of an hour... 45 minutes... we're not just sweating because of the temperature! Any effort to leave the room is halted by the security guard at the entrance (who, of course, doesn't speak English beyond, "Wait! Wait. Sit... Sit!"). An hour later, the "janitor" comes back with our passports (thank God!) and has OS boarding passes in hand. He escorts us through the concourse to the jetway and onto the plane. If he wanted a tip, his expectations were severely misplaced!

Needless to say, our frequent flyer numbers were not noted in our record.

I think it was designed by someone who thought the world would forever remain like something from a 1960s Peter Sellers film, when the only people who travelled were jet-setters. They would swan into the airport with a trilby on their head and a coat slung over their arm. After checking in with an oh-so-pretty ground hostess they would board a romantically-named airliner with dining tables and curtains on the windows and remarkably few passengers. Cigars and cigarettes were the accepted thing, and the whole experience could be had for 2 shillings and tuppence farthing. Well, in the case of the French, for about 17 centimes. Ah, those were the days!


[This message has been edited by Dr. Zhivago (edited 01-15-2003).]

Arusha, Tanzania. When we checked in fairly early in the morning it was dark and the terminal had no electricity. So they pointed jeeps at the terminal and turned on their headlights. Security check consisted of being locked in a little room with a big guy. He looked at me and said, "Nice hat!"

I replied, "And I'm keeping it too!"

We flew back to Rome -- but our baggage went to Beijing. Is that the record for the greatest known distance between a passenger and his baggage?

YEG, gate agent refused to allow my carry on which was 500g exactly over. Said i wanted to carry on instead of checkin , made me open it up so i had to make it 1kg lighter. in the meantime, caused me to miss my flight from YEG-YYC and wait again in the queue. No star gold or biz agents around to checkin for the flight. Declined to issue me my connecting boarding pass YYC-FRA. All in all, typical poor service and poor product from AC. Additionally earlier when in YYC on the way to YEG, wanted to speak to an agent about ticketing, there was a queue of 15 people with one agent in ticketing, with about a dozen people in checkin, sitting there doing nothing, went up to ask a very simple ticketing question and was told to go back and wait in the ticketing queue where this single rep was working. Waited there for 1 hour and gave up...... there must be easier ways to earn miles for flying in Canada.... than flying AC.

My vote would have to be any Sunday afternoon at LAS on Southwest. The lines!! The cattle!!! Oh the horror!!!




------------------
"I just wanna wish you good luck, we're all counting on you"
-Dr. Rumack

I laugh now, but at the time....

Yes indeed, the 'old' terminal- due to a snow storm (or some other unknown reason) we landed at DMO, and I was so happy to be in Russia I beamed at the security boys in the frigid concrete cave at 4AM in January- this so alarmed them they decided to send us to the high level security checkpoint- where a few words in Russian by my BF clued them in to why I was acting so 'crazy'.

The outbound leg to Irkutsk however <GRRRRRR!>-
First the complete lack of signage ANYWHERE in any alphabet (thank God our friend insisted on coming with us until we were on a plane!); then the rooster in a wooden cage next to the bonfire on the floor in the waiting room; followed by the really-ticked-at-life female 'agent' for Aeroflot that insisted that our tickets bought in SFO for our flights were invalid because 'they are not the same Aeroflot'!!!!!

By this time I had aclimated a bit, and tangled with some security jerk at the old Intourist hotel in Moscow, so I only TOLD her once that it was indeed one company and she had a legal obligation to give us boarding passes and point us to the correct gate... well, she copped an attitude and said it wasn't her problem and I lost my temper- let's just say that a really mad female suddenly ranting at you in Russian/English gibberish is enough to bring out the babies with automatic weapons from the room behind! I don't quite know what they were SUPPOSED to do, but I just glared at them while still ordering her to resolve the problem at a shout, and they literally BACKED into their room and closed the door all but a crack.....
Next, she furiously stamps everything and points us towards a hallway and says "down the stairs"; so far so good, right? Nope, stairs are completely iced over and lead to the abandoned tarmac at the start of yet another blizzard; we retreat back indoors but she has now vanished too; back to the outdoors and about 20 minutes later a bus appears and the driver demands the equivalant of US$5 each to take us to the 'correct' terminal- I tell him to do unmentionable things to himself and turn around and march back up the stairs; he gets out of bus, follows us, and tells us to board for the trip, no charge; we are now in the 'foreigners' terminal per our friend, which is admittedly a dramatic improvement over the unheated cave with roosters and bonfires on the floor- for 2 hours before the flight time, and 11 extra hours of delay, along with about a dozen other flight's passengers and about 1/2 the seats to make this work; luggage works pretty good as a bed when needed, and those dried fruits and bottled waters came in real handy until 9 hours after arrival when the snack area downstairs opened up and great real food became available.

Like I said, I laugh now, but....!!!

S

For me it would have to be Air France at IAD when they bumped me from my flight for no good reason whatsoever. Though the budding French student that I was became quite surprised when I started screaming to the desk agent -- IN FRENCH!!!

Hey that hurts.

Mooooo.