oooohyeah. i don't understand why SEA has to be so horrible, but AS MVPs and AA GLDs (you know, both of which i happen to be) aren't even in on the line-bypassing mojo.

JFK is a JOY compared to BOS, which has to be the biggest baddest stinker of an airport i've dealt with. $22 a day to park or shuttles to Siberia that never come? no thanks. horrible poorly air-conditioned terminal? yep, BOS has that. quixotic and hard to get to from transit? at least JFK is fixin' it.

and then there's the total paucity of food options behind the security checkpoint in BOS. at JFK, at least in T9, you have some options. on the bright side, AA's Eagle terminal in BOS is great, you just gotta go through all the old moronic Terminal B fun. oh yeah and the narrow paths for moving back and forth in the airport almost always crowded by morons with carts and no etiquette? you guessed it, BOS has it wicked bad. (JFK isn't innocent, but in NYC an "excuse me" will usually work once you say it loud enough.)

no contest. OAK is bad because it's so overburdened, i agree, and LAX is just...ugh, too.

I'd still like to know what is so bad about LAX. UA terminals 6,7,&8 and Bradley. Simple to navigate, spacious, quick security lines, decent food options(even better in Bradley term.), every gate is only a few minute walk to outdoors....

Actually I've been in term 4 & 5 too....
What's the problem?

Everyone knows term. 1 is a mess, but that's Southwest.

My Top 5 airports to avoid (not in any order).

IAH ... what a dump. It's dirty, it has terrible AirCon, it smells, and has all the charm of a bus station. I've seen roaches as big as my arm waiting in line to get on planes there.

MIA = chaos. Much like IAH but with three times the crowds, less space, and even worse AirCon.

BOM/DEL - It's India - 'nuff said.

CDG - (esp. Term 2B) Filthy, uninspired, uncomfortable, built like a maze ... Also, bound to have someone needed to make the place run on strike, on break, or on a work-slow down.

Now, the top 5

YVR - New, clean, bright, efficient
ZRH - Underutilized, efficient, clean
HKG - New, clean, spacious, efficient
ORD - Yes (Chicago) UA's terminal anyway.
DTW - Northwest's worldport anyway.

Well, my home airport is Boston, so I suppose (after having read everyone's comments here) by comparison, every other airport seems okay to me.

However, about 4 years ago I went to Albania and the airport in Tirana is just incredibly bad. Just getting into the country is so much work you can't imagine. Long lines in a queue in a hot & sweaty room with waits as long as an hour & a half. (not to mention first being directed to a separate building with a frenzied group of about 30 people for a targeted search of my luggage)

But getting out of the country is even more incredible. You are not even permitted to enter the building until flight time. So people are standing outside trying to find some measure of shade, until being permitted to enter the building.

With the new terminal ZRH is even more underutilized.
The new terminal is quite nice and you can see a lot of aircrafts but you have to take some kind of traain to get there.

The old terminal at SMF is not quite a dump, but is an embarrassment.

What is so bad about most of the terminals at LAX???

See also:
http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttr...ML/010820.html

Worst Airport

I am glad that people note the lack of a decent final connection between Boston and Logan airport. It is a truly shameful situation.

To arrive in Boston Logan is rather easy, but between the bus (or busses), and then the dingy blue line subway station, and then, invariably, a connection in a dingy subway station downtown (few people live on the blue line outside of East Boston); Boston presents a horrible picture.

And there are few other options to get to Boston from the airport. The water service is absurdly slow. Taxis are rude, slow, and cost ten times more per mile than the air service that frequent flyers just flew.

It is a nearby airport with enormous problems: Logan cannot deliver passengers into the city of Boston in any acceptable fashion.

Previous Poster said-BKK is in dire need of a makeover.

Well, its being replaced. A new one is being built. Was approved a few months ago and the construction should be started soon if not underway.

How about Narita? The UA terminal was nice but the JAL one SUCKS. The only restaurant was horrible, the service sucks, the duty free sucks. The tram that's required to get to the C terminals is stupid. We had to land on the Tarmac after a Trans-pac from SFO and had to go inside so I could transfer to SIN.

INC, SIN, HKG and even Shenzhen are more desirable to fly into than NRT I have to say.

Some airports I like: AUS, LGW, SIN. I was very surprised by PMI this year. It has a beautiful airport but the longest walk to the gates of any airport I have ever been in. I hate LAX and unfortunately I connect through there more frequently than any other airport, DEL, MIA, JFK.

In my case, the move to DIA added almost an hour each way to the resorts/airport. I never liked dragging luggage, boots and skis on the shuttle busses, so I would hop on the shuttle, and come back to the airport for the ski stuff.(and my wife!) Same on the way back. At DIA, this was timed to be about 1 hour. Stapleton was 10 minutes. At Reno/Tahoe, there is no wait or shuttles at all. It was actually one of the reasons (albeit, a minor one) I switched skiing from Colorado to Tahoe.

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Have a nice day flying United!
ChgoBob

I'm one who opts for convenience and therefore LAX is the best for me. I know the airport very well so I don't get hung up anywhere. For UA, you have 3 security checkpoints and thus no waiting. And they have non-stop flights to a good part of the world.

LHR is another favorite since it too has non-stop flights nearly everywhere. And it has such great transit facilities, especially if you are Gold on BA http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttr...orum/smile.gif.

Ditto for SIN.

Alternatively, I was at SJC Friday and the security line for terminal A was out the building into the parking garage across the street, early in the morning. I asked the security people what the problem was, and they said it's been like this all summer, 7 days per week! They said that Southwest is doing quite well this summer. I guess that's a clue to anyone flying in a terminal that serves Southwest. Arrive early during the summer!!

I can't believe I've not seen IAH mentioned here. Maybe it will be better when they're done with construction, but I think the place is awful. From the signs half hidden by temporary walls to the extremely long walks to the bus pickup lanes in the middle of traffic. Take me anywhere but to IAH!

I can't believe I haven't seen DCA as a favorite yet. In my opinion, it's the best airport in the country. It's clean, has great restaurants, has great metro access, is 15 minutes from downtown DC and, most importantly, you can get from check-in to the gate in 15 minutes.

The only drawback is the fact that the big planes don't fly out of DCA.

Just one (fat) man's opinion,

Biggy