I share this one because i have laughed neurotically to my friend’s airport review. I was there sometimes too! For me tomorrow Budapest Fehiregy… pretty fine to arrive and go to the city, a nightmare to spend hours or getting some quick currency.
Best and Worst: Airports
by Tom Gara on 12/9/08
I went on a trip last week that involved six flights in seven days. Aside from the loveliness of being in three of Europe’s great cities, it also got me thinking about airports and air travel.
As we all know, a big part of the flying experience sucks – waiting, queuing, trudging around soulless places at four in the morning, being crammed like cattle into aethetically horrible spaces. If the end result – being in a place thousands of kilometres away in hours, not days or weeks – was not so awesome, we would never do it.
One thing that can really swing the experience from terrible to tolerable to terrific is the airport itself. So in that spirit, I present:
The Five Best and Worst Airports in the World
An incomplete, evolving list based on limited experience and strong feelings, written during a week of many hours spent in airports.
The Worst
Douala (Cameroon)
The zen of crappyness. Everything that could be wrong with an airport is perfectly, effortlessly wrong with this blight on the international aviation community.
Lets start with its lack of…electricity. I’m sure there is a power connection at some fundamental level, but that is not reflected in electric lighting, a public announcement system, refrigerators for drinks or any kind of electronic screen that displays flight information.
You know that big electronic arrival and departure board they have in airports? Here, it is a large notice board with flight information printed onto A4 sheets of paper and stuck up with thumbtacks. There is no computers or printers at check in – they look up your name on a clipboard, and hand-write your boarding pass and luggage tags. The windows aren’t windows in the traditional sense of the word, but more like holes in walls – glass is a key ingredient in windows, as you may have noticed.
It didn’t help my perception of this shithole when its charming security staff detained three of us for about 15 hours on arrival, hoping to get a bribe from the lovely Cameroonians who were there to pick us up. And it certainly didn’t help our perceptions when they dragged what looked like a homeless man into the room they were holding us in, starting slapping him up, and then beating him on the soles of his feet with a stick.
Take a boat instead.
London Heathrow
I’ve never stood in longer lines, walked longer distances, dealt with more ridiculous “security” theatrics and paid more for worse internet access or crappier food than at Heathrow.
One time when I was there, they decided to implement a new policy: only one item of hand luggage per passenger. They counted hangbags, shoulder bags and laptop cases as an item, and refused to budge an inch or make any exception. Given that every single traveler in the universe carries one of these things, plus a carry-on bag, the result was an airport that stopped working, as every single person had to stop in the lines and try and stuff their smaller bags into bigger ones. There is no conceivable way this stupid policy made a lick of difference to security, but it just furthered the airport’s image in my mind as a banana republic joke.
If you are changing flights in Heathrow, you need a solid two hours between landing and take off. Get there a good three hours before flying for regular flights. The stupid security, terrible queues and death march distances between terminals means even this might not be enough.
This isn’t all Heathrow’s fault – its location in London means it is incredibly hard to expand the airport, with environment and citizen groups opposing anything that might make the airport actually decent. How tough is it to improve Heathrow? They’re been talking about a third runway for a decade, they expect it to be finished by 2030, when Dubai will likely have a spaceport and an underwater nuclear powered train that takes you to London in 2 hours.
“Brussels” Charleroi
Ahh Ryanair, you glorious bastards. Those 30 Euro flights to Brussels seem so cheap, until you land in Charleroi and realise that you are not in Brussels. You are in a nasty decaying industrial wasteland best known for its dungeon-master paedophiles.
There’s a reason Ryanair is so cheap: it flies to cheap airports, some so cheap they actually pay for the privilige of receiving traffic. There is a reason Charlerois is cheap: it is a nasty, second rate piece of crap in the middle of nowhere, and certainly not in Brussels.
Cairo International, Terminal Two
Cairo has three terminals. One is old, refurbished and pleasant (the “old” airport). One is new and shiny and great, but you never land there (I think maybe it is only used for domestic flights to Sharm el Sheikh?). One is newer than the old one, but more run down and nasty (the “new” airport).
The New Airport – terminal 2 I think – is not very old, but it is seriously nasty. They chose not to buy properly made baggage trolleys, instead getting some random local metal workshop to weld wheels onto strips of scrap steel. Seriously, I am not exaggerating.
Nothing is sadder than a run-down airport. It is like a guy with no pants. Airports, like pants, are one of the few dignities we all expect, a minimum level of having your shit together, whose abscence signifies failure and decline. Given that Egypt is has been in glorious, super styling decline and failure for thousands of years, I guess this crappy airport is only appropriate. But seriously Cairo, put your pants on.
Mumbai
The only international airport I have ever been to where taxi drivers and tourist touts are allowed all the way into the heart of the airport, milling around by the baggage carousel and maximising the amount of time you spend getting hassled.
Everything that could be made uncomfortable in Mumbai airport has had its nastiness turned up to eleven – stinking, nightmare bathrooms, seats so uncomfortable that make you look longingly at the ground, a staff whose entire job description seems to be trying to score some bribe money without actually doing anything bribe-worthy.
They even managed to sell me a horrible cup of tea – it tasted like detergent mixed with dirty bathwater. In a country where incredibly delicious tea is available everywhere, all the time, for less than a cent per cup, this was a big achievement.
Top 5
Singapore Changi
The Grand Master, Governing Body and God-Emperor of airports. It hits every spot you can imagine – close to the city, a pleasant place to spend a few hours, sparkly and tricked out with high tech. It is huge, but seems small and easy to wander around, and like the city-state it serves, is packet to the brim with so many delicious places to eat great Asian food. Out the front is an endless line of luxury London-style black cabs, driven by honest men for a reasonable fee. Can an airport get better than this?
Amsterdam Schipol
You can land in Schipol and be on a fast train to Brussels, Paris, London and a bunch of other great Euro cities within an hour; for a couple of Euros the train will take you to central Amsterdam in 15 minutes. As well as being one of Europe’s busiest airports, it is kind of like the central station of the great Dutch train system as well. Its just an ass-kicking piece of infrastructure that powers up everything within a few hundred kilometres of it.
Abu Dhabi
This is not a major world airport – it is not even a significant regional one. But for a small airport, Abu Dhabi runs the game. Most importantly, it is quick – you can literally be getting into a cab less than 20 minutes after the plane hits the runway, with baggage hitting the carousel absurdly fast. It is super well designed around a central hub that is just a couple of minutes walk from anywhere – check in, baggage reclamation, customs, departure gates, nothing is more than maybe 100 metres from the spacey pyschadelic centre that looks like a giant tiled mushroom in full bloom.
It gets the job done with simplicity and style, and the immigration people don’t have the inclination to anally probe and strip search anyone with long hair or a sense of style like the lovely folk at Dubai seem to do….
Munich
It is like you have died and gone to efficient German heaven. There’s no fucking around in Munich, everything just works – which is what you really want at 6am after a 4 hour flight. And be honest, after a nasty sleepless night on a crowded flight, you know what you want. You want a grilled sausage the size of your forearm served with a pretzel and some kinky mustard, washed down by litre of craftsman-like beer served in a glass you could bludgeon a man to death with.
Other airports will try to deny you this, telling you they know better. They’ll tell you that what you really want is a Delifrance sandwich and a cappucino made in a Nescafe machine. But not Munich. It will not judge you. It will respect your wishes with clinical German excellence.
London City
London is full of shit airports. Heathrow is a like a voluntary, upmarket Guantanamo Bay, while Gatwick is in the middle of nowhere and monopolised by a ridiculously expensive train service. From this pile of manure grows a delicate flower, known as London City Airport.
My memory might be fooling me, but I remember it taking about 7 minutes by train to get from London City to the centre of town. It has to be the most centrally located airport in any major world city. There are downsides – its tiny size means proper jumbo jets cannot use it, so you need to fly on on a smaller plane. The one I took from Rotterdam used propellers. But it was great.
Anyhow, London City is like a little private airport shared exclusively between friends. Batman totally flies into London City. Nobody seems to know about it, and I like it that way. Consider yourselves let in on the secret.
