You ever fall in love with an airport?
That’s not exactly what happened to me. I flew through Charlotte last weekend, and I did not fall in love. I did really like it, though. The rocking chairs are nice, the place has tons of food options and they’re mostly in places where they don’t become a disastrous crowd, it’s a good, good airport. A more understated Detroit, I would say.
Detroit. Now that’s an airport people love. It gets more credit per quality than Minneapolis-St. Paul’s airport, but I think that shows how expectations work. You expect Minnesotans to make themselves a nice airport. You don’t expect that out of Detroiters.
Other big American airports, my thoughts on them:
- Atlanta: Pretty smooth for its size, but not as good as the diehards want it to be. It could learn a thing from Charlotte about dispersing its food options. It’s harder to get exactly what you want when they’re dispersed, but Atlanta’s food spots are so crowded and chaotic that you aren’t exactly having a good time anyway.
- JFK: I used to feel good about this one, but I flew through it in March and it was the most overwhelming experience I’ve ever had at an airport. Heading both directions. Two hour wait for my bag on the way in, utter chaos at check-in on my way out. It was one of those moments which leaves you in awe of New Yorkers’ continued survival.
- LaGuardia: Is the expectation still to have an hour delay every time you fly through here?
- Chicago O’Hare: I grew up flying out of O’Hare, so it doesn’t faze me. I think it gets more hate than it deserves, but it’s impossible for me to be impartial.
- LAX: It’s been a long time since I’ve flown through LAX. No opinion.
- Denver: It’s weird, it’s pretty nice, but the location feels unnecessarily bad. When most airports are far from city centers, you aren’t driving through miles of open space to get there.
- Washington Dulles: This is another one overshadowed by location. Impossible to evaluate. Especially with little bro right there next to the National Mall. If Washington Reagan didn’t exist, Washington Dulles would look way better.
- Dallas-Fort Worth: Nice veneer, but bad experience. Some of this is probably where American Airlines puts flights in relation to one another. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d guess American could do some better gate optimization.
- Houston Bush: I have managed to never fly through this one.
- Salt Lake City: It’s been five years, but the last time I flew through here, it felt like I was in 1998. That isn’t good or bad, but it felt very much like I was in 1998.
- San Francisco: Oh man, really long time since I’ve flown through here. No opinion.
- Miami: Is it still impossible to return a rental car here?
- McCarran: Las Vegas’s airport feels weird, but that’s fitting. Honestly, best correlation between airport and city.
I know there are other big ones and loved ones. I haven’t flown through Seattle in ages, I’ve never flown through PDX (congrats on the carpet, though), I had a good experience at Boston Logan recently but I don’t know it well. Cincinnati used to be big, I think, but I was told it’s been diminished? Philadelphia has failed to ever make an impression on me, which is weird because Philadelphia’s definitely my favorite city I’ve never lived in or near. Midway and Newark, like Portland and Austin, feel too small to mention. Indianapolis has a cult following.
I do think that if you ask someone what the best airport is, it boils down to whether they’ve flown through the Twin Cities. That’s the best one unless you really love Detroit’s, but again with Detroit’s—How much of this is relative to expectations? Atlanta and Charlotte are reasonable answers if you’ve never been through Minnesota or Detroit, so I think you hear those too. West Coasters probably say Oakland or Burbank or something annoying like that. We thought about doing an airport bracket, and maybe we will if this post gets a good response, but the early rounds would be rough because there are very few people among our following who’ve flown through 64 different airports in the United States.
What I really want is airport rivalries. I want the Twin Cities and Atlanta to absolutely hate one another’s airports. I want LAX fans to tear DEN down to its studs. I’ve intentionally disrespected Orlando in here, hoping to start beef with that airport and with that city in general. Somebody please say something mean about an airport. This feels like a productive thing for our society right now.
