The Top 5 Worst Airports in the World
Posted on: February 4th, 2009 by Gareth Robinson‘The devil himself had probably redesigned Hell in the light of information he had gained from observing airport layouts.’ – Anthony Price
My dad used to travel from London to Geneva and back the next day, three times a month. He kept this up for a year. Upon his return, I would stare into his eyes and realise that some part of him, some fundamental, happy part, had died forever. It wasn’t the work he had to do when he got there, it was the getting there that got him. The word ‘ashen’ springs to mind.
International business travel – about as fun as travelling last Monday
Airports are gnarly places full of people who want to be somewhere else or are coming back from somewhere they’d rather be. Next time you’re at an airport, take a look around you. There will be a benefit fraudster in the interminably long check-in queue. He has gone a full three minutes without a cigarette. He is ready to punch you. There will be a businesswoman who has been away from home so long she can’t remember her children. She is ready to punch you. There will be a member of staff with a walkie-talkie and a name badge the size of a postage stamp attempting to wrestle a single mother and her three children away from the check-in desk where the computer will not accept their biometric passports. She is ready to punch you, the mother and all of her children. It’s moronic and infuriating. I only travel two, maybe three times a year, and I know this. I can’t imagine what the regular flyer endures.
Those people with those machine guns, they’re just there to keep the queues in order
A good airport can make this experience tolerable. Something as rudimentary as a comfy chair, or a well made pre-packed sandwich, or even decent air conditioning, can turn a downtrodden traveller into a stoic professional, capable of maintaining composure for the few hours required to get to their destination. And there are good airports out there. Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul are regularly mentioned when checking travel websites and newspapers as bastions of efficiency, cleanliness and customer service. But there is always a flipside. Below are the five worst airports in the world. To be more specific, it’s the airports that I feel have done the least with what they have going for them. Apart from Baghdad, which is just plain scary, and makes the list for reasons that will soon become apparent.
5. London Heathrow Airport
When Heathrow Terminal 5 opened last year, it was a chance for Britain to show the world what it could do, to let it know that, yes, London might be horrendously crowded, it might lack sufficient transport links for its existing population nevermind the millions of tourists that will be flooding in, and it might in general eschew the notion of a friendly welcoming atmosphere in favour of all-out xenophobia, but it is the right choice for the Olympics. Thankfully it all went to plan. Except for the computer crashes, and the inadequately trained staff, and the missing bags. Missing bags on a biblical scale, with estimates ranging between 15,000 and 28,000. Even better, only weeks afterwards, 5000 still-unclaimed bags were marked down for incineration. True, this was an isolated incident, but it’s the latest in a long line of issues Heathrow has had to deal with, the worst being overcrowding. Before Terminal 5 opened, the airport was dealing with 68 million passengers per annum when it was designed to handle 45 million. Terminal 5 should alleviate many of these problems now that it seems to be working properly, but until everything settles down, Heathrow makes the list.
Heathrow Airport. Sucking the joy out of flying for 50 years
4. Baghdad International Airport
Perhaps it’s a bit harsh putting Baghdad on this countdown. It is, after all, one of the most dangerous places on the planet at the moment. But for the sheer crazy terror that it imbues in some passengers (and some journalists) it makes the list. Allan Duffin of Air & Space magazine described it thus back in 2006, ‘Before jumping out of your seat to complain to the pilot, consider the good news: You’ve just avoided being shot down by a missile.’ In the last few years, pilots also had to undertake a manoeuvre known as the ‘corkscrew’. I’m sure it’s not as ball-achingly terrifying as it sounds. Still, even with the relatively normal service now resumed in the airport, you can still expect a barrage of security checks, concrete walls and barbed wire. Sweet.
Looks pretty nice there, but what you don’t see are the mortar holes
3. Los Angeles International Airport
By general consensus, LAX seems to be the most generally awful airport on this list. There is nothing sensationally bad about it, it’s just an energy-sapping experience for anyone who has to go there. John Flinn describes one of the main problems: ‘At LAX your ticket sometimes says “Terminal 8″ when the sign on the building says “Tom Bradley International Terminal.” You’re expected to know they’re one and the same.’ Andrew Gumbel says, ‘I retain a special dislike for LAX. Nothing approaches the horror of American Airlines losing control of Terminal 4 when – at least on a couple of occasions – it refused to staff the check-in desks adequately and made no provision for passengers with imminent departures.’ Nicely done.
Los Angeles, you have to cross the gates of hell to get there
2. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai
Only 49.95% of flights arrived at Chhatrapati Shivaji on time, according to Forbes. Worse still, ‘About 58% of its late arrivals in 2008 were delayed by 30 minutes or more, according to FlightStats sampling of the airport’s flights.’ This is an extraordinary figure. It’s worse than Virgin Trains. I’ve calculated that if all public transport adhered to these standards, nothing would get done anywhere, ever.
Hi darling, sorry, I’m leaving on time. Yes, I know!
1. Charles De Gaulle International Airport, Paris
In my search for the worst airport in the world, one stood head and shoulders above the rest, a colossus of misery, delays, and even death. It made every list I read. If I went into detail I could turn this into a novel and label it a disaster thriller. Here are some of the lowlights. In 2004, the roof of Terminal 2E collapsed and killed four people. To add to the awfulness of this tragedy, the same terminal was the setting for U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ video. Terminal 2E is now closed. Further, the airport boasts eight terminals separated by a circuitous bus route which is best described by John Flinn, ‘…it follows a bewildering, maze-like route — up and down and back across, at one point seeming to leave the airport grounds altogether.’ Other criticisms levelled at the airport include bad food, rude staff, overflowing toilets, inadequate check-in facilities, no windows in Terminal 1 and a nonsensical navigational nomenclature. Most damningly, it’s the worst airport to sleep in. My advice is to take the train, and if you can’t take the train, take a boat, and if you can’t take a boat, don’t go to Paris.
The French use their airport to begin the tourture of their tourists
Have we missed any airports out? What have been your experiences in these airports? Why not let us know in the comments below:
