Four Shopping Malls Attached to Some Runways

[kevin_standlee]

According to Successful Meetings, something called the Wall St. Cheat Sheet has issued its list of the 10 Worst Airports in the World. Coming in an #6 is London Heathrow, described as "four shopping malls that have been smashed together." The description is slightly harsher than it should be, though; you do go through security before being herded into the central shopping waiting area.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I wouldn't place too much stock in that list. It seems to have been based mostly on what other travel writers have written. Chicago Midway -- the airport I use most often, so I'm familiar with it -- got ranked 2nd-worst because of its poor record for on-time departures, which is more a function of the weather than the airport operations. In fact, Wall St. Cheat Sheet's full description of Midway says:

Chicago’s Midway International Airport is ranked as the nation’s worst for on-time departures. “It isn’t a bad place to hang out, with a new food court and a frequent subway connection to downtown Chicago, but any airport is the worst airport if you’re stuck there and you aren’t getting on a plane,” Frommer’s writes.

That doesn't sound to me like a description of the second-worst airport in the world.

It's probably worth noting also that the Wall St. Cheat Sheet appears to be mostly a "listicle" site rather than a serious business site. The top "must-read feature" currently on the home page of their web site is "Recipes: 6 Flavored Milks and the 6 Cookies Perfect for Dunking."

--J. Kreitzer

[(Anonymous)]

They also described N'Djamena International Airport as being located in "the tiny Republic of Chad." Chad isn't tiny. It's twice as large as France.

--J. Kreitzer

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

I'm currently working on a new website for an airport, and after a while realized that it's basically a huge mall with security and parking you have to pay for, where some doors (hopefully) lead to other parts of the world. Since you don't actually sell tickets for airplanes on an airport website (unlike, say, a bus station or train station), the most un-mall-like thing about the website will be the search for upcoming arrivals and departures.

Happily the mall in question isn't on that list.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

You may not make this decision, but it would be nice to have an easy-to-find page that shows arrivals and departures, for example every such event in the upcoming 24/48/72/whatever hours listed chronologically, in a simple list of events with no fancy stuff.

I mention this because I discovered my local train station's website does not have that feature, which as it turned out was just what I needed. They have it posted inside the terminal, which is less useful to people not already inside the station.

[delosharriman]

The Phoenix airport really is a shopping mall with attached air transport facilities. I understand it was built that way explicitly with the intention that people from the city would come to shop there. As a result, the new security measures were implemented in an exceedingly awkward way.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've been to Heathrow and all of the US airports on the list, and I don't get it. The "corral" system in Terminal 3 certainly wasn't in place the last time I departed from there, which was admittedly some years ago. I've never had a serious delay at Midway, which I like as a small, friendly, manageable airport, conveniently located and with agreeable food options. JFK, because it's made up of numerous tiny terminals, is surprisingly manageable for such a large airport; the biggest curse for me, coming to it from Connecticut, was having to drive through Queens to get there. As for La Guardia's local ground transport, in NYC they have these things called taxicabs; the WSJ should try them, especially when carrying luggage, which most airport passengers are. Logan can be nasty, mostly to get to on the ground, but I'm told that's improved a lot in recent years (I'll find out this summer).

My selection of worst airports I've been to are: SFO (constant fog delays), Kansas City (whose pod structure means that, since 9/11, you have to go through security again to transfer to another gate down the hall), San Diego (scary to land at), Washington Reagan (also scary to land at, and has the most tasteless and inappropriate choice of name ever given to an airport), and, above all, Charles de Gaulle (smoky! smoky! smoky!).

[petrea-mitchell.livejournal.com]

Completely agree about LaGuardia, but don't blame the WSJ; Wall St. Cheat Sheet is a separate publication (as far as I can tell), and their source is a USA Today article (http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2013/07/24/worlds-worst-airports-dumps-disgraces-and-big-bugs/2581015/) which in turn is just quoting several other people's opinions.

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

It's turtles all the way down! :)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You're right; I forgot the name of the publication.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I've been through Terminal 3 recently and there's no corral system, it's the process the whole airport, and, for that matter, most British airports, of having a central waiting area and not getting people to their gate until boarding time. The gates are smaller and with limited seating and no facilities and the idea is to not have people waiting at gates, especially as the damn things change all the time.

I'll take that over last minute dashes I've had at IAD and ORD to get to the newly assigned gate that they 'forgot' to announce.

While LHR, LGW and others are shopping malls, you can at least find a place to eat and drink and sit down, unlike ORD or many other airports I could name.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Interesting. But do you go through security before heading to the central waiting area, or only afterwards on your way to the gate?

Knowing how things used to be at British airport, I'd guess the answer is that they check your ID and boarding pass at both steps. They did that before there was a central boarding area too.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Security is after check-in and before the shopping area. Much of the shopping/waiting area is taken up with large amounts of duty-free shopping. I don't remember there being another security checkpoint after that other than checking boarding passes.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

They check ID with boarding passes, and they do a secondary security check on boarding for US flights too. But that's more due to the cost the airlines incur if a person is refused entry to the US. They want to make sure that they're not letting anybody through.

Frankfurt is worse, there are multiple security checks including a complete gate check too.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

As is Amsterdam. All the non-EU international gates have full security checks.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

As Kevin says, you go through security to get to the waiting area which is, basically, a shopping mall. They do check ID and Boarding Pass before you board through and they often check boarding pass at the gate.

To be fair, British Airports have been about selling you stuff for a few decades now :)

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't have to take a taxi to get into town which is the attitude you suggest for LGA. If Heathrow took that attitude it would cost me about $100 extra every time I flew into or out of Heathrow. While it might only cost $30 or $40 to take a taxi from LGA, that is still more an an order of magnitude more than public transportation. And given LGA isn't that much further from downtown that Logan is and if Ohare can have reasonable public transit, why can't the city with the biggest subway system in the US have reasonable public transportation from what should be its most convenient airport?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a misconception about airports in the UK. They are shopping malls. They're privately run operations designed to extract money from passengers before they get onto a flight.

Gates are announced close to departure time and people then walk to the gate where there's limited seating anyway. Walks can be quite long, and I'll leave it to the imagination why they have long walks from a central area to the departure points. I'd invite people to think about why they'd arrange things for people to have to walk quite a discuss after having been kept waiting in a central area for a while before calling the flights and why certain flights to certain locations are longer walks than others.

It's not as daft as it seems.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

The list is hilariously bizarre. I'll take LaGuardia (no WiFi? Shock! Horror!) against some of the African airports I've been to any day.

The worst airport I've been to is Johannesburg. On the face of it, a modern airport, upgraded for the World Cup, so the condiitons are much better than, say, those at Windhoek (one room crammed with passengers, one official slowly stamping things, stifling heat) or Victoria Falls (people cramming the room and out down the street, two officials slowly stamping things, stifling heat). But Johannesburg is notorious for baggage theft (the handlers put things over the cameras and steal with impunity), it's practically impossible to find your way around on a first visit, and gate seating for domestic flights is mysteriously absent (three seats for an entire flight).

No WiFi. Hah.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I've had experience with both Midway and Heathrow.

While I do remember finding Heathrow a bit strange because you do get stuck in the shopping mall for most of the time between security and boarding.

And of the 3 times I've departed from Midway, the only problem was the first time (when I still lived in the Chicago area) because they hadn't fixed security lines causing a bottleneck - comparable to the bottlenecks I experienced at San Jose in 2002. The other two times (after Chicon 7, and on the way to SMOFCon this year) I had no troubles with either security or departure.

On the other hand, the (as I understand it) old and now replaced Delhi airport was the absolute worst. The second time I left India, I was connecting through Delhi without an overnight layover (to go to Agra), I had to find my own transport from the domestic to the international terminal, and then had to wait for American Airlines to post an updated passenger list before they would let me inside the international terminal. I'd rate it well below (or above) either of the ones I've been to/through on that list.