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

[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?