NorthernLad

Frankfurt is crap. Every time I've been, they don't announce the EK gate until late so means waiting last minute to get through security.

I don't mind Dubai T3, the new concourse is very good (apart from the train on the way back), the business lounge gets bonus points for the large smoking section. I only buy booze and fags in duty free so the shops are fairly irrelevant to me.

Cape Town is a huge disappointment, once through security pretty much no restaurants. The only saving grace is a smoking bar.

scot47

Bahrain is not bad - but the truth is that all airports are crap. Travelling is a chopre and anyone who sees it as a "travel experience" needs counselling.

Kix

Agreed, If you fly any airline apart from Lufthansa you're in terminal 2 which is a bus journey from the station. Security is also at the gate which is crap because once you're through passport control you have another security gate to go through before you board your plane. Much more sensible if you have security immediately after passport control, that way you can chill and have a glass of beer while waiting for your flight to be called.

The airport lounges are miles from the gates too.

shiva

All airports suck. End off.

Terminal 5 heathrow is so much better than the rest it fools you into thinki g it's ok but it really isn't. All airports are a special kind of hell, when all goes well you sail through in a bustle that conceals that hell but it only takes one or two **** ups for you to spend interminable hours or days in that special hell reserved only for travellers. The hell where you will eventually reach a point that the final destination no longer matters, the mode of transport no longer matters, all that matters is that the pain to away and they let you leave the ****ing airport at some point.

( I once a couple of years ago had this epiphany in heathrow. Flight left Dubai 3hrs late after pissed pilot, who arrived over an hour late, and needed more time to sober up, insisted that the entire passenger complement go through security again and again while he stood there reeking of booze. Plane then circled heathrow for a few days, on landing in apparently Cornwall and taking buses around heathrow for a week we were eventually de bussed at a random door and funnled like sheep to ge slaughter through the bowels of some building, about 2 1/2 hours later we emerged from a door right next to where we entered the building and were then bused to security, where we again qued for months for **** nuts to not watch the screens or generally give a **** about their jobs. Having now missed a connecting flight by what must by this point have been months I was stopped by some well meaning idiot who asked me where I was going. I couldn't answer, in all seriousness by this point I genuinely no longer knew where I was going, que minor issue as wife has to intervene to prevent my arrest for bei g a bit suspicious and odd looking. Just to top it off when we finally arrive at our destination our ****i g bags were missing. There is no such thing as a good airport or airline there are just better disguised forms of hell filled with satans minions awaiting to torment you. )

OleJanx

And there you have it: The airport experience, nicely summed up in a few lines.

shiva

And the best bit?

If you complain about customer service or generally upset them in anyway you risk not only being stuck for further hours but the attention of some wanker whos sole existence is dedicated to fisting bedraggled travelers oh and then there is the very real threat of a lifetime ban.

scrubbedexpat141

Really?

shiva

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List

for one.

also any airline can issue a lifetime ban pretty much for whatever and whenever they fel

scrubbedexpat141

You'd have to be pretty offensive in your complaining though?

scrubbedexpat141

....and that is for 'terrorists' not an angry Shiva who upset Mary at the check in counter.

shiva

Plenty of innocents on that list including two us senators. Ted Kennedy was one. The teacher who threw an understandable wobbler at security and said yes he had a bomb and many many more. The aviation industry regulators have lost the plot in the last few years and anyone can find themselves labelled "terrorist" and on a no fly list.
Ryanair, flybe, delta etc have all doled out lifetime bans in recent year, some quite deserving some not so much.

If you want to know how backward airport security is go to gatwick or heathrow with baby food. Most has to opened and tasted regardless of the fact it may now go off before a kid eats it. Utter ****ng joke. I'd like to know just how many middle class white British passport holders with kids have ever tried to blow up a plane with baby food?

scrubbedexpat141

Chaos.

Athens airport for a domestic (40min) flgiht to Crete was ****ing carnage at security on the gate.

I was practically naked with half-a-dozen trays containing (separately)

iPad
Mrs iPad
My big camera
Her hand luggage (now basically empty)
Duty free booze for Dad
Dubai carrier bag with magazines in
My belt, ring, watch, shoes, wallet, phone and change.

Insisted on them all being scanned separately and questioned me on my scar on my hand which covers up a titanium plate (which doesn't go off, obviously).


All of this seemed perfectly reasonable until the woman in front of me was let on the plane with a driving license that looked like it had been washed 30 times, acid bathed and sand blasted.

scot47

Ah, the romance of international travel by jet plane ! Persdonally I now stick to using the Choo-choo.

dubaiguy2011

+10,000 re Qatar Airways.

And Dubai is the shittiest "new" airport on the planet. On average I fly through it twice a week and the only thing good about it is that it's not in Qatar.

flares

Las Vegas Airport has a load of slots just in case you needed to lose more.

KKIA in Riyadh is a 'vision in beige'. Like a big armidillo bereft of the usual sea of aluminium and glass. I quite like it.