Dec 20, 2011

Best and Worst Places to fly into in the US

Between traveling for work and various family vacations, I have traveled through many different airports and developed some likes and some dislikes.

Favorites
SFO - San Francisco is the main airport I fly in and out of when I go home.  Despite problems a few years back due to construction and maze of overpasses and different lanes going everywhere, the experience flying at SFO is excellent.  SFO has the best assortment of food that I've seen at any airport. From Peets Coffee to Andales Taqueria, the airport food is actually food you want to eat as opposed to the typical Panda Express / Sbarro options.

MKE - Milwuakee's airport is one of the easiest airports to fly out of that I think I've ever been to.  While there aren't many flights to choose from, you can usually find a good flight option or two.  The biggest plus to MKE is just how easy getting there and through security is.  Being located 15 minutes away from downtown, MKE is quick and easy to get to.  Once you're at the airport, security is a breeze making it about as convenient as it can be.

DCA - Washington DC's Regan airport provides the best access to a city of any airport I think I've ever flown into.  The airport is only slightly outside the city but linked up to the city's metro system which means getting where you want to go after your flight will take you less than an hour to most places for only $2-3.  Part of DCA's appeal is also the alternatives to fly to DC which are Dulles (which is infinitely times further away) or Balitmore (which is even further away).  If you're flying to DC its worth paying the extra money to fly to DCA, trust me.

Worst
FLL - Maybe I'm being too harsh on Fort Lauderdale's airport, but after getting stuck there for 12+ hours I hope to never have to fly through there again.  After missing an admittedly tight connection on our way back from Peru, Hannah and I were stuck all day as Spirit Airlines (worst airline ever) only had another connecting flight that evening (after we arrived before 6am).  Not that I'm that much of a coffee fiend, but this airport was so bad it didn't even have a starbucks.  Aside from coffee, the food options were limited and we had to evacuate at one point due to some sort of fire / bomb scare.  The only plus side was that they randomly had a jazz band playing in the lobby for a few hours of our wait but this doesn't correct the horrible experience we had there.

LAX - Los Angeles' airport is the definition of a clusterf***.  There are just so many people and even more cars all moving around this disorganized mess of an airport.  While the lane systems seem to make sense, the 15 different types of buses and all the horrible drivers bring the whole complex to a snail's crawl.  Last time I was there I needed to switch between terminals which required asking 3 different people which bus I needed to get on (only 1 of which actually knew).  After sitting in the bus for what seemed like 45 min, I arrived at the terminal which probably wasn't further than 300 yards away.


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