i'm in an airport

Yes, it looks fascinating but, as the wikitravel page notes, does carry an ever present risk of getting beheaded on video.

The only available outlet I could find during my 4 hour Sea-Tac layover requires me to sit in the tiny space underneath the arrival / departure sign in the N terminal so every once in a while I get a mass of people congregating in front of me and staring above me.

Second-longest security queue of my life at JFK.

how long was it??

fyi the smoked meat poutine at Lester's Deli in the Montreal airport is gross, do not eat it.

40 minutes or so. Halfway through they had a little station to check your passport and boarding pass, then continue queuing.

40 minutes wait on the tarmac at Heathrow for a bus to take us to the terminal. Now standing in a half-hour queue for border checking whatnot. My suitcase will be dizzy by the time I get through.

BTW by the end of this, it had taken me about six hours to fly from Toronto to London, and then three hours to get from landing to the house in north London I was staying in.

also I went to Stansted for the first time a few weeks ago, but due to a bout of diarrhoea (not mine) and a suicide (also not mine) ended up leaving the airport and renting a car and driving to another country.

Forty minutes is one of your longest? Are you including going through Customs, or just your run-of-the-mill metal x-ray deal?

Forty minutes seems about right, from my past experiences. Granted, I was sweating it out because of all my Kinder Surprises stocked with ninja stars inside, but still.

Waiting to get to the metal x-ray bit, just wending through ropes in the lobby

ps i really want this thread title to be changed to "where in the world is carmen (sic)diego"

he's in airports a heck of a lot

I gotta go home and get a job or sell all my records soon though ;_;

My only experience of JFK was a 45 minute wait followed by an hour-long security interview, so could be worse.

All British airports are terrible in September / early October as you have a lot of new students coming for the start of term and getting the third, fourth and fifth degree from the immigration goons. I think i landed at Stansted at midnight last autumn and cleared the immigration queue at 2am.

ugh even the Eurostar terminal at the Gare du Nord this weekend was like that, British immigration taking 15 minutes with one American kid who'd been in Paris for the weekend with his parents. stuck behind him I heard the whole spiel.

At the Denver airport w a 6 hour layover til my flight to Portland. Flight was at 7am so I stayed up the night before watching moat of TNG season 2.

@NateSilver538
Hint: avoid Spirit Airlines, which is basically like one of those wagons on Oregon Trail after Mabel gets dysentery

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/will-your-holiday-flight-be-on-time/

At LAX. Got a $75 overweight fee (for three suits I bought for jobhunting at the other end of the flight) and have been put in a middle seat for 15 hours of flying to a city currently under tornado warning.

There are cats roaming about beyond the immigration point at Dhaka airport. I am significantly less annoyed about a delayed flight than i would otherwise have been. This is something other airports might want to look in to.

^^^^

<3 <3 <3 <3

https://s18.postimg.org/3vbk4fxfd/20161011_071349.jpg

They're incredibly boisterous - knocking over bins, leaping off the back of seats, etc - and nobody seems to have a problem with them.

I'd enjoy the airport if it were full of rambunctious cats

most surreal airport experience i've had was at los cabos.. bats flying around, clipping unphased employees heads... giant moths/butterflies perching on luggage...

Bleah. Diverted right as we were about to land, delayed two hours, now I don't get back til 7 hours later.

Yay holiday travel.

SEATAC = best airport. The buskers, the cheese store, the light rail, the kinetic art, etc. Good bookstore down by terminal A. ILXORS on the shelf in the Sub Pop store.

Coffee at Beechers / Cafe Vita, breakfast sandwich, ellenos yogurt. browse through Sub Pop, stroll to gate. Every time.

ILXORS on the shelf

good name for a new compilation

I really like this https://discover.stqry.com/v/travelor-karen-ganz/s/12e74c420a4f20b896973cf72b8fa85c

My small local airport only flys to Seatac so I've been there a ton in the last decade (and yet have never walked out the front door as I'm always connecting). It used to feel kind of amazing to me compared to other airports but I feel like it's been a while since its been remodeled and parts are starting to feel kind of run down and shitty. Part of this might also be that beers in other airports are novel and exotic now and Seatac only seems to have regional standards that I'm bored of. And in MSP and DEN you can roam around with a beer in some of the terminals which is great when you're trying to let a toddler run around burn off energy.

But breakfast at Anthony's, sandwiches and coffee at Beechers, noodles and a beer at Waji, the the awesome horror of the children's play area, the pearl jam poster exhibit (r.i.p. last time I was there), and Sub Pop are all awesome.

trying to navigate Seatac and find the exit felt like being stuck in House of Leaves

I'm glad the magician mural is still around. He's my first cousin once removed!

Ha i was going to mention the magician too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV-wgZBGfCo

I Love LCY

^would wear as a t-shirt

we kind of based our holiday destination around what was cheaply available from this airport, that is how much I love using this airport

full english breakfast for £16.95 the obvious drawback, fortunately there's a caffè nero

At London City for the first time because all the flights to Milan from proper airports were booked. If this happens again, I'm going by boat.

It is a terrible airport but, unfortunately, extremely convenient for Kent.

leaving my house -> being in Milan = less than 5 hours, it's a great airport

flew from Sydney to Los Angeles via Melbourne (bcz it was $900 cheaper) yesterday. Spent longer in LAX than in the two departure airports combined. A++, would be detained by CBP for hours again. Gonna suggest on Yelp that they turn down the volume on their multiple TVs showing The Game Shows Hosted By Former Cast Members Of The US Version Of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Channel though.

'Bout an hour done pass / Done watch two episodes of M*A*S*H

sic you rollin up to SEA this time?

fyi i was confused by the time difference - it was less than four hours

Yeah LCY is my favourite London airport by a long way, though the company is usually unpleasant. What don't you like about it SV?

LCY can be pretty grim when overcrowded on a Sunday evening. The compact size and location is a bonus.

Yeah it's not perfect, it does get crowded but so do all the London airports IME. City has a habit of filling up with some very shout-on-their-mobiles City types, but it's so much quicker and easier to get through than the others.

The location is great. I used to be able to get home in half an hour and now, from Medway, it's not much more than an hour. I hate everything else, though.

The company is definitely a factor. It's too small and too crowded. You usually can't check in more than two hours ahead of your flight and there's literally nowhere to go landside that isn't a commercial space - so if you arrive early, you have to either leave the airport or go to Pret.

When you've checked in, seating is extremely limited so gets too busy. There are no good shops. There's no business lounge (presumably because almost everyone would qualify for it) so it's perversely impossible to work at London's most business-centric airport. The last few times i've had to board basically from the central departure lounge and there are no dedicated spaces to do that, so you have had people queuing in the corridor, being told that they're blocking Boots so everyone has to turn around and queue in the other direction, etc - usually with a lot of aggro passengers.

If you need to turn up an hour before your flight, hop on the plane and be out, it's fine but it's just too small for the capacity of flights to be a pleasant place for anything else.

This airport is a saviour compared to the horror that is Stanstead.

Where are you hanging out at Heathrow or Gatwick if you arrive early? I don't recall anything but a tiny handful of uncomfortable metal seats landside in either?

I can't imagine wanting to check in to any airport more than two hours ahead of time, particularly not one where I didn't need to check in so early, so I grant that could be annoying.

I don't think there are any good shops in any of the London airports.

Anyway, sounds like you use LCY more than I do these days - I used to use it a lot but have done so rarely over the last few years, and I've never failed to find somewhere to sit down, so I 'm sorry things have got worse. My basic point is that I hate all airports, particularly the London ones, and LCY doesn't seem any worse than Heathrow or Gatwick. And this:

If you need to turn up an hour before your flight, hop on the plane and be out, it's fine

is pretty much my ideal for what an airport should be, particularly one which is relatively well-connected to public transport.

Yeah I'm the one hour before person too. The idea of going into a shop in an airport for anything other than coffee is alien to me.

I see an airplane but its is made of fur and planets.

City is easily the best airport, the fact the bars are the areas you wait in is a bonus. I don't find braying city types any more annoying than the ultimately similar variety of human stains you have to be around at any other airport but I'd agree generally that air travel is horrible and the people around you are generally really irritating/lacking in self-awareness.

For this reason also City is best, fewer queues, less walking, no grim maze of death by commerce like they've installed at Stansted both on the way through duty-free and in the horrendous food court circle that resembles that stone they all walk around in Midnight Express, arguably the most badly and brazenly designed public space I've ever been in.

I used to avoid Gatwick given that Stansted brings me back to Liverpool St and I live in Hackney, but I'm working v close to Victoria these days so Gatwick is very handy to get to from the office. I've been hugely surprised, particularly flying Easyjet, but in general really, at how calm and easy it is, short queues, lots of space, everything working very well. They fucked Stansted so badly when they redesigned it. Security queues included.

I'd agree generally that air travel is horrible

air travel remains amazing and thrilling

sic you rollin up to SEA this time?

no immediate plans but surely sometime! maybe thanksgiving? and hopefully mopop/popcon next year, depending on employment & transport & such. (I'm a resident now.)

oh welcome aboard, here's your red hat

is it too late to go back home and wear a Make Australia Gay Again hat until the postal survey