Based on layout inconvenience, inefficiency, angry people, and just plain filthy conditions, I’ll nominate CDG in Paris. Connecting flights to The States or South America from there seem to be the absolute worst.
I use CDG a lot and I agree with you. You forgot the homeless dudes hanging around in the terminal asking people for money and bothering women which the gendarmes or airport version of the gendarmes do nothing about. Have you ever tried to park there? Theres some kind of twilight zone between T2 A and E or similar which is like the Schrodingers Cat of floor levels.
BUT...I fly to Edinburgh from CDG and back. That surely is the journey from hell. Edinburgh is the one airport which can mount a serious challenge to CDG on all your markers. You arrive. You walk a mile and enter through a tiny door in a random wall. Upstairs for 3 minutes, onto a featureless corridor, then downstairs, then back up and then another long corridor. Then wait an hour for the luggage handlers to resume work and actually unload the luggage from the plane. Onto passport control, conveniently arranged for the airport staff so that 3 loaded flights from Spain all land at the same time with only 2 border control staff for everyone. You queue for 90 minutes, then if you are lucky, you can join the queue for the bus or the endless taxi queue.
So layout: worse than CDG even though much smaller.
Inefficiency: Staff can't be bothered to work so its set up for their convenience on the rare days they aren't wfh. There are actually managers who specialise in this sort of thing paid a lot of money to produce these kind of systems. Its the same management ethos thats producing the much delayed ferries...
Angry people: If you haven't been shouted sorry barked at by a wannabee member of the Stasi at Edinburgh Airport, have you even been allowed into Scotland? Don't get confused and stand in the wrong queue - you'll get both barrels of the h&s lecture, at full volume, complete with "are you listening to me?" prompts and an exam at the end.
Filthy: chewing gum stamped into the floor along with grime. It makes CDG look clean.
Taronno (Toronto) is pretty bad too.
Classic Scot. You guys hate your own country so much. It's like you're all living that monologue out of Trainspotting.
However, Manchester, now that is a grim UK airport. I remember getting off the train, entering the airport, and immediately finding a sharps bin for considerate junkies to drop their used needles into.
Nice thing about LAX is if you can go to the beach to pass time before your flight. San Diego is nice in that regard, as well.
Um, in theory - but you had better have a night flight.
This might work for a tourist with a tight schedule, but I'd recommend the beach day not be the day of flight, especially out of LAX.
You might be able to swing this flying out of Long Beach, but I have missed a flight there too, and I am a local.
Redondo is decent (and only 20 minutes away) With some nice shops and some topography at the south end. Manhattan is okay. I wouldn’t schedule around it, but they are not bad spots to kill time before a flight out. There’s even some decent food in El Segundo. Both are better than the tar balls and lack of topography in Long Beach and Seal Beach which are further away. I’d take either over anything remotely close to Ontario.
London Heathrow. Old, crowded, dirty , smells like body odor with perfume, overpriced. London Heathrow is what GB is , not what old school England was suppose to be.
Go back to Russia, I bet you love the airport there LOL
Thank you! Flown through Edinburgh many, many times and you encapsulated the experience as it really is and has been for decades. Beautiful country, beautiful, beautiful people but that airport …… Jesus
SGN airport in Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City. There were no officers at immigration, neither at the desk checking people or funnelling people into the queue. The queue eventually fell apart completley as large groups of families literally bum rushed the queue claiming they would miss their connecting flight. The other travellers had to maintain the order of the queue itself, and this lasted for almost an hour before finally some immigration officers came in. It felt quite dangerous, like there could have been a crowd crush or something
SGN airport in Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City. There were no officers at immigration, neither at the desk checking people or funnelling people into the queue. The queue eventually fell apart completley as large groups of families literally bum rushed the queue claiming they would miss their connecting flight. The other travellers had to maintain the order of the queue itself, and this lasted for almost an hour before finally some immigration officers came in. It felt quite dangerous, like there could have been a crowd crush or something