Plan your airport layover with T+L’s Airport Navigator

by Katie Hammel on

I hate airports. I hate sitting around and waiting, and I hate being unable to escape the thought that soon my plane will be the one zooming down the runway and lifting off into the sky. So rather than arrive early to the airport and allow myself time to get anxious about flying, I prefer to arrive at the last possible second, so that as I run through security and down the terminal, I don’t have time to think about my fears.

Unfortunately, sometimes I have an unavoidable mid-length layover at an airport – one that’s too short for me to go out and explore the city and too long for me to just sit at the gate and wait for my next flight. At those times, I need to find something to do to keep my mind occupied. Often, this means that I end up wandering the unfamiliar airport for about an hour in search of something good to eat, before giving up and buying the next thing I see – usually an uninspired sandwich or a bag of chips.

Next time, I’ll check Travel and Leisure’s Airport Navigator for tips on my airport before I go. For each of 20 airports, T+L has put together a list of places to eat and drink, shop, things to see and do, and places to relax. They’ve covered several major hubs in Europe – London, Madrid, Rome, Paris, and Amsterdam among them – plus major Asian airports like Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. They’ll give you the scoop on Sydney, Cairo, Dubai, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires and Mexico City, along with info on Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, but coverage in the US is non-existent.

Along with listings of each airport attraction, the guide offers reviews, websites, hours and price ranges.

Iron Chef Morimoto working on skewered airport food

by Scott Carmichael on

Celebrity chef Masaharu Morimoto has partnered with a restaurant operator to bring a new Asian inspired food concept to US airports.

The concept is called Skewers, and it will feature a variety of meat and vegetables on…skewers, of course.

The meals will be served with rice bowls, and the idea is that this dish is highly portable and easy to bring on board your flight.

The skewered dishes are called Yakitori, and prices will range between $4.50 and $16.95. Morimoto predicts that Yakitori will be the next big wave, and fully expects it to be very popular.

Personally, I welcome any new food to the airport – we’ve had to deal with bad pizza and stale sandwiches for too long, though I do worry that this new food may be a tad aromatic. I really hate it when people bring strong smelling food on the plane (unless they bring enough for everyone). I also hope the TSA has no objection to wooden skewers. As of right now, no locations or dates have been announced for these new restaurants.
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Ten reasons why I dislike the airport

by Scott Carmichael on

I hate airports. It never used to be like this, because most of my travel used to take me abroad. I always looked forward to spending some time at the various major international Airports.

Most of my travel nowadays is between US airports, and it is obvious all my years of international travel spoiled me for life. There are just a handful of decent airports in the US, but the vast majority are just a disgrace. Even airports that act as the gateway to the nation greet tourists with dull and uninspired buildings, rude staff and confusing public transport.

Call me negative Nancy, but I’ve listed ten of the things that annoy me the most when I’m at the airport. Let me know in the comments whether you share any of these things.

Lines

Lets face it – unless you are an elite level flier (or you are flying out of a quiet airport), your trip is going to mean you’ll be standing in line, just so you can stand in line, so you can stand in line.

You’ll encounter lines at the check-in desk or check-in computer kiosk, you’ll be in line for security, you’ll be in line at the gate, you’ll be in line at the air bridge, and you’ll be in line on the plane waiting for someone to spend their first five minutes on board slowly getting comfortable. Lines suck, and unless you are really mellow, lines are a sure way to get your trip off to a bad start.

The “security” checkpoint

TSA staff rank up there with most other bureaucrats. There vast majority of them are good people out there, but plenty of them stand around the security area radiating total and utter contempt for the traveling public.

Basic help is rarely available, and any time the stress of travel makes you forget to empty your pockets or remove your laptop, you find yourself on the receiving end of a monkey in a blue shirt yelling at you. Sadly, all this harassment is done under the disguise of keeping us safe from terrorists, which is the magic word that allows people to be rude.

Poor seating

Airports spend millions on art, but when it comes to providing decent seats, they must shop at IKEA. Even though airports know they’ll often need to take care of you for several hours, the seating they provide is horrible. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if it is just done so they can force you into their overpriced restaurants, because spending $6 on a beer appears to be the only way you’ll get a decent place to sit.

Baggage fees

In the past, once you’d paid for your ticket, the only money the airline would get out of you would be for a decent drink on your flight. That has all changed with airlines demanding money for checked bags. A family of 4, each with 2 bags can easily find themselves parting with $200 at the airport.

Concession stands, restaurants and stores

Who doesn’t like paying $10 for a stale sandwich or a 2 day old bagel? Airport food sucks, is overpriced and is usually inedible. There are a couple of airports who managed to find a decent restaurant, but the vast majority consists of bad sandwich stores and greasy fast food.

With a couple of exceptions, US airports also offer a dull array of stores. Just how many people actually shop at the airport Brookstone? Would it hurt them to start offering some real choices? One quick look at Amsterdam, Dubai or Hong Kong shows how a real airport shopping center should be.

Public transportation

Very few US airports have the luxury of a decent public transportation system. When these places were designed, most architects forgot that not everyone would be traveling by car. Even some of the busiest airports in the world (like JFK in New York) didn’t get a decent public transit system till several years ago. Others, like LAX don’t have any direct connections (other than a poor bus service).

As usual, some of the airports outside the US show us how things should be – Hong Kong has a high speed rail service connecting the airport with downtown, Amsterdam has an underground train station linking the airport with most Dutch stations, and even Heathrow offers arriving and departing passengers multiple rail options.

The executive lounge

The “executive lounge” is where elite passengers and people traveling in first class can relax separated from the commoners. In the US, the lounge is a dark and poorly designed room, where you can trade a drink coupon for a beer.

Outside the US, the executive lounge is a completely different story – airports like Heathrow and Hong Kong offer lounge amenities from complimentary spa services to noodle and ice cream bars and an assortment of top shelf liquor. The contrast is amazing. Upscale in the US means grabbing a cracker before someone beats you to it. Upscale abroad means trying to pick which of the various freshly cooked meals you’d like.

Parking

Parking at the airport is a huge scam. There is no logical explanation why a parking spot should cost more than a couple of bucks a day. Arriving back home from a 2 week trip, and having to fork over a $210 to get your car back is a rip-off.

Even short term parking can be a nightmare – $10/hour is not unheard of, and a simple departure delay could mean you are out $20 just for the luxury of waving goodbye.

Drop-off lanes

Does anyone know when dropping people off at the airport became such a pain in the ass? Most airports now employ security staff equipped with whistles and bright orange vests who have been programmed to ensure nobody spends more than 20 seconds saying goodbye to their loved ones. Travel is stressful enough, but these bottom feeders make things far worse than it should be.

Gate lice and the boarding rush

We’ve all seen them (perhaps you are one of them) – the people who hang around the boardin
g door making sure they can get on board the plane before anyone else. They are called gate lice, and they make a sport out of completely ignoring all requests from the gate staff.

Even though they never seem to be in the first boarding group, they’ll still stay put, and as the people who are actually eligible for priority boarding make their way to the gate, they won’t budge. When people walk past them with “boarding group 1” in hand, they’ll stare them down. I hate them, and wish they’d all just stay home.

Man threatens to explode bomb at SFO, gets one-way ticket to jail

by Jamie Rhein on

If you have a problem with your plane ticket, do not, I repeat, DO NOT do what Oregonian Mark Field did this past Tuesday at San Francisco International Airport: He threatened Philippine Airlines‘ staff by waving his cellphone and saying, “I’m going to press this and blow up the plane.”

Mention a bomb in an airport and you’re in BIG trouble as Field quickly discovered. It doesn’t matter how hopping-, spitting-, head-about-to-burst-mad you are. It also doesn’t matter that you don’t actually have a bomb.

Evidently, the problem started when Mr. Field tried to check in for an international flight and discovered he was being charged for a round-trip ticket even though he only wanted a one-way ticket. No matter how much he argued with staff, they weren’t budging, and the situation heated up until … Field finally snapped.

Once the word “bomb” spewed from his mouth, in rushed the bomb-sniffing dogs. After it was established that Field didn’t have a bomb after all — just a trigger mouth — he was arrested for making a false bomb threat. Now, Field sits in jail with a hefty $50,000 bail and a one-way ticket to a court date on October 19.

If convicted, Field could remain in jail for up to one year.

As Sargent Sergeant Wesley Matsuura of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office explained, one-way tickets aren’t normally sold for international flights due to security issues. That’s why the airline staff wasn’t giving in to Mr. Field’s complaints. Too bad for him he didn’t understand this.

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Airports go green with new eco-friendly initiatives

by Katie Hammel on

Airports are little cities unto themselves. Many are even large enough to have their own zip codes. With so many people coming in and out, cars dropping off and picking up, and planes departing and landing, airports produce a whole lot of air pollution and physical trash. But, many are making an effort to reduce their environmental impact by implementing new green features. Here are some of the coolest green initiatives at airports around the world.

Using Alternative Power
Last July, Boston Logan Airport installed 20 wind turbines that will offset about 3% of the building’s annual energy needs (doesn’t sound like much, but consider the amount an airport uses), and it’s not the only airport investing in alternative sources of energy. The airports of Munich, Zurich, San Francisco and Denver have also installed solar panels to help power their buildings. Dallas/Fort Worth Airport converted its bus and shuttle fleet to run on compressed natural gas and hydrogen-based fuel, as has Mineta San Jose. Heathrow is testing its new Personal Transport Pods, battery-powered, zero-emission vehicles that will whisk passengers from the terminal to the parking lot, and Boston provides preferred parking spots to drivers of hybrid cars.

Refilling Empty Water Bottles
The Portland Airport allows travelers coming through the security line with water bottles to dump the liquid but keep the container to refill once they pass security. That doesn’t sound like a big deal until you realize that other airports, like Chicago O’Hare, require the bottles to be thrown out. Not only does that policy generate tons of unnecessary waste, but all those full or half-full bottles weigh more and therefore the removal produces more emissions. Portland’s rule seems pretty green in comparison. San Francisco Airport goes one step further than Portland by providing water refill stations past the security checkpoint so people can refill their water bottles free of charge.

Recycling and Composting
Many airports have limited recycling programs in place, but some are going above and beyond when it comes to making sure that nothing that can be recycled gets added to a landfill. Seattle-Tacoma Airport, rated by the Clean Airport Partnership as one of the greenest in the country, charges concessionaires by the pound for waste(but doesn’t charge for recycling), encouraging vendors to recycle as much as possible. Portland makes it easy on flyers as well by providing a “single sort” recycle bin. Everything gets tossed in one bin and later sorted by a recycling company, so people don’t have to worry about which receptacle they throw their items into.

Seattle doesn’t end its recycling efforts with paper, plastic, glass and aluminum – it also composts 145 tons of coffee grounds per year and recycles 1,000 gallons of cooking oil each month, which is then used to produced biodiesel fuel. Munich Airport has a similar program: the organic waste from the airport’s restaurants is collected, sent to a farm, and used as pig feed. San Francisco hopes to require its concessionaires to serve all food in containers that can be composted and turned into fertilizer and Denver Airport will begin its own composting program this January.

Other green airport practices include using energy-efficient LCD screens on all computers and monitors, landscaping with native plants, installing low-flow toilets, and replacing paper towel dispensers with electric hand dryers. With the amount of waste and emissions airports produce as a result of their sheer size, the have a long way to go to truly be called “green”, but it’s nice to know that many are taking steps to reduce their environmental impact in whatever small ways they can.