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I can't seem to get a flight out west without going to ATL. DTW and DEN are very nice airports so I should look into including those airports on my list of possible layovers. If only RDU had a direct to PSP.. that would be awesome and save me the two hour drive. I drive a lot but after flying I don't know about driving two hours.
TPA is the best so far. My wife travels the country for a living and she feels TPA is in the top two for sure.
I love TPA and DEN (Denver). I won't knock LGA as much as others here. It is not goldplated but it gets the job done remarkably efficiently for an airport quite near midtown.
JFK and Newark may be newer and glitzier (as the others certainly are). But remember those are not urban locations.
My favorite is Denver (DEN). It's new, it's modern, it's spacious, it has all the amenities, it's super-easy to navigate around, and the view of the Rockies from the west-facing windows is fantastic.
I'm going to give some hometown love to Baltimore (BWI). The Southwest concourses (A and B, and soon to be C) are very well laid out and have a decent supply of food and shopping. And I love the view of the runways through the huge windows in that central area between the A and B wings. On the downside, baggage claim is painfully slow.
And here's a surprise: for a small airport, Juneau (JNU) is very well laid out, nicely decorated, and even has a surprisingly tasty snack bar. (And I love the restaurant's motto: "Food so good, they built an airport around it.")
Florida is a mixed bag with their airports. Tampa (TPA) and Orlando (MCO) are wonderful and very well designed. And West Palm Beach (PBI) feels very luxurious. But Miami (MIA) is atrocious -- or at least it was up to about 20 years ago, the last time I subjected myself to enduring it -- and Fort Lauderdale (FLL) is overcrowded and not very appealing.
I don't like Hawaii's airports, with the exception of Hilo (ITO). Confusing layouts, poor signage, surprisingly little in the way of food and shopping, and inefficient, convoluted check-in procedures. And would it kill 'em to turn up the air conditioning? Or, in Kona's (KOA) case, to install some in the first place? To be fair, I'm ragging mainly on Honolulu (HNL) and, most especially, Kona (KOA). It's been too long since I've been to Kahului (OGG) and Lihue (LIH) to really remember much about them.
Least favorites include New York-LaGuardia (LGA), New York-Kennedy (JFK), and Los Angeles (LAX).
As for airlines, Southwest is my favorite. Good service, friendly employees, and they don't nickel-and-dime you to death. Back 20 or 30 years ago, I thought Delta was the best thing in the skies. Now, I avoid them like the plague. I don't know what happened to cause them to fall so far.
My only problem with Hartsfield ATL is if your gate is on one of the ends of the concourses it can be a long walk, they could use the moving sidewalks there. Other than that I don't find it confusing at all. I like how busy it is. The underground train couldn't be simpler to understand. Gate on concourse D? Go to D. It just takes a while if you have to go from T or A over to D. I've used the separate north and south terminal security lines to get into concourse T instead of using the main one. The good thing is once you're in, you're in. I went to Philly once and unless I just goofed, once I left the terminal, I couldn't get into a different one. Or at least if there are connections, it wasn't very clear.
I don't like IAH that much. Seemed like the terminals were just 5 random pieces joined together with no rhyme or reason. One section had it's own mini security checkpoint. One had the doors leading straight to the tarmac. One seemed like a mile away and had to take two different moving sidewalks to get to and from.
I have to add one more airport that I have not flown into or out of, but I've been next to it: Princess Juliana International Airport (SUX) in St. Maarten. This is, without a doubt, the most amazingly awesome plane watching I've ever had the privilege of witnessing.
Location: East Central Pennsylvania/ Chicago for 6yrs.
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Originally Posted by CarolinaWoman
We always used Charlotte Douglas. It's the pits. It's a hub and no it's not cheaper. My favorite little airport is Greenville/Spartanburg. When Charlotte Douglas had a mess with construction of a new runway we started using Greenville/Spartanburg. Tampa is neat but to get in and out easy we use Sarasota. I have no use for LAX, O'Hare or Atlanta.
Long ago I had to fly from Myrtle Beach to Springfield, Illinois connecting through Midway in Chicago. On my return from Springfield (SPI) the little commuter flight had discontinued service to Midway. I had to fly into Meigs Field in Chicago, which I think is now a park. When we started to land all I could see was a runway with weeds growing on it next to Lake Michigan and I still had to get out of there to Midway to catch my flight back to Myrtle Beach. :smack:
Yes The old Meg's Field is being transformed into a 6-ecosystem Wildlife Refuge. It has hills and Pond with Reef, to encourage fish to breed in its 40-acres. It ill have camping, but that will not be free. The North will have a 30,000 seat Concert Pavilion.
Parts have opened for camping, with completion in 2017. This picture shows it in conversion and its Setting overlooking the Skyline. :ok:
As for airlines, Southwest is my favorite. Good service, friendly employees, and they don't nickel-and-dime you to death. Back 20 or 30 years ago, I thought Delta was the best thing in the skies. Now, I avoid them like the plague. I don't know what happened to cause them to fall so far.
Southwest operates a very simple system compared to other big airlines. This enables them to streamline costs and streamline services, and they can be awesome if your needs specifically fit inside their box or if nothing goes hugely wrong. But if you have to go outside their box and try to do something exotic like book a flight from Pensacola to San Francisco, they system tends to choke and say 'sorry, but you can't fly that route' even though they do indeed serve both cities and they don't have a mutual aid agreement with other airlines so if your planned flight goes mechanical, you're stuck waiting for the next Southwest flight or buying a ticket on another airline instead of Southwest finding space for you on the next United or Delta flight at their expense.
Maybe I should try Ontario, I do know that it is 30 minutes closer to Palm Springs than LAX but flights there seem to be more expensive than flying to LAX. I will be traveling with people who have nut allergies and from experience I know American/US Airways will deny requests to not serve nuts on the plane. Delta will not serve nuts on the plane if you have nut allergies. Has anybody had experience with Alaskan? Virgin? United? jetBlue? Or any of the major airlines?
Oh, I'm sorry I don't know anything about nut allergies and airlines. I didn't know how familiar you were with the socal airports. you could try john wayne (SNA) too I think that might be slightly closer than LAX and easier to navigate. You're right LAX is usually the cheapest option, unfortunately it's also the worst option of all the airports...it was the bane of my existence living there when I was traveling anywhere not on the west coast.
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I don't know anything about nut allergies and airlines. I didn't know how familiar you were with the socal airports. you could try john wayne (SNA) too I think that might be slightly closer than LAX and easier to navigate. You're right LAX is usually the cheapest option, unfortunately it's also the worst option of all the airports...it was the bane of my existence living there when I was traveling anywhere not on the west coast.
