Good news: Detroit Metro ranked #3 airport in U.S. (Flint: car rental, rental)

[ZnGuy]

Travel & Leisure magazine ranked Detroit Metro #3 behind Minneapolis and Charlotte airport. Pretty impressive..America's Best and Worst Airports- Page 15 - Articles | Travel + Leisure

[Osito]

Originally Posted by ZnGuy

Travel & Leisure magazine ranked Detroit Metro #3 behind Minneapolis and Charlotte airport. Pretty impressive..America's Best and Worst Airports- Page 15 - Articles | Travel + Leisure

Glad to hear it!

[ram2]

Anything is better than O'Hare.

[Coldjensens]

It is an odd ranking. The airports I like the best are not even listed (John Wayne (Orange County CA), Cincinatti. Denver is ranked low and IMO is one of the best.

Detroit has some good and bad attributes, but not top three IMO. A lot depends on which terminal you end up in. They use very different criteria than I would use. I do not go to an airport to go shopping or for fine dining. I do not use slow and risky public wifi. I do not lug suitcases on public transportation. My criteria are (Detroit scores imo in parenthesis):

Available power outlets. (1/10)

Understandable sound systems. (2/10)

Plentiful working information boards. (6/10)

Reasonable layout and means to get between gates (moving sidewalks are nice if they work - in detroit there are always many of them shut down). (4/10)

Quick and easy baggage retrieval. (2/10)

Easy access from baggage to car rental, parking and/or shuttles. (5/10)

Clean and easily accessible bathrooms with space to leave your bags. (6/10)

Quick well staffed security (9/10)

Clean (depends on the terminal).

friendly, knowlegable and respectful counter staff and other personell (9/10)

Food I do not much care about as long as there are some options. I do not go to airports for dining.

Of the iarports I use, LAX is by far te worst. Detroit falls somewhere in the middle. It is hard to objectively consider Atlanta since I have had only bad expereinces there due to Air Trans horrid customer service. It is hard to look around objectively when you are super ticked off.

[belleislerunner]

I think Detroit's airport is great - but the one thing I always wonder/puzzles me - is it's such a long corridor - that it never seems like a happening place. Some of the other airports (e.g. DCA, LGA) are so cramped, with restaurants that have "outdoor seating" and a general buzz that at least it always seems like there's something happening that you're part of. I miss that here. Overall, thumbs up.

[AmericaWestCMH]

DTW is a fantastic airport. The McNamara terminal is a gem, and the North terminal is new and a marked improvement over it's predecessor. Nice facilities and infrequent delays puts DTW near the top of most lists.

Coldjensens, don't know when you last flew, but Delta's added power outlets at every gate area in the Mac, and probably in B/C as well. 2/10 for baggage retrieval? Seems unnecessarily harsh, care to elaborate? I flew mainline Delta a few weeks ago. A 5 minute walk to baggage and the bags were already coming out on the belt. I've had similar experiences in the North terminal. I work in the airport, and the moving sidewalks are rarely out of service.

Belleisle, true that concourse A never really seems all that busy. But, it's an underutilized terminal that could easily handle double the flights it currently does.

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by belleislerunner

I think Detroit's airport is great - but the one thing I always wonder/puzzles me - is it's such a long corridor - that it never seems like a happening place. Some of the other airports (e.g. DCA, LGA) are so cramped, with restaurants that have "outdoor seating" and a general buzz that at least it always seems like there's something happening that you're part of. I miss that here. Overall, thumbs up.

Airports seem to be going to the long corridor format. The "fingers" extending out from the main terminal seem to be going out of fashion. The long corridors seem to allow more room for waiting passengers. I never cared for the "cramped, buzzing, happening" atmosphere. I prefer peace and quiet.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by AmericaWestCMH

DTW is a fantastic airport. The McNamara terminal is a gem, and the North terminal is new and a marked improvement over it's predecessor. Nice facilities and infrequent delays puts DTW near the top of most lists.

Coldjensens, don't know when you last flew, but Delta's added power outlets at every gate area in the Mac, and probably in B/C as well. 2/10 for baggage retrieval? Seems unnecessarily harsh, care to elaborate? I flew mainline Delta a few weeks ago. A 5 minute walk to baggage and the bags were already coming out on the belt. I've had similar experiences in the North terminal. I work in the airport, and the moving sidewalks are rarely out of service.

Belleisle, true that concourse A never really seems all that busy. But, it's an underutilized terminal that could easily handle double the flights it currently does.

I fly pretty much every month, sometimes twice a month. It varies, there are times when I do not fly for a month or two. My last trip was three weeks ago.

I do not fly Delta. They are consitently too expensive and/or simply do not match my schedule. Mostly they are too expensive. Usually many hundreds of dollars more. Once in a great while Northwest/Delta works, but not in the past 20 or so trips, so it has possibly been a couple of years. I am not sure I have been on Delta since they took over Northwest. However I have been in MacNamara a few times in the past year, so maybe that was Delta. I do not know who else flies out of Macnamara.

Every time I arrive in Detroit, I have a half hour or more to wait for the bags to come through. It is almost always a long walk, expecially when you have to walk through what my son calls "the tunnel of electronic digestion"

I cannot rememeber which terminal it was, but one of them has a few new charging stations (samsung maybe? I cannto rememebr), but they are always packed with a line waiting. I usually end up wandering around until I find an outlet in a hallway and then I just sit on the floor. There are maybe four outlets in the baggage area where you can re-charge a dead phone to call your ride. If my phone is dead (it usually is) I usually run for the baggage area to claim an outlet while waiting for the bags to come out.

Spome airports have outlets all over the place and I never have any trouble finding an available outlet. Detroit is not the worst in this regard, but it is one of the worst.

The last ten times I have been at DTW at least 3 of the moving sidewalks I needed to use were out of service. However I am including the ones going to the parking structure as well as the ones inside the airport. I do not really care except when I am carrying a lot of heavy bags. I do nto have any workable wheelie type bags, so I am sometimes happy to plop my junk down on a moving sidewalk. When I push myself to get the moving walkway so I can rest and then find it broken, it is frustrating, so I tend to remember when it happens. If I am not carrying heavy bags, then I do not notice broken moving sidewalks since I do not use them much. I have long legs so I usually walk faster than people go on those things, unless I am loaded down like a pack mule.

I prefer small super clean airports that are quick in quick out. (John Wayne and Cincinatti for example). As mentioned I am not interested in shopping or fine dining at an airport. I would prefer not to have to walk through a bunch of restraunts and stores (and I certainly do not need to walk through a bunch of slot machines while carrying my luggage). One or two per concourse is really all you need.

[Tyryztoll]

I've been to....I'd say, probably half of the big airports in the U.S., and would say the new Metro is right at the top, if not the best outright that I've experienced. They did an absolutely incredible job with the new terminals. Denver is nice, Atlanta too. I must have missed something at the Minneapolis airport, though, because when I was there in 2006 I thought it was a dump. We docked at a really old gate, and it took what seemed like half a day to get shuttled to the car rental counter.

On a side note......I wonder if they've ever considered a different name for Metro airport. Something in the line of "Detroit/Motor City International" or similar. Metropolitan/Wayne County just seems kinda drab.

[Tyryztoll]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

I prefer small super clean airports that are quick in quick out. (John Wayne and Cincinatti for example). As mentioned I am not interested in shopping or fine dining at an airport. I would prefer not to have to walk through a bunch of restraunts and stores (and I certainly do not need to walk through a bunch of slot machines while carrying my luggage). One or two per concourse is really all you need.

I don't fly nearly as much as you do, but this is why Flint Bishop is an absolutely awesome airport to me. Not only is it the no nonsense, get 'er done experience you just described, but it shaves an hour off of my drive home to Petoskey. If Ican get a direct flight into Flint I'll take it every time.