World's worst airport?

I am flying into PVG and out of HKG.

I am not too bothered about any potential delay on the way back given what Chep Lap Kok has too offer!! ]

Do we dare take this subject onto the opposite end of the scale??? If so, HKG gets my bet everytime followed by KUL.... [y]

PVG now has 3 hotels on site, one of which is quite nice (for a standard business hotel). So if you were delayed it would not be too bad. This would be a new development since 12 months ago.

The journey to the Bund is about 35 minutes by taxi, Pu Dong business district about 25 minutes, Song Jiang about an hour. Of course you can take the 450km/hr train (It is speed limited to 450kph because the have a subsidance problem on some of the piles) which is quite an experience, but for some reason it stops (after a 10 minute journey) a long way from anywhere useful[ii] - it is about 25 minutes from Wai Tan and 15 minutes to Pu Dong business district[ii][ii]

Shanghai is an amazing place to stay. I will be there next Sept and will stay at the Hyatt, thats a hell of a high hotel. I stayed at the Shangri-la the last time , again a lovely hotel. With all the state of the art city and amazing nightlife , I still think the airport is a disappointment.

Originally posted by porsche911
With all the state of the art city and amazing nightlife , I still think the airport is a disappointment.

I can understand that.

{edited sailor99 - Original content about hotels moved here as that topic is more appropriate.}

Originally posted by preiffer
Bournemouth - BOH. Difference between "gate 2" and "gate 3" is the left door or the right door of a small shed...

ROTFLMAOPMP to true.

I have to say MIA for immagration a free for all bundle. LAS for luggage for the time it takes to come out. CDG as there 's esculators all over the place and i keep getting lost there.

Sailor, you seem to be the man on Shanghai!! [y] - Do you have any recommendations on food, places to see off the beaten track etc ????

Quizzed a few F.A's on way back from BOS recently, they advised me to check out a restaurant called 1221, did you come across it????

Originally posted by p17blo
I firstly would like to agree with Fozzyo about Coventry. It is my local airport which I can be to within minutes. I would rather travel 2.5 hours to Gatwick than use Cov!

Paul

HANG ON You two! Coventry does what it says on the tin, gets you from the UK to your destination.
Its not the airports fault that the idiots on Warwick District Council first objected to the new passenger terminal, then after spending £1 Million of the taxpayers money have finally accepted that a new terminal will not be armageddon when built!
You just wait until the terminal is replaced, it will be fine.

Originally posted by AlanA

Originally posted by p17blo
I firstly would like to agree with Fozzyo about Coventry. It is my local airport which I can be to within minutes. I would rather travel 2.5 hours to Gatwick than use Cov!

Paul

HANG ON You two! Coventry does what it says on the tin, gets you from the UK to your destination.
Its not the airports fault that the idiots on Warwick District Council first objected to the new passenger terminal, then after spending £1 Million of the taxpayers money have finally accepted that a new terminal will not be armageddon when built!
You just wait until the terminal is replaced, it will be fine.

I understand and agree with you, but we are not talking about how nice it WILL be;). I went when it was a portacabin and then again in the modified shed/hanger and both times security was a joke, I was able to wonder in and out totally without checks the first time and with simple checks the second.

On a security theme, on my recent visit to Grand Cayman I had to stop at the airport. I was able to walk through the Fire Station (which doors where open and empty) and onto the runway without being challenged. Man that scares the HELL out of me, which is why I went there straight afterwards!

Paul

My father tells me that Lagos and particularly PHC aren't too nice![:p]

Also, there's one airport in New Guinea where shoot outs are held between rival gangs. I think it won the worst airport to sleep in award a few years back!;)

Cheers,
VS045

There are some beaut's in the Caribbean.

'Beef Island' Tortola is a particular gem. Not becuase it is especially decrepit but the, shall we say 'service' there is unique. There is nowhere I have been in the islands that makes you feel less welcome on arrival than Tortola.

Mind you, I am used to chickens and livestock running round airport forecourts so maybe it is decrepit.

Don't care for UVF, last time I was there there was no VS or any lounge for that matter(this is now not the case) no aircon and 3 jumbo loads of pax crammed into that small space totally horrendous.

I dont think its fair to compare regional type airports with those used for major international hubs - even places like Antigua St Lucia and the like are not worth moaning about they are what they are - 5 mile strips of tarmac with huts attached!! I think we shoudl be aiming or criticism at the "Major" airports where compnaies or governments have spent money - so heres my list of whats bad out there:

LHR - yes - what a sprawl - but somehow its good to get back to and at leats its our sprawl"""

LGW - try this on a Saturday morning in the school holidays - eeek!!! Nowhere to sit ( lounges rule at this time)

Madrid - I hate this airport because A.I was stuck there all day one day on a Sunday and couldnt even get a shower and B. the runways are miles from the terminal -I even asked the FA on a recent flight if we were driving home - 25mins to taxi out is ridiculous.

Moscow - agree with earlier comments - big blob of black brick in the the middle of nowhere!!!

It used to amaze me how BAA thought it acceptable to present international travellers arriving at T3 with the ragged building site that used to be the landside arrivals area at LHR. Taped off maintenance areas, half the ceiling missing, buckets underneath leaking pipes, you name it. Compared with SIN/HKG it was truly horrible.

It's better these days but is still far too much of a scrum: leave customs, past dowdy duty free shop (surely no one buys anything there?), out into scrum, fight your way to the limo desk or towards the lifts to Revivals, no visible signage, shops placed where there should be thoroughfares and all the time tripping over tourists with outsize luggage trolleys and wayward children.

At least LGW (not exactly a paragon of airport planning) has the virtue of more space and less scrum.

BC

Could be worse - Could be T2 departures. Ughh those really low celings; I can't help but duck!

I will also have to say Coventry (and the whole thompson fly experience from the start).
It was in the middle of nowhere and the facilities were awful and at the risk of sounding like an atrocious snob it seems to serve the scrapings of humanity (checking into the flight covered in blood, using a bin bag as a suitcase!)
That aside, I do think it was the quickest I ever passed through an airport on the return, about 5 minutes.
As for the big boys it'll have to be JFK, although having access to the CH does make it much better.

Dean

Adam777. Can't believe you have put forward Beef Island BVI's. Antigua yes but Beef Island[V]. I assume you dont mean the brand new one. This is the only airport I have been to where you can check in then walk 150 yards and sit in a beach bar overlooking the yachts in Trellis Bay. Wonderful[y]

I agree that we should try stick to International as the smaller airports dont really take the larger long haul aircraft.

Shannon Airport to be honest is no great shakes even though it does take a lot of long haul flights. Mind you it does have a great does free.

Originally posted by pegitt

Originally posted by preiffer
CDG as there 's esculators all over the place and i keep getting lost there.

Oh my goodness, how could I forget to include CDG in my all-time worst list. I utterly loathe that place. It is totally depressing. No windows, nowhere to eat, nowhere to shop, nowhere to go. The whole CDG complex looks like some great god of concrete was playing with his lego blocks one day and dropped the lot in an ugly great heap on the ground and couldn't be bothered to pick them up. Driving round the complex is disorientating in the extreme. How a supposedly civilised country can produce such a god-awful airport I will never know.

Chris

(I feel better now!)

Originally posted by RichardMannion
Can I offer up LHR as a contender? Once you've been through HKG, SIN or KUL you will see what a dump the place is and how badly we can't arrange things in the UK.

I'm going to offer up LHR T5, even though it's not even open yet, as a paragon of disorganisation, if only because what I've already seen could be a bad omen of things to come.

It seems, that while they have built nice sliproads on and off London's Orbital Carpark, to try and make some sort of free-flowing traffic, the planning wizards have decided to terminate the lot on one single roundabout (which looks like it will be controlled by traffic lights).

Apparently no lessons have been learned from the central complex at LHR, which is basically a series of "nested roundabouts of doom", all trying to funnel through a single choke point.

Surely we could have some sort of grade seperation for arrivals, deps, and short term parking? It can't be that much to ask for, can it?

Oh, but it does make for a pretty "T5" logo in the middle of the roundabout that you can see when you depart 27s or land 09s.

Maybe they should visit the Bad Junction website.

There's already a page on how bad the Heathrow Spur can be.

Cheers,
Mike

Good god , I would have thought T5 was going to be a master piece
Keith

[RichardMannion]

Originally posted by cshore

Originally posted by pegitt

Originally posted by preiffer
CDG as there 's esculators all over the place and i keep getting lost there.

Oh my goodness, how could I forget to include CDG in my all-time worst list. I utterly loathe that place. It is totally depressing. No windows, nowhere to eat, nowhere to shop, nowhere to go. The whole CDG complex looks like some great god of concrete was playing with his lego blocks one day and dropped the lot in an ugly great heap on the ground and couldn't be bothered to pick them up. Driving round the complex is disorientating in the extreme. How a supposedly civilised country can produce such a god-awful airport I will never know.

Chris

(I feel better now!)

Oh my, such a faux pas for me to forget this hell hole. I miss BA flying direct to ORY for when I need to visit our French office, instead I have to fly to CDG and then sit like a fool for a bare minimum of 60 minutes in a taxi to get to Les Ulis.

But then CDG itself knows how bad it is, the new terminals barely stay up long enough to serve customers.

Thanks,
Richard

Last year, we were put on standby to Mauritius and ended up spending THREE DAYS [B)][:0] sitting around in CDG.
Sometimes, when they call out the stand-bys, they send you to this underground cave is the only way I can describe it.
After not getting on the flight for all this time, we eventually upped and headed off to ORY to fly to Reunion instead.[:(!]

Cheers,
VS045

Well I might agree with those who say LHR T3 is bad - certainly the road traffic drop off is apalling but hey, how many airports are serviced by road, underground, train and bus ... simply take the HEX if you can and it's fine.

While on the theme of defending Heathrow, it's really not that bad compared to:

- MIA IMHO the world's worst airport, not only is it grim but its managed by numbskulls if the customer service is anything to go by
- IAD, what is it with those prehistoric buses on stilts!
- JFK a myriad of terminals and no facilities
- LAX, don't bother about food or anything else, take your butties

But on the good side I think LGW is pretty OK, as is ORD where I find it amazing that at the no.2 airport in the world it's so easy to get around and once of the highway the road links are amazing, PSP is micely designed and comfortable for a small airport too.

i think we have coved most of the bad places - i believe some of the African airports are awful

[preiffer]

By the way - if anyone's got any strong views about particular airports (and Clubhouses ) - you could earn yourself an mp3 player just for sharing them...

The V-Flyer Awards 2006 are here! [y]


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