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Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 9:30 pm
by Rwy in Sight
We had the thread about the airport we like how about one to discuss the ones we don't want to set food ever again either as crew or pax.

And one more request: I like to focus the question on airport not the cities they served.

No I came to think about it I don't have an airport that I like to avoid.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 9:36 pm
by 500N
LA if I had a choice. Although hopefully with the refurb it will get better but the International hall is bloody awful for a major entry point into the US and Customs and Immigration even worse than awful.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 10:29 pm
by Capetonian
CDG
FRA
DXB
LTN
STN
LAD
DEL
BOM
NBO
KBP
SVO
MIA

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 2:34 am
by 19downbubble
This is quite a few years ago, hence the dim memory, but what was the airport in Russia where the ceiling motif was strange copper pipes, one had to remain in the duty free shop until departure, the exchange rate in the shop was "1" in any currency, and they knicked any coffee and other edibles they found on you? That one. It may have been on Virgin's first flight to Japan.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:38 am
by OFSO
Perpignan France (PPG) has been under refurbishment for the past year. In the departure hall singles, families and young children quite literally have to queue next to workers (rubbing shoulders with 'em) using angle grinders or rotary hammers, climb over reinforcing rods in stacks or through heaps of sand, try to talk over the noise of cement mixers. OK, it's not a permanent state of the airport, but for the moment it isn't an airport, it's a building site. In H&S-conscious UK this would very much be forbidden: in France ? Gallic shrug of shoulders.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 11:42 am
by ian16th
Thankfully I haven't had to use it for years, but I always dreaded going to and from Milano (Linate).

Chaos as only the Italians can manufacture.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 12:57 pm
by rgbrock1
JFK. What a friggin' nightmare that place is. I get a migraine just driving past it, let alone entering it.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 4:38 pm
by CharlieOneSix
Only went to JFK once as a pax back in 1980.....and on a horrible rainy night. Had to drive a hire car to Connecticut but took ages to find my way out of the car park let alone find the place we were going to.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 2:12 am
by Alisoncc
Honolulu in the days when 747's couldn't make all the way from Australia to 'Merica without calling in at a gas station. All the pax would be loaded into the "wiki-wiki" bus and driven to a holding pen as there was no customs or immigration facilities available. For the time it took to replenish the aircraft pax would be incarcerated in a secure hall with no loos, services, refreshments - absolutely nothing.

Alison

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 8:53 am
by Capetonian
The above sounds like SID (Ilha do Sal) when SAA had to stop there for fuel when they weren't allowed to overfly west Africa. You could get warm beer or cold coffee. The place stank of perspiration and humidity and filth.
I had to spend a night there once over Christmas, at the hotel Atlantico which was built on stilts over mudflats inhabited by rabid howling dogs. It too stank.
Now people go to Cabo Verde on holiday. Nao obrigado!

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 11:59 am
by ian16th
Can I add Antananarivo to the list?

Was routed through there by Air Austral on a Joburg - Reunion flight.

SWMBO need to use the loo there :ymsick:

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 8:52 am
by Slasher
JED
RUH (Departure. Arr ok.)
CAI
HCM
PEK
NBO
SAH (Yeh I've been there. Hopefully the whole airport has been flattened).

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:18 am
by limeygal
Khartoum, Cairo, Dacca, JFK

Bombay was also crap, but went there so often I got used to it :-o

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:59 pm
by Rwy in Sight
An interestingarticle from the BBC about both the excellent and worst in US airports.

Does any one know what are those structures (chimney like) on top of the mobile lounges in Washington D.C.?

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2016 8:32 am
by Fliegenmong
Been on them RIS., and no don't know what they are.....interesting airport is Dulles, but the Steven F Udvar-Hazy centre nearby is even more so...

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:40 pm
by lasernigel
Calcutta, Peshawar, Manila, Miami, LAX,Cochin.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:24 am
by Capetonian
Any airport in Egypt, Israel, UAE.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 7:36 am
by Mrs Ex-Ascot
I'd like to add India to the list, particularly Mumbai :-q

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 2:13 pm
by Rwy in Sight
Tel Aviv was not bad although my father said I enjoy the trip there because I was curious to see the quasi interrogation procedure.

Re: Airports you don't want to fly to (again)

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 4:58 pm
by OFSO
Perpignan (PPG) France has constructed a theme park departure lounge modeled on the Black Hole of Calcutta (Indian Mutiny), it's most realistic in the summer months.