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Bad Airports We Have Known
I traded a few tweets with fellow Ricochet members Whiskey Sam and 6Foot2InHighHeels — yes, we’ve joined the Twitter Borg — about bad airports and airport experiences. The exchange got us wondering what would make a good post on the topic. I settled on what became the title of this post: the worst airports you and I have known.
First, let me stipulate that my dad has many better airport — even landing zone — stories than I do. His two worst are LOS (Murtala Muhammad in Lagos) and MLW (the domestic airport in Monrovia, Liberia). LOS was the airport you’d see warned about in US airports:
The FAA has determined that the following airports do not maintain adequate security standards: Murtala Muhammad, Lagos.
Criminals roamed the terminal, customs, and even the runway. Planes were stopped and robbed during taxi. Oh, and the maintenance was lovely.
MLW (a.k.a., Spriggs Payne) had problems with aircraft maintenance and a rough runway. However, my dad learned to fly there and was on the verge of getting his pilot’s license. Then a volley of RPGs hit his plane and the runway … the Liberian Civil War was on!
My personal worst airports are more mundane, save for one: BZV, or Maya-Maya, in Brazzaville, the Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately, when I made its acquaintance, it was known as the People’s Republic of the Congo. I was on my way to visit my parents, who were stationed in Lomé, Togo (LFW is no prize, by the way. Open shakedowns at customs.)
However, I missed my connection in CDG — the French built a great aerobic exercise center cum airport in DeGaulle’s memory — and the French TWA agent granted my demand to get on the next flight out.
Be careful of Frenchmen granting your demands. He put me on an Air Afrique flight in a few hours, which had a stop in Brazzaville, which didn’t have diplomatic relations with the United States … and I didn’t have a visa. I was pulled out of the immigration line at gunpoint, taken to a holding cell, and interrogated about the McDonald’s manuals in my luggage. (But that’s a story for another time.)
My least favorite US airport is PHL. Philadelphia International is not only the home to US Airways — the Official Airline of Old Scratch® — it hosts the nastiest and least helpful airport staff I know. “Lost” baggage, infinite car rental and return, lousy airport hotels … PHL has it all. EWR (Newark) and JFK are no fun either.
I’m sure you all have plenty of your own nominees, so sock it to me!
Published in General
Now it is half unionized. The Minnesota NWA people are in unions, the Atlanta people are not. The union elections to combine the work forces have been …… interesting, to read the newspaper accounts.
I’m picturing Ice Cube in snow pants.
When I was stationed there, they still had the civilian road just on the other side of the fence (now rerouted where the hill used to be). I used to run to Burger King for a burger to go then park on the side of the road and watch the two US planes land at lunch time. I also watched them from the tarmac on the passenger terminal side and the Air Force side or when I jogged on the exercise track beside the runway. It was great entertainment, except for when I was on one of the planes. Equally exciting was the cliff you would go down if you didn’t stop soon enough. Saw an American Airlines 757 skip one day but still manage to stop in the remaining runway.
It fills this West Virginian with warmth to hear such good things said about our CRW. Good thing local pols blocked the building of a real regional airport on the other side of Charleston on a beautiful strip of land which would be on flat land.*
*- sarcasm intended
Heck, it takes forever and a day to get from one end to the other of a single terminal…
…and that’s if the airport’s resident demons don’t eat your soul.
Castle Airport (KMER) is an interesting place to visit, if you like the aviation equivalent of a ghost town. The former Strategic Air Command base is located in California’s San Joaquin Valley and was decommissioned in 1995. This means that an area sized as the Air Force’s training hub for B-52 and KC-135 pilots is now an uncontrolled field housing just eighty general aviation planes.
On my first visit to the nearby Castle Air Museum, I made the mistake of landing before working out exactly where amidst all of the empty gargantuan hangars and tarmac and blast deflectors the one operating FBO was located. I wound up taxiing around endlessly and in fact had to shut the plane down twice to get out and ask directions (the first time the open hangar was simply abandoned; the second time was the charm).
The 11,800 foot runway at a facility with no air traffic control tower also provides something of a scale challenge for a GA pilot accustomed to strips one-fifth the length. KMER is where I learned to pretend my Cirrus was a helicopter on arrival and essentially air taxi on down the runway to mid-field or so.
San Juan. Louis Munoz Marin Airport. Dirty, badly laid out, nasty local passengers, uncaring staff, very nasty food services. A third world experience staffed by nominal Americans. Makes every biased thought and comment about Puerto Rico seem abundantly true. My Puerto Rican friends agree.
The ATC SID clearance for departing Luken airport requires initiating an Immelmann at the end of the runway. A good way to get on top of the ground fog.
Just booked tickets to see the Rattlers. I love Southwest — it’s a 1.5 hr flight from KCI to Midway, and I can get a round trip in December for $98. And I don’t have to go through O’Hare. Hallelujah.
Just flew Southwest and connected in Midway…..was great.
As a husband of a Southwest F/A, I thank you, my wife thanks you, and our children’s college funds thanks you.
The S/W F/A on my flights were very good and very funny. They enjoyed their work and it showed.