Ah, What's the worst airport stopover you've had?

lazza14

Back in '97 I had a 4 hour stopover in CDG ... it was 97 so Porno mags were still on sale ... I bought a couple and went into the mens jacks ....

spent about 2 hours beating my meat , but the other 2 hours were boring as f*ck ..

Yamanoto

spiralism wrote: »

Amsterdam Schiphol i had to stay in overnight once with a vicious hangover. Horribly uncomfortable place and not a wink of sleep was had, the chairs there are pretty much impossible to sleep in.

There are comfortable leather recliners in a darkened area upstairs near the KLM Crown Lounge.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

Not many bad experiences except jfk for 8 hours, not too bad. But just gotta say that hotel that's connected to Stansted is worth every penny. I forgot the name but it's basically 30 seconds from the terminal. Has black out blinds and seems pretty sound proof. Bliss after a big London session waiting on an early flight.

Toots

Heathrow a fortnight after the London Bombings in 2005. Had flown from Australia and didn't get any sleep so I looked like the walking dead. Not sure if this made me look shifty or something, but I got frisked 4 times on my way through the various security checks. We queued for 2 hours to get through security, then got to the transfer desk only to discover that someone in Aer Lingus fcuked up royally and had somehow booked us for a flight in September. The woman behind the desk was a complete cow, and was really rude about it all. We had to wait on standby for 6 hours, and the only money we had was about £14 stg left over from the stopover on the way out.

Oh and Malaga airport. Worst airport ever.

mosstin

roro1990 wrote: »

Just back from a 13 hour stopover in Zurich airport. Genuinely up there with the worst few hours of my life. Arrived at 8pm and the whole airport pretty much closed at 11pm. None of the shops offer free samples of food or drink (I had hoped to spend at least an hour stuffing my face with Switzerland chocolate).

The airport had 60 minutes free wifi but you needed your phone to get a code and my battery was too low to even get the code, let alone browse the net. I then looked for a place to charge it but the Swiss don't even use European plugs - they have their own f*cking plugs. I then looked for a place with an adaptor, and the shops all had every single type of adapter except UK to Swiss.

To add to this I am suffering with a horrendous dose of man flu - sleep was an impossibility. I pretty much just spent 13 hours in a deserted airport staring into space. Absolute banter.


I guess i'm just posting to make myself feel better when I inevitably read a story about a worse stopover than mine. Anyone have one?

Free samples of food and drink???? In 20+ years of travelling I've never received free food at an airport.

magentis

Links234 wrote: »

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris

I understood perfectly why the French get a reputation for being rude. I'd actually love to go to France properly sometime, get a real experience of the country, but my god was the airport a horrid experience.

Pure and utter sh1thole isnt it.

LorMal

Spend 43 years in Cairo Airport one long night. Now there is a ****hole.

connected1

georgiecasey wrote: »

Not many bad experiences except jfk for 8 hours, not too bad. But just gotta say that hotel that's connected to Stansted is worth every penny. I forgot the name but it's basically 30 seconds from the terminal.

It's the Radisson Hotel. Often spend the night there when catching connecting flights and Yeh, it's great

Steve_Carella

Abu Dhabi seems to be getting a fair few mentions on here. And deservedly so. A three hour stopover there seems to last forever. There's just something about it...24 hour trading under electric light in a windowless terminal seems to have created an absolutely nightmarish place.

HalloweenJack

On one weekend trip to Holland, I had two ~8 hour stopovers in Heathrow (mate booked the flights, didn't tell me this 'til I'd paid). Both times we arrived just as things were shutting down.

First time we kept ourselves going by chatting away and playing basic games. Second time I politely informed him I intended to sleep, couldn't care how awkward or impractical it was.

clappyhappy

Flying from dubai to shannon via Amman in Jordan one time. Arrived for stopover, was only supposed to be for an hour, got stuck there for 14 hours, most depressing airport in the world. No alcohol sold there, everything shut down for the night. So called restaurant only did cold Arabic food. Horrible lime green paint and tiles on walls, never forget it.

On way back to dubai same thing happened, this time they put us up in a hotel, was worse than the airport. Haven't flown with them since.

Pure Mule

The day of nine eleven we and our two youngest were due to fly out of Malta. Very scary and very late due to increased security.

JacquesDeLad

I've had some awful self-inflicted misery at airports due to hangovers, lost passports and missed flights but I too have experienced the unique misery that Abu Dhabi can inflict on a traveller. Flying with Etihad and with Abu Dhabi being it's base I expected to be well accomodated when I transferred through there with a broken leg. I'd been very well treated by everyone up to this point.

Bad luck to start with that we got a stand miles away from the terminal, I hadn't anticipated not docking at an airbridge but I wasn't too worried because they're obviously not going to expect me to hop down a flight of steps with a heavy shoulder bag and my crutches in midday gulf heat. Wrong!

The crew apologised profusely as I was getting off the plane explaining our scheduled gate was blocked or something but promised I'd be met by airport staff with a wheelchair when the bus dropped us off at the terminal. I didn't get a seat on the bus as I was last on and it was packed.

When I got to the terminal I was shattered after hopping down the steps of the plane in 40 deg. heat and standing one leg trying to keep my balance for 10 mins on the bus. There was an airport staffer with a wheelchair waiting but some black clad person sat in it before I got there. I asked the guy if there was another wheelchair coming and he said he didn't know and then just went off in the lift with his passenger.

After about 10 minutes waiting I just decided to make my own way to the next gate, as I was struggling along the concourse I could see staff with empty wheelchairs heading towards gates and not one approached to ask if I needed assistance. I had to go through a security screen and still no offer of assistance. I just about made my connection and haven't been back since.

Dubai and Doha are much more professional and Westerner friendly imo.

Photo-Sniper

London Gatwick.

Was their for 8 hours overnight once. Genuinely the worst ****ing excuse for an airport in the world.

An absolute abomination.

Kiwi in IE

Additional to the Abu Dhabi thing, Etihad is also the worst Airline I have flown (and I've flown a few). We had a horrible experince starting with engine failure after boarding the plane at Dublin airport and having to sit on the plane for 3.5 hours while it was fixed, then generally terrible service in the air, really badly timed food service (my child missed a meal and ended up going about 15 hours without anything but a muffin, when I asked flight attendant for something for him outside meal service they offered to heat his next meal up early, Emirates and Qantas have a help yourself food bar on long haul available at all times), then when we finally got to Brisbane our flight out to Christchurch was cancelled, they couldn't give any reason for this, the Etihad desk was closed and there were no staff from the airline available in Brisbane airport at all. We were there for 16 hours (was supposed to be 4) then put on a flight to Auckland where we had to stay the night and get a flight the Christchurch the next morning.

It took 60 hours to get from Dublin to Christchurch. Worst travelling experience I've had and I would never fly them again. The only good thing about it was the 3.5 hour delay in Dublin meant we only had to spend 2 hours in Abu Dhabi airport on the way over, sitting on a plane on the runway in Dublin was far preferable. Emirates are far, far superior and so is Dubai Airport. You can put up with ****ty service on flights up to about 8 hours, but on long haul it's awful.

Iranoutofideas

Atlanta, Georgia.

Every single person I had to interact with there seemed incapable of speaking English without resorting to incomprehensible ghetto slang.

Had people from TSA saying things like - "Yo Put yo' bag on da conveyor an' proceed through da gate, nigga what 'chew trippin foo'"

It was ****ing bizarre.

LollipopJimmy

11 hours in Izmir many years ago. Bloody awful, terrible food and sweltering heat. I have to go to Zagreb soon and no direct flights it's making me panic

Aimeee

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

Abu Dhabi! I had been travelling for 24 hours already and we were all cranky and tired. So many people were covered from head to toe with only faces/eyes showing and it was jam packed in many areas, so we were sqeezed in and unable to tell one person from another. I'm not being prejudice, their country/their culture and people should dress how they please, but I just found it really unsettling that I couldn't see people properly. I also found that a lot of people seemed to be staring at my young son and in many cases I could only see eyes staring at him (he was not making a show or misbehaving in any way), I actually felt so conscious of it that I picked him up and carried him. OH noticed it too without me pointing it out and told me later that he felt relieved when he turned around to make sure we were with him and saw I was carrying Little Kiwi. We were probably paranoid with tiredness but I was actually concerned that he was going to disappear under a swishing burqa and never be seen again. This probably sounds racist but I just hated the place and felt quite scared.

A few hours of a stopover in a nice European airoport and had similar experience with my daughter. People staring and stopping to take photos of her. I found it very unnerving. Highlighted a whole new experience of travelling with children for me. It was Helsinki btw.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

iusedtoknow wrote: »

14 hours in Mexico city, flight kept on being pushed back and back so we couldn't leave the airport. Ate way too much food and Mexican coke, got the squits and ended up missing my actual flight as I was too sick to travel.

A lot of lessons were learned that day.

They say it's the purest these days alright.

efb

Stansted- it closes! Heathrow doesn't fcuking close!

Turtyturd

Iranoutofideas wrote: »

Atlanta, Georgia.

Every single person I had to interact with there seemed incapable of speaking English without resorting to incomprehensible ghetto slang.

Had people from TSA saying things like - "Yo Put yo' bag on da conveyor an' proceed through da gate, nigga what 'chew trippin foo'"

It was ****ing bizarre.

Atlanta is a bizarre one alright. Definitely the least professional airport I have ever been in, and like a case study of America's race issues.

Have also never managed to get out of it at the departure time even once in all the times I have used it.

Kiwi in IE

Aimeee wrote: »

A few hours of a stopover in a nice European airoport and had similar experience with my daughter. People staring and stopping to take photos of her. I found it very unnerving. Highlighted a whole new experience of travelling with children for me. It was Helsinki btw.

It's horrible isn't it! I couldn't understand what it was about my son that was making people stare, he doesn't have unusual colouring or any features that would stand out or draw attention. He is an especially adorable looking kid, but I'm his mother so I'm going to think that. He looks like an ordinary cute little western kid. Maybe he was wearing something that was unusual or (hopefully not) offensive in their culture. Whatever it was, along with the generally unpleasant atmosphere in that airport, the fact I was unable to see the faces of many of the people staring, and we were crowded in the security line with people pushing and bumping us constantly, it was really awful and unsettling. I've never been so happy to get on a plane a get out of a place. I've never experienced anything like it again (the odd mass staring) before or after. My OH was unnerved by it too we both looked at each other and said 'what the **** is with the staring' at the same time. There was none of it in the same airport on the way over, I think it had to be something he was wearing in hindsight.

endacl

porsche959 wrote: »

Kuala Lumpur. Not a particularly bad airport as such, just being stuck there for around 6 hours after getting off a 7 hr flight from Sydney and facing into another flight of 9 hrs to London, and I can never sleep properly when travelling.

KL? Deadly airport. Harry's Bar with decent grub, live jazz and you can smoke. Well at least you could last time I was through. Ex- smoker now. The upstairs food court had a place that served the best chicken satay I've ever experienced. I'd nearly fly there for it now. Really clean showers between arrivals and the main concourse. Massage if you want it.

WTF more do you want from a stopover?!? I'd go to KL international for a break!

Oh. Wait. That was Singapore. Yeah. You're right. KL is shyte. Best ever airport to be stuck at is Koh Samui. Think "Rick's beach bar, from Magnum P.I.". Only, with airplanes, and free iced pineapple juice if your flight is delayed...

Thoie

Iranoutofideas wrote: »

Atlanta, Georgia.

Every single person I had to interact with there seemed incapable of speaking English without resorting to incomprehensible ghetto slang.

Had people from TSA saying things like - "Yo Put yo' bag on da conveyor an' proceed through da gate, nigga what 'chew trippin foo'"

It was ****ing bizarre.

Don't get me started on fecking Atlanta. Only been there once. Was on a connecting flight, and for various (airline) issues, missed the connection. The airline in that instance is obliged to sort you out. Instead I got all the above kind of attitude, got yelled at, threatened with police, you name it. That was just the Delta desk staff. Ended up having to spend a night there, and they refused to even let me phone around a few hotels. They also took my suitcase from me and essentially held it to some kind of bizarre ransom.

Canard

22 hours in Charleroi...no idea why the hell I agreed to it in hindsight. :pac: In fairness we went to Brussels for the day which was nice, but by the time I arrived I'd already pulled an all nighter, and had to then stay up from 8am til 6am to get the flight -- so a total of around 40 hours awake, travelling. Charleroi is a weird place and while I ended up having good chats with some of the Belgians we found in an Irish pub, some of them were shockingly rude.

It was hell knowing some people had slept twice or even three times in the time I'd been awake, but sure now whenever I can't sleep I just remind myself how tired I was and I promptly get to sleep. :cool:

ProudDUB

Washington DC (forget if it was Dulles or RR) back in Jan 2006. My sister and I had just flown from Ethiopia with her 5 yr old daughter. Addis-Rome-DC took the guts of 24 hrs. The flights themselves were actually fine. We were freaking out about them, as we were traveling under particularly harrowing personal circumstances, that I won't bore ya'll with.

Anyway, we got to DC thinking that the worst part of our trip was over. It wasn't. It was only beginning. A massive blizzard had just hit DC. Our inbound flight was one of the last flights to land before they closed the airport to all incoming flights. They were about to close it for outbound flights about an hour after we arrived. We had connecting flights home to Atlanta (me) and Seattle (my sister) about two hrs after we arrived. They were both canceled and the airlines were frantically trying to reschedule and rebook people on new flights, before the airport closed.

What we didn't realize, was that it was the day after President Bush's inauguration ceremony. So the airport was packed full of very, very, very important VIPs that had no problem pulling rank to get themselves to the head of the various airline queues. I don't know how we did it, but we both managed to bribe, bully, cajole, Delta and American Airlines staff into getting us on the next flights outa DC. The stress however, was unreal. And we were knackered tired to boot.

I dunno, maybe they just felt sorry for us and knew that if we didn't get out that day, we were facing 2-3 days stuck in the airport with a seriously traumatized toddler. There is no way we would have gotten a hotel in DC, what with the weather situ and all the dignitaries being in town for Dubya's lil shindig.

Just goes to show, that no matter how well you plan a trip (and God knows, we planned every single detail of that trip down to the most minute degree) George W Bush could have still effed it all up for us royally !

Btw, dunno what the beef is with Hotlanta airport. I must have traveled thru it 200 times when I lived there & I don't think I had one bad experience with the security staff. They may not be as polished as those in some other cities, but they deffo have the human touch that those in JFK, O'Hare etc etc sorely lack imo.

Egginacup

Listen to yourselves......6 hours here, 12 hours there. Try 3 fcuking days stranded in Dusseldorf airport in the Xmas of 2010 ( the big snow).

endacl

Egginacup wrote: »

Try 3 fcuking days stranded in Dusseldorf airport in the Xmas of 2010 ( the big snow).

Absolutely willing to, but can't. 2010 is in the past.

househero

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

I was actually concerned that he was going to disappear under a swishing burqa and never be seen again. This probably sounds racist but I just hated the place and felt quite scared.

Not knowing other cultures can be intimidating. FYI, they LOVE children in the UAE, the people staring at your (exhausted) son, probably wanted to make him smile but a language/culture/aware of a scared mum barrier didn't let them. Children are put on a pedestal and treated with huge respect in ME countries, other adults will often try to make strangers children laugh, its innocent and the whole airport did not want to kidnap your son. You were horribly mistaken and possibly lead to believe a terrible racist idea portrayed by the media. Sad. But now you know.

My most loathed travel isn't on a plane but 14hr ferry/car trips every summer UK/ireland as a child. I can travel like a trooper now I know nothing is worse than the back seat of a ford Orion and a 20ft swell on p&o.

househero

endacl wrote: »

KL? Deadly airport. Harry's Bar with decent grub, live jazz and you can smoke. Well at least you could last time I was through. Ex- smoker now. The upstairs food court had a place that served the best chicken satay I've ever experienced. I'd nearly fly there for it now. Really clean showers between arrivals and the main concourse. Massage if you want it.

WTF more do you want from a stopover?!? I'd go to KL international for a break!

Oh. Wait. That was Singapore. Yeah. You're right. KL is shyte. Best ever airport to be stuck at is Koh Samui. Think "Rick's beach bar, from Magnum P.I.". Only, with airplanes, and free iced pineapple juice if your flight is delayed...

Meh the new KL domestic (Asian) airport is one if the best I've ever been to, shopping mall (nandos) loads of food and no Q's. Koh Samui was painful for me, no walls, no ac. Crappy free food on a boutique airline doesn't make up for tarantulas crawling on the back of your wicker chair. Reminded me of the Dominican republic big ass fan airport.

& KL does have live jazz on the airside and a huge range of shops and food.

ProudDUB

househero wrote: »

Meh the new KL domestic (Asian) airport is one if the best I've ever been to, shopping mall (nandos) loads of food and no Q's. Koh Samui was painful for me, no walls, no ac. Crappy free food on a boutique airline doesn't make up for tarantulas crawling on the back of your wicker chair. Reminded me of the Dominican republic big ass fan airport.

& KL does have live jazz on the airside and a huge range of shops and food.

Ah feck off you. I'm gonna have nightmares about that tonight. :mad:

househero

Pure Mule wrote: »

The day of nine eleven we and our two youngest were due to fly out of Malta. Very scary and very late due to increased security.

I booked a 2 week 5 star holiday to Rhodes for me and my mates for €68 on the anniversary of 9/11 . 1 year later. Didnt realize until we asked why the Thomson Jumbo Jet had 20 people on it and the airport was pretty much empty,the FA told us. (Bloody backwards date writing Americans, its 11/9)

househero

ProudDUB wrote: »

Ah feck off you. I'm gonna have nightmares about that tonight. :mad:

It was mortifying mate. When I travelled to Asia I knew I was going to see a few but I didn't know if I was going to freeze or kill it. When it came down to it and I saw it crawling up to me I fkn punched it in its 80 eyed face then I was all like great now I got spider guts on my hands... Walked in to toilet to wash my hand and take a leak and when I looked over, there was another one right in front of my face as I was Peshing.

Weirder still there was a 18yr old pretty little (Malaysian I think) girl watching me too. She was the cleaner (I think) but she just hung around and stared at dudes junk... I used that toilet a few times on our 5 he delayed flight, it had an awesome fish tank over the urinals. I found the whole Asian toilet thing weird. A cranky old cleaning woman in Bali airport was so keen to clean the urinal I was using, she sprayed cleaner on my piece while I was Peshing. And all the other guys in there too.

Loved the Conrad in Koh Samui, hated the no walls airport.

househero

My worst airport delays...

3. Military airport Dominican Republic
Emergency landing due to hurricane, had already spent an extra 2hrs circling. (Military) Ground crew refused to refuel Thompson jumbo jet and after sitting on the mack for 4hrs in baking heat no ac or food drink. We were taken to our resort by knackered minibus's took 3hrs on a 'farmers' mud road. Our bags came a day later. Just glad to be alive.

2. 6hrs on a easy jet plane in Prague waiting for take off clearance after heavy snow, told repeatedly 'was us next' bullsquit Mr pilot man. My whole suitcase (with 22 bottle of absinthe) was smashed when we landed in mank. I bought insurance every trip after that.

1. Chennai Airport India
They spent €500 MILLION building an extension that looks great to tempt you in.

But the airside waiting area is a 50yr old shed that smells like butt. Food options are coffee, 1/2 tub Pringles €8!!!, or a plain, no butter 'sandwich' with lettuce OR tomato. That's it, no joke. There are 3 'shops' that sell this identically wide range. Or you can get some noodles from the ground floor kiosk, BUT when I threw them in to the bin, the cashier walked over brushed off the tray and put it back on the shelf. The toilets are grim, no AC, 40+ degrees, every1 unplugs the fans to charge their iPhone and if you smoke you can electrocute your self on a bare exposed mains wire they use in the (open) smoke room to light their cigs as lighters are banned hahahahaha one good thing is there are free local phones, I passed an hour calling strangers, that were happy to practice their English (friendly people) wasted 9 hours of my life here

Hell in earth

Joe Doe

worst: Heathrow: T1 overnight the place stinks, spotted loads of bed bugs crawling over the seats and then my luggage, even though there was plenty cleaners banging about the place pretending to work.
worst: LAX: Dozens of perma-homeless located at the bus terminal & car parks with eyes on your luggage, haggling for change, plenty of cops indoors though, none outside.
worst: Newfie: cold semi-fried chips and attitude was all that's open/available after extensive transfers to get there.
worst: JFK: Get in with at least 5 hrs to spare, more queues than a new ipad launch party, had to blag it into the faster resident passport holder stream, else return tickets were going down the drain (spring break wknd). No shortage of queues and standing about on arrival too, not for the elderly or infirm, passport checks, random questions and all that finger/eye scanning not much of a laugh. Sure it's only me...

not so bad: Vancouver: Ye have to walk a good km around in circles pre-customs, all-right if you have wheels on the luggage.
not so bad: KL: squat to crap on medieval style floor toilets, lucky-dip fish soup was the only hot food open as O'Brien's was closed, not cheap.

Best: Amsterjam: Library, shops, shoulder massages, tidy well designed place even the McD's give you proper metal cutlery, no plastic stuff.

Am sure there is plenty worse, but only do 1st world currently...

Jude13

Got stuck in Abu Dhabi for 14 hours the year of the big snow (2010?) Had great craic bozzing it up in the pub. The etihad lounge was packed though.

No stare-y people either in the 6 years Ive been traveling through there.

Kiwi in IE

househero wrote: »

Not knowing other cultures can be intimidating. FYI, they LOVE children in the UAE, the people staring at your (exhausted) son, probably wanted to make him smile but a language/culture/aware of a scared mum barrier didn't let them. Children are put on a pedestal and treated with huge respect in ME countries, other adults will often try to make strangers children laugh, its innocent and the whole airport did not want to kidnap your son. You were horribly mistaken and possibly lead to believe a terrible racist idea portrayed by the media. Sad. But now you know.

Yeah, normally when people want to make a child who is unknown to them laugh/smile they smile/pull faces at the child. Normally body language crosses cultural barriers. Staring fixedly at them for prolonged periods with very serious or blank expressions ain't going to do it. You can patronise me all you like but I know what I saw and it was definately not people trying to make the child laugh, I think I'd probably recognise a friendly gesture like that, no matter what the culture. As I said it did not happen in the same airport on the outbound flight, and nor has it ever happened in the other UAE country we have been to and stayed for several days on 2 occasions since my son was born (Dubai). Think whatever you like, but I was there know what happened and I am not some simple racist idiot as your post implies, as I said in another post, it must have been something my son was qearing that day that was odd or unusual to their culture (hopefully not offensive), there is not really any other explanation, but it was not pleasant at the time. Another parent in the thread said she had a similar thing happen in Heksinki Airport which unnerved her, has she also been led to believe a 'terrible racist idea portrayed by the media'?

porsche959

endacl wrote: »

KL? Deadly airport. Harry's Bar with decent grub, live jazz and you can smoke. Well at least you could last time I was through. Ex- smoker now. The upstairs food court had a place that served the best chicken satay I've ever experienced. I'd nearly fly there for it now. Really clean showers between arrivals and the main concourse. Massage if you want it.

WTF more do you want from a stopover?!? I'd go to KL international for a break!

Oh. Wait. That was Singapore. Yeah. You're right. KL is shyte. Best ever airport to be stuck at is Koh Samui. Think "Rick's beach bar, from Magnum P.I.". Only, with airplanes, and free iced pineapple juice if your flight is delayed...

Thinly-disguised 'my world travels were more interesting than yours' post.

cournioni

I have been lucky so far with flights thankfully. The longest stop over I have experienced was in Dubai which was a 9 hour wait. Just booked the airport hotel for the night and then headed for the plane in the morning.

Howard the Duck

Links234 wrote: »

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris

I understood perfectly why the French get a reputation for being rude. I'd actually love to go to France properly sometime, get a real experience of the country, but my god was the airport a horrid experience.

I went to a cafe here once and i asked the man behind the counter if they toast the panini's, he didn't answer me and picked one up and went over and put it in the grill. when he came back i asked can i have another please, he looked at me and pointed the tongs he was holding at me and said "are you sure, because i can walk up and down all day for you!" I just kind of in shock, looking back i should have told him to shove them both up his backside.

Worst stop over i had was in Hamburg for 5 hours on a trip to Sydney. Was just very boring and everything was closed, i was too afraid to sleep in case i missed my flight but was really tried so i just walked around and sat down a bit. The security staff were very rude also.

Kiwi in IE

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

There was most likely a logical reason that we weren't aware of.

Maybe an obvious question but, is your child blonde by any chance?

Uncle Ben wrote: »

Was going to Leningrad back in the USSR in the '80s. My flight was Aerofkot from Shannon. My flight arrived from Cuba and my seat was inside a 20 stone Cuban who sweated profusely and never stopped smoking. We sat on the tarmac for a few hours before taking off. Then 4 hours plus of a flight.

Now THAT'S "Economy"! :pac:

Thoie

ProudDUB wrote: »

we were traveling under particularly harrowing personal circumstances, that I won't bore ya'll with.

I know it's 10 years later, but hope everyone is OK now.

ProudDUB wrote: »

Btw, dunno what the beef is with Hotlanta airport. I must have traveled thru it 200 times when I lived there & I don't think I had one bad experience with the security staff. They may not be as polished as those in some other cities, but they deffo have the human touch that those in JFK, O'Hare etc etc sorely lack imo.

I spent 18 hours "trapped" in Madrid airport, airside, and that was still better than my experience of Atlanta! Usually if I know I'm going to be somewhere more than 6 hours (long layover) I book a hotel. The layover in Madrid was only supposed to be a few hours, so didn't bother. Think there was a problem with the plane or something, which led to the delay. All along we were being told another hour, another 30 minutes.

People finally starting demanding vouchers for food/drink, but by the time they organised them, all the airside shops/restaurants were closed so there was nowhere to get anything. I wasn't too bad - I'd used my own money (shock!) to buy stuff before things closed, and ended up donating bottles of water to a family with kids. I still think the parents were bordering on neglect. Sure, the airline "owed" us, but I think if I had kids with me I'd have forked out for some water at least.

The most irritating thing was not being allowed to leave. Once it hit a certain time it was completely obvious that even if a new plane arrived, it wasn't going to be taking off again until at least 6am, so I could have fecked off and got a bed somewhere.

And despite all that, Atlanta was worse

Dog of Tears

Charles de Gaulle airport is one of the most horrible places on Earth. An hour there feels like a day.
It's like the French workers actually go out of their way to make your time there as unpleasant as it can possibly be.


Had to fly out of Pape'ete Airport in Tahiti at 5am once, which meant arriving there at around 7pm the previous day. Airport consisted on 1 coffee shop which closed at 8pm.



A 6 hour delay in Bodrum airport in Turkey was less than pleasant. Full of cockroaches.

Ush1

Madrid airport for 12 hours, 10pm till 10am next morning.

Everything closed, this was pre smart phone days also. I'm a light sleeper so can't really sleep in airports but my mate could sleep no bother. I just raced around on trolleys and had loads of hot chocolate from the vending machine.

endacl

porsche959 wrote: »

Thinly-disguised 'my world travels were more interesting than yours' post.

Thinly disguised, me hole. I've never been to KL. Or even CDG! Or most airports mentioned...

iDave

Not so much a stop over but I arrived at Dublin airport to get a flight to Cyprus. The screens came up as delayed and the boarding time kept getting put back and back. Sitting around in departures for about 3 hours before we're told the flight has been cancelled. Turned out an airport vehicle collided with the plane somehow so they couldn't fly it for safety reasons. We were told to come back in 24 hours and hope for the best pretty much. Some were put up in the airport hotel but we just drove home. Came back the following night and they stuck us on some unmarked aircraft that was flown in from Paris.
Seriously how do you crash into a stationary plane!!!

chupacabra

Flying from Ireland to Estonia during the christmas period is always a barrel of laughs. The only reasonably cheap way of doing it is going through Stansted or Gatwick (Ryanair and Easyjet respectively). Ryanair flight departs at 6.55am, Easy jet at 8am. My only option is to stay the night. Nothing is open, the limited number of seats are all taken by sleeping travellers so the only option is to sleep on your bag or on the floor and I am a remarkably light sleeper.

Last Christmas I headed home to Ireland via Stansted and lo and behold, after going through security... Swanwick ATC goes down and strands half the travellers in the country. Luckily some of the pilots managed to convince the airport to let them depart on the condition that they fly low enough to be managed by some secondary radar system. I had resigned to being stranded for at least 8 hours (as we were initially told) so I popped into whetherspoons and drank my stress away. Made for a very fun flight low over towns and the Irish sea until we got to the safety of Irish ATC.

Never a dull moment on that route in December. If its not storms its technical faults. Good thing there is always a large number of lads at the whetherspoons pub and the craic is usually mighty.

Macavity.

Have relatives (one elderly) who had a flight to Australia. They had a stopover somewhere in Aisa where there was some issue with the plane. They were told they could be transferred onto another flight and there would be no issues, but this one was going to the USA first. It was the only available option for a few days so they reluctantly agreed.

They arrived in the USA (not sure which airport) and were told they had entered the country illegally. Apparently they weren't treated very well, lack of water (they were very dehydrated from the flight) etc... and it was all a bit of an ordeal, especially for someone 80+ years of age. I think one of them (not the elderly person) may have fainted. I don't know if there was any follow up, but I imagine they were compensated by the Airline company. It was all pretty embarrassing on their part.

Sinister Kid

Flew home from from Boston via Paris, 8 hr stop over in Charles De Gaulle... About an hour in to the stop over a guy sits down beside me that I vaguely recognize, he worked next door to my job about three years earlier, we probably spoke twice in the whole time I worked there. He did not shut up asking question after question like we were BFF's having a good catch up. All I wanted to do was finish my book.

keano_afc

I've been fairly lucky on stopovers down the years.

Only entertaining one was last year, we had a 7 hour stopover in Toronto before our connecting flight to Winnipeg. We decided to leave Pearson and go into Toronto for food. My 4 year old, who'd been great on the flight over, fell asleep in the back of the cab but woke with a start and vomited everywhere. We mopped up what we could but the back of the taxi was a bit of a state. We got to the mall and the cab driver just turned around, took our fare and said nothing. We got out and ran into GAP to get a change of clothes for the little one. Was half expecting to be hunted down by the cabbie.