This time, I'm ready for the "I can't believe Blah isn't on the list" comments, so let me qualify this list by saying that these are the worst airports that I've actually been to. They're ranked very scientifically in order of which ones I thought of first.
1. San Juan Airport, Puerto Rico
The husbandfriend and I were unlucky enough to spend the night in Puerto Rico's airport on the wrong side of Security. Everything awful about Puerto Rico likes to congregate in San Juan airport between the hours of two and five a.m. And everything awful has a keen eye for expensive electronics. Around three a.m. a dude entered the airport who must have weighed about 400 pounds. He stalked us up and down the terminal for a while, but by five a.m. we were worn down and tired, and he knew it.
The game of cat-and-mouse came to an end when we realized that Security had opened and was our escape from this six-ton giant who somehow knew that we had a new digital camera. Unfortunately, our pursuer also realized that we were about to get away just when we were tired enough to be vulnerable, and literally chased us up to the security check in.
At security, there's this bleached-blonde dude, also checking in. We're panting from running away from the monster outside, and this blonde guy turns to us and says, "Dude, are you high? Because I am." Remember, it's five thirty in the morning.
We get through security and away from the blonde high dude and I want to call my mother and let her know I'm alive, so I find a pay-phone and dial 1800-COLLECT. Someone answers and I tell them where I want my call to go.
"Are you attractive?" the guy at 1800-COLLECT says. "Because you sound attractive."
I hang up.
We spend two hour watching the blonde high dude ride on his ass up and down the escalators before leaving that little hell hole. What a circus.
2. Kai Tak, Hong Kong
This airport is now closed, but it still rates a mention. For an airport whose flight path included steep dives and turns in order to avoid a mountain, and a fun maze of sky-scrapers that 747s had to navigate through, Kai Tak had a rather impeccable safety record. But that didn't matter to me when, in 1998, our plane "landed" there by smacking into the ground with enough force to open over-head bins.
Do you know what it sounds like when 416 people scream at the same time? I do.
Things were equally as amusing on our return journey when my little swimming-team friends and I witnessed ten guards, armed with AK-47s, running through the terminal at full speed. There was nothing to buy at the shops but bad Doublemint chewing gum. On the return flight, I couldn't stand to look out the window until the seatbelt sign had gone off. Rest in peace, Kai Tak, you piece of shit.
3. Dominica, West Indies
Dominica is a mountainous island in the Caribbean. We were not meant to land there, but our "direct flight" from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Barbados turned out to include four stops due to "weather conditions." That people got on and off our airplane at each stop must have just been one big convenient coincidence. We were flying "LIAT", a Caribbean carrier whose name is apparently an acronym for Leeward Island Air Transport. I like to think it means Lost In between Aruba and Trinidad.
Anyhow, there were apparently some more adverse weather conditions in the deep blue Caribbean sky and we had to stop in Dominica. It was getting very dark out. Follow this link to find out why that's really fucking scary.
Yep, no night landing. Thus, no lights on the runway. It was also kind of windy out, and the wind-sock at the end of the runway was blowing in the same direction as our plane was landing. That, kids, is not how you land an airplane. You land against the wind, so that is slows the fucking plane down.
4. Wellington, New Zealand
Big props to my home town! Let the video explain our little problem in Wellywood.
5. London Heathrow
This place is an infested rat maze of ineptitude, escalators, buses and long lines. I arrived there once to an immigration official who refused to believe my true story of why I was visiting the United Kingdom. He also didn't think my story of where I was going next (Berlin) was very plausible. A trip itinerary and tickets had to be produced before this asshat would believe that I wasn't planning on finding some nice corner of St. Pancras Station to hunker down in, never to leave.
6. Narita Airport, Japan
If you had two very large cities like, say, Yokohama and Tokyo, you'd build them an airport, right? And you'd want that airport to be relatively accessible from both cities. Right? Not so in Japan, where Narita airport, is located maaaany miles away from both cities. The more centrally located Haneda airport only deals with domestic travel. All us foreign folk have to sit in buttloads of grid-locked traffic in order to get to Narita. It took my bus four hours to get from Yokohama to the airport.
7. Charles de Gaulle, Paris
While Charles de Gaulle is a dingy, scary, depressing place that tends to employ the surliest of surly Parisians, its rabbit-hole tunnels, weird escalators and general awfulness have become legendary. What is a trip to Paris without grouchy French immigration officials, French McDonalds (yes, it exists and it's weird), a myriad of closed stores, and bad coffee?
8. Nice Airport, France
All lame-tard English jokes about this being a "Nice airport!" aside, Nice has one of the scariest landing strips around. It really does feel like the plane's landing gear is kicking up the azure waters of the Mediterranean Sea before you finally see tarmac underneath your window. I got to spend the night at Nice once and it's amazing the tricks fluorescent lights set amongst white cielings, walls and floors start to play on your eyes after seven hours.
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