OT: Favorite and Least Favorite Airports

Atlanta is great if you live here.  You can pretty much hop on a direct flight to anywhere. My condolences to everyone that connects through here though.

I agree with OP on DTW. Great airport.

I love The ATL!  I've been flying in and out of there for the last decade plus and find it very efficient. Delta planes generally run on time - except for weather.  The train gets you to the terminals - everything is clearly marked.  And the TSA Pre and Clear areas are easy to navigate.  I do see the the other TSA area are generally packed, but that's what happens in the busiest airports.

Detroit's airport is beautiful - love the indoor train.  Salt Lake City is nice, too.  Both are Delta hubs. 

Chicago ORD sucks - there are always flight delays!   My wife flies United Airlines to visit her family in Chicago and always has delays.

Saint Louis is a small, run down airport with no good food.  Minneapolis doesn't have a tram and it feels like a mile from check-in to the Delta gates. 

Been there. Flight from ORD came late to DTW. Hence, the DTW-ORD flight was late. We landed at ORD with minutes to spare. Thankfully, boarding takes a while for trans-Atlantic flights. We made it finally. Funny part was that we spent nearly the same time as the flight time in LHR waiting for the next flight :D

Yep. Love it when my flight to Chicago gets delayed by even 20 minutes because then it's a mad dash across a terminal or two to try to make my connection

OK.  O'hare definitely sucks.  But I don't understand this issue.  Is your connecting flight with the same airline usually?  If so, then its like 5 mins to get to your connecting gate.

I’ve only connected through once or twice, but, yeah, pretty underwhelming for a major city airport.

I once was connecting through MEX, and I while transferring from the int'l to domestic terminal, I asked someone where to go, and they pointed me through some doors.

I went through the doors, and I was now outside the terminal. So technically, I entered Mexico without going through any kind of customs/immigration.

To enter back in to the airport, I had to go through security all over again.

When I lived in San Diego, we routinely took the CBX bridge crossing over the international border directly into the Tijuana terminal, and could fly to most Mexican destinations while avoiding both MEX and LAX.  That bridge is great example of cross border cooperation.

Totally agree!  The busses to the other terminals, hotels, and car rentals are complete bull shit!  I think their TSA baggage X-ray machines are from the 1980's.   Plus, east coast rudeness runs rapid when those chuckleheads put on a badge. 

My worst time at Boston Logan was the night before the Boston Marathon several years ago.  I'm headed through JFK to head to Europe for the week.  We run into a storm and after circling for an hour, they decide to divert air traffic.  I end up in Boston and can't get a flight until the next morning along with about 1000 other people.

As it's the day before the Boston Marathon, of course there isn't a hotel within an hour, so we all get to spend the night with a tiny blanket and an airline pillow on the floor of Boston Logan and still have to fly back to wonderful JFK in the morning and spend the day to take my flight to Europe a full day later than planned.

I wish I had known this before my recent trip there. I tend to show up at the airport like 60 minutes before my flight leaves and I was late a few weeks ago (38 minutes before take-off) and had I not had Clear and TSA Pre I 100% would have missed my flight. The regular TSA line was absolutely bonkers in a way I've never seen.

I went to San Diego earlier this year, and the TSA was so slow for the return flight. I am happy we were an hour and half early. 

Hating Reagan while loving Dulles is certainly a take, although I don’t disagree with anything you said about Reagan, especially during the current construction. Reagan is built to Metro not drive to, but I traffic is a nightmare there. 
For the reasons you like Dulles I like BWI. I live in MoCo so it’s pretty easy to get to BWI and takes about the same amount of time as Reagan. I never fly in/out of Dulles unless it’s a big international trip I can’t get from BWI. 

I'm in the DC area - i HATE reagan - partly because of location, partly because of the horrible infrastructure of getting in and out of the area, partly because you can't get there without traffic, partly because i live in the dulles corridor, and partly because every flight coming in over the potomac, while pretty, is a windy nauseating mess.

Love dulles because of ease of use - hated their old "people movers"... but most of that is gone now. Easy to get in and out. No real traffic ever in the area unless its a busy time. If drop off gets backed up, youre kinda screwed because there's really only 1 entrance to arrivals/departures/close parking.

What's interesting is that when I lived in DC, my opinions were completely opposite. I loved Reagan. Super easy to get to off the metro, security was always quick and efficient, etc. My only real complaint concerned the metro hours, i.e. that it didn't run 24/7; the last train left at 12 or 1 am and the first train didn't leave until 5 or 7 am, depending on weekday or weekend. You couldn't take the metro in the morning and make a 6am flight (took a lot of those back to Detroit, especially during football season), so my routine was to take the last train the night before, I had a spot at a restaurant in the concourse where I'd push together chairs to make a makeshift bed, and try to get a few hours sleep before security opened up in the morning.

Dulles by contrast was always a nightmare. No easy way to get there (unless you lived out that way). Security was always a cluster, consistently the worst I've ever seen--don't think I ever got through security in less than an hour. Those stupid buses, and tiny little planes (at least on Delta) where the overhead couldn't even fit a normal sized carry-on. I avoided Dulles at all costs.

You didn't mention BWI, but BWI was always a great experience too. Also easy to get to, taking the metro to the MARC. Fast and efficient security, clean airport with nice amenities. Some of my most interesting flight stories involved BWI.

I'm in the DC area... Love dulles because of ease of use - hated their old "people movers"...

Those Dulles battle jitneys were awesome. Wtf are you talking about.

A colleague and I once missed our flight out of Reagan - we were sitting in the gate but missed the instructions that we had to go through a door off to the side, down the stairs, and out onto the tarmac to board. It was frustrating 

When I lived in Arlington I had a 615AM flight Monday morning for several months for work. Reagan was great, I could literally call a Red Cab night before for a 515 pickup, and I'd sometimes be through security by 530. But, thats when there was zero traffic. Otherwise I agree with your pains.  

Dulles on the other hand, feels like I would walk forever with those low ceilings and had very little amenities. When I moved to Reston and started using more often, I got used to it and learned some of the better spots though. Overall I don't know that I prefer one airport or the other.  

Came on to say that Orlando is my least fave, just because in the morning they still--decades after 9/11--crowd everyone into the atrium in the morning when the first rush begins. Adjust already! 

And Miami is very far-flung, also with an absurd amount of walking that leaves my post-heart attack behind wary of even trying flights if the connection is short. OTOH La Carreta, the Cuban restaurant there, is primo, even if Luis Carriles and his 60s CIA pals sometimes look like they're sitting there hunched over and whispering. 

Which Houston airport? :) 

Bush (IAH) is undergoing renovation. Hopefully, it will look and feel better. Agree with the food options. Could be way better. 

Hobby (HOU) on the other hand got a facelift recently. But I have not flown through there in the recept past.