Dear people who work at the airport

andsoitis

> She was anxious, because you instilled a sense of panic in her. That's not why she was anxious! She was anxious because, according to author's own account, this is someone: a) flying for the first time b) hardly speaks English c) is in a foreign country d) solo responsible for 4 grand kids running around etc. Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something.

MotoriX

Navigation in a lot of public places is pretty bad. I think interactive maps on small terminals could help a lot. Personally, I find it much easier to understand things from a map, especially when it shows exactly where you are.

josefritzishere

Everyone over 40 knows how terrible air travel has become.

mschuster91

> Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travellers don't. Railways aren't much better. German railways are bad enough, but Eastern Europe... good luck even finding a realtime track schedule, and screw you if you don't speak the language. Last time in Rijeka there was construction going on but no indications anywhere , my fellow travellers were lucky I spoke Croatian and recognized that the attendant was shouting in Croatian for the people on what should have been a train...

neko_ranger

Am I crazy or are the general workers at most US airports of dubious quality at best?

patchorang

I can't agree more. I was once catching a flight, went to my gate and found no one there and the flight status monitors saying "Cancelled". I couldn't find an agent at any desk, so went back out of security to check-in to figure out what was going on. The agent proceeded to act like I was the biggest idiot in the world for leaving the gate because "we don't control those boards, your flight isn't cancelled, the gate was changed". So I had to run back through security to barely catch my flight. Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.

piinbinary

This has some lessons that apply much more broadly than to just airports (e.g. apps that make you jump through hoops and expect you to know what 2fa or SSO mean)

mikeocool

My favorite but of airport-ese that emerged post-9/11 is that on most US airlines you can now have 1 carry-on and 1 personal item. As far as I can tell the difference between them is that a personal item can't have wheels.

chasd00

This is currently the #4 story on the home page, an article about someone complaining about not being able to figure out an airport. This must be why the standard recommendation is to get to the airport 2 hours(!) before your flight.

foo-bar-baz529

I dislike the sense of judgment from TSA officials when I don’t correctly predict which items they do/don’t want me to put in the tray. It’s not my fault that different airports seem to have completely different rules for the same items.

raverbashing

While I found this rant mostly annoying: > When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign: (see board with 2 B45 gates) Well, yes. This is wrong. And confusing. But mostly wrong

Retr0id

I suspect airports could be a whole lot simpler if the notions of "security" and "border control" didn't exist or were otherwise relaxed.

igornotarobot

How about two different planes departing to exactly the same destination at exactly the same time from two different terminals? That's how I missed my plane from Belgrade to Vienna. I have no other explanation but that they do it on purpose.

superxpro12

i think that 90% of these problems would be solved by an easily accessible, standardized map of each airport. When i attempted to find airport maps, I was met with a mess of mobile apps, mobile website pdf's, and an enormous amount of text. Just... give me an easy to use map. Call out the obvious use cases like "how to transfer terminals" and "your bags will/will-not be checked through".

NoDodgeQuestion

Post title should be, Dear people who design the airport, not Dear people who work at the airport.

piker

Absolutely! I travel a LOT, am able-bodied and frequent the same airports, and I am routinely confused and anxious. Bad call-out to Heathrow though where they’re amongst the best in the world at this.

charlesabarnes

Experienced travelers also often face troubled, contradictory instructions from airport staff seemingly at random. The experience doesn't have to be so stressful and confusing, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

xvxvx

Last time I flew, it was with United and I highly recommend their app. Clearly designed by people who know airports suck. It automated everything, from checkin and tickets, kept me updated on flights and gates, mapped them out and told me how long it would take to get to the gate and where security lines were the longest. Even tracked my checked luggage.

Kinrany

Funny. I love flying partly for the very reason that airports need to be idiot-proof.

hmokiguess

Expectation is the source of frustration. Embrace the chaos, accept the journey.