In praise of easy airports

Fear of missing a connecting flight can run deep. 

Years ago, I cringed at how little time I allotted between flights when picking San Antonio as the connection from El Paso to Nashville. The short layover stunned me – 25 minutes between flights? No way could we make that flight, not even if we ran. “Don’t worry. It’s not a big airport,” the baggage attendant said. 

She did not lie. We exited the El Paso flight, and our gate for Nashville stood 40 feet away. The 25-minute layover posed no problem, especially with the hour delay announced minutes after our arrival. We walked down the hall, ate dinner and had no reason to rush into the boarding line. 

Some airports just deliver easiness, mostly in small and mid-sized cities. You expect Omaha to deliver ease – up the escalator, off to St. Louis. But larger cities don’t mean larger airports. John Glenn Columbus International is one of the more relaxed airports for a big town (getting to 900,000 people). The longest part of a departing flight was the drive from the interstate to the terminal. Show up at Glenn Columbus an hour before flight time, and ticketing and security might eat up 15 minutes.

Show up for a departing flight at Denver International an hour before flight time, and you might find yourself sprinting out of the train station to beat the gate closure, or you might go ahead and schedule a later flight.

Colorado Springs has emerged as the easy alternative to Denver International. It even uses the tagline “Colorado’s Smaller Airport.” They almost overemphasize “small” – almost every airport is small compared to DIA. DIA is a city on the high plains, Colorado's largest employer, and not always simple to navigate.

From the Springs, Denver flights require almost four hours of lead time – 70 miles for the drive, up to an hour to drop off a car then shuttle into the airport, the security line, trains (Southwest flies out of Concourse C, last stop on the train). Depending upon baggage carousels and shuttles, 90 minutes can pass between arriving in Denver and reaching your car.

Despite sharing real estate with Peterson Space Force Base, Springs Airport feels incredibly small for a city with a half-million people. Flights leave from a 12-gate concourse. Short-term parking sits slightly close to the terminal than long-term parking. I arrived in the lot at 4:35 a.m. By 4:50, I passed security and awaited my flight – to Denver International. It might be the shortest commercial flight going, as the ground crew spent more time de-icing the plan than we spent at cruising altitude. But the short flight beats morning rush hour and the whole DIA departure. 

I didn’t even think about the train until I landed in Atlanta, another airport where a train ride can make or break a flight. Mercifully the plane unloaded at the T Concourse, which flanks the passenger pickup/dropoff area. I was outside in five minutes.

My return trip again displayed the ease of COS. Ten minutes passed between exiting the plane and driving out of the long-term parking lot. With no checked bag, I started walking and didn’t look back. I hope it never changes. Of course there’s already change afoot – long-term parking goes from $7 to $8 per day in March 2022. We’re a big city now. 

Most airports change with time. Nashville once presented ease. At arrivals, the airport offered 10-minute loading spots at the arrival area. As the city grew, those spots became a memory, just like having baggage unloaded in less than 30 minutes. 

Easy airports rarely shout their existence. They whisper. I could never opt for Boston Logan after Manchester. Exit plane, take an escalator to baggage, step to the rental counter, walk across the airport drive to the rental car pickup. Depending on the departing hour, there’s enough time for breakfast at Dunkin’s or a last Smuttynose at the bar. 

There's no quick departure at LAX or Seatac – at the latter, you can’t hear gate announcements 20 feet away from the gate. I missed a flight that way. Given how angry the airport experience grows at any airport associated with New York City, Westchester County Airport feels like six-gate oasis. It isn’t convenient for everyone, but no one feels lost at an airport of that size. The miniature cities of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson or DIA exist on a different level. Still, easy is relative. 

Traveling with my family in the 1990s when my Dad worked in China, I remember a sweltering wait for a flight from Hangzhou to Xiamen. To combat the thick air, I fixated on a sign in the waiting area. Below the Chinese script an English translation commanded, “Your cooperation is required.” Not appreciated, required. 

In Hangzhou, easy could turn complicated so quickly. Under the wrong circumstances, so can the easiest airport.