What’s the best and worst airport you’ve been to?

Airports: Where Journeys Begin — and Patience Ends!

There are airports you remember because they made you feel that you had arrived somewhere special. And then there are airports you remember because you spent three hours wondering whether you had actually arrived in civilisation.

Airports are strange places. They are neither here nor there. You are physically standing on one piece of land, mentally somewhere else, and emotionally praying that your luggage is travelling with you.

Over the years, I have passed through quite a few airports — some magnificent, some chaotic, and some that seemed to have been designed by a committee whose members had never actually travelled by air.

The best: when an airport feels like a welcome

My favourite airports are not necessarily the biggest or most luxurious. They are the ones where everything seems to work quietly in the background.

You enter, and somehow you know where to go.

The signs make sense. The staff are courteous. Security is efficient without making you feel like a potential criminal. The departure boards are actually telling you something useful. There are enough seats, clean toilets, decent food and, most importantly, no mysterious queue whose purpose nobody can explain.

A really good airport gives you the feeling that someone has thought about the passenger.

You can sit by a large window, watch aircraft taxi towards the runway and feel that little flutter of excitement that comes with travel.

There is something magical about watching an aircraft take off.

Thousands of tonnes of metal suddenly become airborne, carrying hundreds of people towards distant cities, reunions, adventures and, occasionally, someone’s mother-in-law.

Perhaps that is why I like airports at their best. They represent possibility.

And then there is the worst…

The worst airport is not necessarily the dirtiest one.

It is the one where nothing seems to happen logically.

You arrive three hours early, as instructed. You check in. You pass security. Then you discover that your gate is approximately the distance between Delhi and Mumbai.

You walk.

And walk.

And walk.

Eventually, you reach the gate, only to discover that boarding has been delayed.

So you sit.

Twenty minutes later, someone announces that the gate has changed.

You walk again.

At this point, your cabin baggage has developed a personality and your feet have begun negotiating for independence.

Then comes the boarding queue.

Nobody knows why there is a queue because nobody is boarding.

Yet everyone joins it.

You join it too, because airports have taught us an important survival lesson:

If everyone is standing somewhere, there is probably a reason.

Sometimes there isn’t.

The airport test

I have developed my own unofficial airport rating system.

An airport earns points for:

• clear signage;
• comfortable seating;
• clean toilets;
• efficient security;
• helpful staff;
• reasonable food;
• reliable Wi-Fi;
• and, above all, not making passengers walk unnecessary marathons.

It loses points for:

• unexplained queues;
• confusing announcements;
• gates changing every ten minutes;
• overcrowded waiting areas;
• charging points that don’t work;
• and the unforgivable crime of having only one tiny café serving 400 hungry passengers.

But there is another test.

How do you feel when you leave the airport?

At a good airport, you feel excited.

At a bad one, you feel as though you have completed a postgraduate degree in endurance.

Airports are little theatres of humanity

What fascinates me most about airports is not the architecture. It is the people.

You see everything.

The excited first-time traveller clutching his passport as if it were a treasure map.

The businessman marching towards the gate with the urgency of a man negotiating a billion-pound merger.

The family travelling with enough luggage to relocate permanently.

The child running around as though the airport belongs to him.

The elderly couple quietly holding hands.

The backpacker sleeping peacefully on three plastic chairs.

And the passenger staring anxiously at the departure board every thirty seconds, as though his concentrated gaze might make the aircraft arrive faster.

Airports bring strangers together for a brief period.

We may speak different languages, eat different food and come from completely different worlds, but for a few hours we share the same anxieties:

Will the flight be on time?

Will my luggage arrive?

Is that actually my gate?

And the eternal question:

Why is my boarding group still not being called?

The real luxury

As I grow older, I have realised that the best airport is not the one with the most expensive shops or the fanciest lounges.

It is the one that respects your time.

Give me a clean terminal, a comfortable chair, a cup of decent coffee, a large window overlooking the runway and a calm voice announcing, “Your flight is now ready for boarding” — and I am happy.

I don’t need marble floors.

I don’t need designer boutiques.

I don’t need a waterfall in the departure lounge.

I simply want an airport that allows me to travel without making me question my life choices.

And perhaps that is the secret

A journey begins long before the aircraft leaves the ground.

It begins when we enter the airport with a suitcase in one hand and expectations in the other.

The best airports add to the excitement.

The worst airports test our character.

And perhaps both serve a purpose.

One teaches us the joy of travel.

The other teaches us patience.

After all, an airport is ultimately a metaphor for life.

There are smooth departures, unexpected delays, confusing directions, long queues, sudden changes of gate and moments when we have absolutely no idea what is happening.

Yet eventually, if we are fortunate, the doors close, the engines roar and the aircraft begins to climb.

We look through the window.

The airport becomes smaller.

The queues disappear.

The frustrations seem insignificant.

And somewhere above the clouds, we remember why we travelled in the first place.

Because sometimes the journey is worth every queue, every delay and every misplaced suitcase.

Even if we still haven’t forgiven the airport.