In early adulthood I had an ambivalent relationship with airports. Whilst my friends found them exciting, associating them with flying off to new adventures and far horizons, I wasn’t so keen. This was probably because I found the whole idea of overseas travel quite daunting as I’ve never been particularly good with diving itno the unknown.
Once I plucked up the courage to put my toe gingerly in the water and tried travelling for myself, things changed. The great unknown Overseas became less unknown and I discovered the wonder and joy of travel. Airports took on the tantalising gleam of being the gateway to the endless possibilities of the rest of the world, so big that I could never run short of new and exciting places to go.
Having lived overseas for several extended periods and done as much travelling as possible during that time I have spent lots of time in airports, and found the quirky and the quaint alongside the tedious and the dull. British airports, for example, often feel more like a trial than an exciting first step on a journey; perhaps if you can survive the grimness of Heathrow or the queues elsewhere you are some way to being prepared for a British winter or English public transport.
The newer English airports are built like barns: huge, white, airy spaces that seem to have been divided up with walls and shops as an afterthought. The check-in halls and retail areas are often so huge and intimidating it’s hard even to find the signage to navigate through them. British airport authorities are also fond of doing things en masse, so every last passenger in the airport seems to be herded into the same queues for security screenings and passport checks. This may make staffing easier but an hour waiting for passport control behind a jetload of antipodeans is not a pleasant way to spend time on a Sunday evening when you’re still suffering from a Moroccan stomach bug.
The British Airports Authority also seem to be intent on maximising every chance for earning money through retail space. Doubtless this helps explain why it’s said to be the world’s most profitable airport company. In some of its airports, simply requiring passengers to pass by a myriad of shops on the way to the gate isn’t enough and the only way to get to your plane is through of a duty free shop, winding your way between perfume stands and supposedly cheap alcohol. Mind you, this can come in handy when you have time to kill: the Beloved and I spent several happy hours in Stansted waiting for a plane in September, him watching a football match in a bar and me browsing books and perfume. Nonetheless, by the time we noticed that our plane was ready it was on Final Call and it cost £30 just to eat lunch.
My favourite airport in the whole world is Charles de Gaulle in Paris, which is all seventies space age, but is neither dated nor faded, instead wearing an air of classic style like a Chanel coat. It’s built as a cylinder criss-crossed by shiny tubes that contain ramp escalators connecting the various floors. Where most airports feel like enormous barns, Charles de Gaulle is all small spaces; intimate cafes and comfortable check-in areas, which means you can eat well in peace and it’s remarkably quiet. And elegant.
In Thailand, the airport was a joy, but more because it was a respite from heat and chaos (wonderful chaos, but hard work). After three weeks of travelling around in a heatwave, we were ready for its cool calmness. We had battled idiosyncratic transport in out-of-the-way places and cheerfully managed cheap accommodation that wasn’t always cool and comfortable. We negotiated the manic, jammed cities and ate on plastic chairs from street stalls and markets as well as unfancy restaurants, ever careful to go somewhere reasonably clean. After this, the airport was a godsend, and I remember it really clearly. Calm, light, airy. Clean, free toilets. Cool. Quiet compared to the chaos in the streets outside. Places to sit everywhere. The prospect of 11 hours to sit quietly in airconditioned comfort and watch movies whilst someone else brought me food at regular intervals. Pleasant!
Sometimes airports feel like carbon-copies of one another with even the same dull shops in them. Other times they are ridiculously quirky, and this is particularly true of small airports. The exponential growth of budget airlines in the last decade has seen lots of tiny provincial airports reborn as bustling regional hubs. Many of these are in towns and cities within reach of larger, more attractive destinations but flights to them are sold as flights to the larger cities, leading to lots of disgruntled passengers finding themselves not in Frankfurt or Barcelona, but in Hahn or Girona, an hour or more from the city they actually wished to visit. In some cases, these flights are to entirely different, interesting cities, such as Bergamo or Pisa, instead of Milan or Florence.
This sudden availability of flights to small regional destinations has led me to visit lots of tiny airports, some of which seem slightly overcome by the new volume of passengers. In December we flew to Perugia which has an airport the size of an olympic swimming pool, and receives the grand total of one flight a day in winter. Arriving, we watched our luggage driven across the tarmac, after which the staff opened some glass doors directly into the arrivals hall and loaded the bags onto a miniature luggage carousel the size of a small car. The car rental company seemed to be operating out of a cupboard. Leaving, we found the check-in counter was a makeshift lecturn with no computer, and the girl behind it crossed our names off on a printed list. It was all very basic: even the surly security staff had steadfastly refused to learn to say ‘would you take out your laptop’ in English. After security every last passenger was crammed into the single departure lounge that was the size of a small shop. This being Italy, there were no queueing mechanisms, so a massive crush ensued. Sometimes the British obesssion with queuing is convenient.
Supposedly the best airport in the world is Singapore’s newish facility, which offers the passenger on a brief long-haul stopover cheap, clearn showers and snoozing chairs with built-in alarm clocks. All in all, most of us want to get in and out of airports as fast as possible, but it’s impossible to avoid them altogether when travelling long distances. For a seasoned traveller, a decent airport is worth paying a little bit more on your ticket for.
