Travel News

Are Airports Becoming Too Complicated?

Locations in this article:  Miami, FL

Airports are growing increasingly complex. Shopping and dining options are improving, but these mall-style airports are becoming harder to navigate. New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey and Peter debate the pro’s and con’s of today’s airport experience. 

Peter Greenberg: Airports are navigational challenges, aren’t there? People get lost at airports. I was just at the Miami airport the other day. Forget GPS, I needed personal guidance just to go from one terminal to the other. It’s that crazy.

Joe Sharkey: Airlines aside, airports have spiffed up their environment over the past ten to fifteen years. But, as we introduce more complexity, especially more complexity into the boarding procedures, more people, including myself, head straight to the departure gate and stay there because the boarding procedures has become so complex with all these status levels and hierarchies.

PG: Joe, here’s what happened to me the other day, I literally was at the gate for United Airlines and this is how they boarded the flight: We’d first like to board our Global Services, followed by our 1K, followed by our Executive Premier, followed by our Premiere, followed by our First Class, followed by Group 1, 2, 3, 4…I didn’t know the plane was that big!

JS: The boarding list is endless and they keep adding to it. I don’t even know where to stand anymore. I just stand there and hope somebody will take pity on me and point me in the right direction.

Aside from the boarding process, another notable change is airport food. There are a lot of good restaurants now in airports. It used to be that airport food was considered like school cafeteria food or jail food except more expensive. Now airports have a lot of really good places to eat. You just have to find them.

PG: Airport food used to just be guess the age of the mystery hot dog at the rotisserie.

JS: What did you win if you did?

PG: The opportunity not to eat it. Now with branded chefs and name restaurants, you have some pretty good food choices.

JS: You have good choices, but you also have bad choices. A couple of weeks ago, I was in an airport and it was morning and I was faced with an all day multi-connection flight and I grabbed a Cinnabon. And you know that’s a tragic thing to do. That’s not exactly a fine pastry, but it has 730 calories and it qualifies as a carry-on bag.

PG: Joe, if we had the Cinnabon in World War II we would have actually ended the war two months earlier just by dropping it out of planes.

JS: Louis CK the comedian calls it a six foot high sticky cinnamon bun made for one, sad, fat man.

PG: I go to the airport and can smell the Cinnabon about 900 feet away and I find myself walking towards it. It’s terrible.

Let’s not pick on Cinnabon. Instead, let’s talk about navigating the airport. There are some great phone-apps now right?

Duty-Free shopping, credit Ryan WickJS: There are a couple of apps that allow you to pre-order food from airport restaurants. There’s also an app that allows you to tab out at the bar without having to get the attention of the bar tender. I have also heard from people about apps for navigating airports. These apps are becoming a solution to the need to stick near the gate in an unfamiliar airport. Having an app le’s us venture out and not be afraid of missing the boarding time, let alone the flight.

PG: Another cool thing, Joe, is that there are a lot of airport stores that have finally gotten smart and realized that if you buy something there you will have to schlep it on your whole trip. So stores will ship it for you for free.

JS: That’s smart because the last thing you want to do is carry another bag. I didn’t know they were doing that.

PG: Stores got smart because if you look at an airport as nothing more than a shopping mall where planes park, then you better start doing some free shipping, right?

By Peter Greenberg for Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio

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