The problem is finding flights into SNA. It’s not always possible or in the budget. Last year I was able to fly into SNA for the first time and it was a breeze.
I just feel bad for families traveling to Disneyland with children. Air travel is so harrowing nowadays, that my heart goes out to families arriving in to LAX and facing the next few hours of getting through baggage claim and a decrepit airport, crowded and frenzied transport infrastructure, and on to a bus or rental car to battle the freeway down to Anaheim. Yuck!
SNA really is the perfect airport; or about as perfect as it can get these days.
This is actually the perfect airport in my opinion, but I have to admit those days are never coming back...
LAX will improve once the construction is done. It’s going to be a night and day difference in my opinion.
It should improve some, but I just wonder if they can really make it
easy. I also wonder about the mish-mash of aesthetics they seem to be using, and spending Billions but still leaving cheap-ugly stuff, like the cement parking structures from the 1980's, around the facility.
In the defense of LAX, the only time I've used that airport in the last decade has been to fly in/out of the Tom Bradley Terminal on an international flight, and that's a very nice and sleek terminal to be in for a couple hours. It also helps that
I only fly foreign airlines when going abroad, and thus I have a vastly superior customer service experience once I finally reach their embrace at the check-in counter.
The Achilles heel of the Tom Bradley Terminal is the standard LAX employees that work there in the non-airline jobs. Those LAX employees in terminal support jobs are almost uniformly surly, slovenly, and sloppy. Three S's.
On another note, I knew MSP was a great airport but I didn’t know it scored that high.
I had no idea either! I haven't flown through that airport since my career days when I was flying sometimes on Northwest Orient and transferring through MSP. Delta got all their routes in the takeover. I was also surprised to see how PDX had fallen to mid-pack, as it was rated at the top for at least the last decade. Then I did some research and realized they are completely gutting that airport and rebuilding the whole darn thing and it's a disaster area at PDX now.
But when PDX is done, it's going to look like this! I love John Wayne Airport,
and you simply can not beat it's ease and efficiency for a Disneyland vacation with children in tow, but aesthetically it's very bland and Irvine Company-esque.
Acres of very clean tasteful beige is better than dirty facilities, but it doesn't really inspire or excite or engage the senses.
Here's what Portland International Airport (PDX) is going to look like in two years!
Wow.