Wednesday, July 30, 2025

In Which I Talk About the Airport

I have a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. I think, if we are serious about climate change, we have to decrease commercial flight by some huge percentage, and that means airports as they currently exist are … let us just say, a bad thing and a bad investment in the long term.

However, I can't help but feel a bit of local perkiness when I see one of the many lists that ranks MSP as one of the best, or the best, airport in the U.S. for travelers. I haven't seen that many airports so I can't really say, but among the ones I have seen, I would agree. 

Today's Crankshaft cartoon strip didn't say that exactly but it did remind me of it:

The Pittsburgh airport was built to essentially be a shopping mall, not too long before 9/11. I haven't been there in a long time. I don't know what happened to it, given the change in airport security and not allowing unticketed passengers into the area where all the shops were located.

I never thought of MSP as being fully mall like (compared to what the Pittsburgh airport was like), but it's definitely livelier than most other airports I've been in.*

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* I've never been in some of the country's largest airports, like O'Hare or Hartsfield-Jackson.

1 comment:

  1. The sheer size of O’Hare makes it awful — try running to get to a connecting flight after the first plane is late.

    The Indianapolis airport is a good one (8th on some national list): very low-key, with one terminal, two concourses, and a Shapiro’s Deli outpost.

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