Northbound

Updated for 2007:

• AMA – Amarillo International Airport, Amarillo, Texas. The big Amarillo landmark, the eat-a-72-ounce-steak-and-it’s-free restaurant, is on the road from the airport to downtown. So you’re good like that. 
• ATL – Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia. I actually wrote an Epinions piece about Hartsfield, which was more-or-less my second home when I lived in Atlanta. The thing I always liked is that when you sat next to people on Delta flights, and they asked you where you lived, and you would tell them, “Atlanta”, they’d be surprised. Like they’d never met anyone who actually lived there. Be sure you try the fried chicken at Paschal’s. 
• AUA – Queen Beatrix International Airport, Oranjestad, Aruba. They have the damnedest setup at the Aruba airport for outgoing flights to the United States. You drop off your checked bags at the airline counter. Then you go through Aruba security. Then you pick your bags up at a carousel, walk them through U.S. customs, put them on a conveyor belt, and go through a TSA security checkpoint. Weird, yes, but it does allow you to check your baggage through to your final destination, so there’s that. Otherwise unmemorable, although one wonders just why it’s a good idea to have foreigners get their first impression of your country from works by third-grade artists tacked up in the airport corridors.
• AUS – Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Austin, Texas. The newest and best airport in the country. I was there not too long ago, but got there too late — and left too early — to eat at either the Salt Lick outpost or the Amy’s Ice Cream. Great as long as you’re going anywhere Southwest goes; otherwise, you’re changing planes in Dallas.
• BGI – Grantley Adams International Airport, Barbados.  My new favorite airport.  Not a lot of jetways, mind you (there may not be any, I’m not sure).  They have a Concorde, but it’s not yet ready for display.
• BTR – Baton Rouge Municipal Airport, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I’ve only been there once, to speak at a conference, and I had a bad sinus infection and couldn’t tell you a thing about the airport, other than LSU does a heck of a job at hospitality if you’re a guest speaker. 
• BHM – Birmingham International Airport, Birmingham, Alabama. Not the one in England. When I first moved to Atlanta, I used to have to drive here to use my Southwest frequent flyer points, because Southwest doesn’t serve Atlanta. I drove back one night too late (over the horrific Alabama interstate) and got caught on I-20 coming into Atlanta in this huge traffic jam caused by an overturned canteloupe truck. I wrote Herb Kelleher about it, and his staff wrote me back a great poem, which I still have somewhere, and a very nice black leather Southwest travel bag. Other than that, not much to say except that the airport is northeast of town and has a really ugly parking garage. 
• BNA – Nashville International Airport, Nashville, Tennessee. If you fly Southwest a lot, you’ll have had the experience of seeing that your flight is not a nonstop, and that you have to change planes in BNA, and you don’t have the first clue what BNA could be. It’s Nashville. I spent about ten hours there once. My conference ended early, and I went to the airport to see if I could get an earlier flight home. But I couldn’t get on anything earlier, so I had to sit there for three hours. Then the flight I was actually booked on was cancelled, so I had to wait for hours to get on another one, and that one connected through the horrible Cincinnati airport, and I didn’t get home until after midnight. Not many happy memories of the Nashville airport from me. 
• BOS – Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts. I remember flying in for a eleventh-grade choir tour, in 1986 or so, but that’s it. It’s on an island or something, right? 
• BUF – Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Buffalo, New York. Has a really new terminal that was designed to make it look like a really old terminal, but not in a cool, retro way.  It’s an International Style tunnel, with a sloping white ceiling and an off-white terrazzo floor, and is as ugly as an ape’s butt.  To be honest, it looks like the whole thing came from Airports R Us.  If you fly in on Continental from Newark, don’t.  Same goes for Delta from Atlanta.  You come in at the very far end of a very long, linear terminal, and it is a long bloody hike to security.  (Five-hour delay on my last flight out of there, blast you, Continental Airlines.)
• CAE – Columbia Metropolitan Airport, Columbia, South Carolina. I had the worst barbecue of my life here. I hope it isn’t representative of all South Carolina barbecue, because if it is, watch out. Having said that, the Columbia airport has very high vaulted all-white ceilings; it’s going for the Crystal Cathedral look or something. 
• CHS – Charleston International Airport, Charleston, South Carolina. This is one of those places where I flew in the night before a conference and left the next day without seeing much. I could not tell you the first thing about it. 
• CMH – Port Columbus International Airport, Columbus, Ohio. I was there for a conference just last year, and it looked like it had been renovated all to pieces. It looked something like “The Terminal” in the Tom Hanks movie, almost, if memory serves (although not as much as Newark’s Terminal C does). I spilled about half a Coke in one of the gates and didn’t really do a very good job cleaning it up, and I’m sorry. 
• CRP – Corpus Christi International Airport, Corpus Christi, Texas. You do want to fly into Corpus, because there’s not much worse than the drive from San Antonio to Corpus Christi, except the drive back. Dismal. 
• CVG – Cincinnati – Northern Kentucky International Airport – I never want to go back there again as long as I live. I feel that strongly about it. The Cincinnati airport should be burned down to the ground and rebuilt as a bird sanctuary. 
• DAL – Love Field, Dallas, Texas. Perhaps better known for its role in the JFK assassination (and the 1992 movie) than its role in the growth and development of Southwest Airlines, one of the great success stories of our time. With the repeal of the Wright Amendment, more people will get to visit.
• DCA – Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Arlington, Virginia. I’ve only flown out of Reagan one time, mostly because it’s almost always more expensive to do that. I had a conference in DC and a training in Raleigh on consecutive dates, so I flew Atlanta-Reagan-Raleigh-Atlanta, using three different airlines. I learned the hard way that you do not, under any circumstances, want to fly one-way in to or out of Reagan National. I got searched like you would not believe. Once I got there, I landed in the older terminal (which is where AirTran flies into). It is impressively ugly, and I don’t know why the richer part of the Republican Party doesn’t bother to donate some money to the airport to put up some Reagan stuff to make it better. 
• DFW – Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Grapevine, Texas. I have a ton of DFW stories for some reason.  There was the time that Delta lost my bag flying in from Atlanta, and United lost my fiancee’s bag on her flight from Newark on the same day. The only one worse than that was when I was supposed to meet my then-fiancee on the same sort of trip, and I missed my flight in Atlanta because my drivers’ license fell out of my wallet.  Strange things happen. 
• DEN – Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado.  Been there twice, now.  The first time, I was just changing planes, although I wasn’t planning on it.  I was flying United from Austin to Atlanta in December 2001 for a job interview.  I was lying on my back in my last apartment in Austin, listening to Rush Limbaugh and waiting for it to be time to go to the airport.  The radio news show said that a blizzard just hit Chicago and O’Hare was closed.  This was bad news, as I was changing planes in O’Hare.  So I called United and they rerouted me to Denver – on a plane that was leaving in one hour.  I scrambled to the airport, got stuck in security, and made the plane by the skin of my teeth.  I spent six hours in the B Concourse, and that was the extent of my experience.  But I actually flew to Denver in 2007, and learned these facts:  a) the airport is actually in Kansas; b) I’m kidding, but it’s incredibly far from downtown; c) by “incredibly far”, I mean “sixty-dollar cab ride”; and d) I’m not kidding, take Super Shuttle.  Otherwise, DIA is almost exactly like Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, and I do not mean this in a good way.  (P.S.  Got stuck there again on the return flight — Continental was overbooked — and read the new Lee Child novel, in which the train under the Denver airport features prominently.  Weird.)
• ELP – El Paso International Airport, El Paso, Texas. I changed planes there once, a Southwest flight from Austin, headed to Las Vegas. The flight from El Paso to Las Vegas was the week of the National Finals Rodeo. Lots of drunk cowboys on a small plane. I don’t recommend it. 
• EWR – Newark Liberty International Airport, Newark, New Jersey. My current home airport. Outgoing flights for business always suck, because I’m leaving my wife, but that means that incoming flights are always cool. Plus, there’s an IKEA close by.  
• FLL – Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I’ve been there just once. I had a grant conference in Miami, and for whatever reason, it was cheaper to fly into Fort Lauderdale and drive down I-95. All I remember was that the speaker was kind of a bitch. When we took a break, she went into the ladies’ room. She forgot to turn off her lapel mike. We heard everything. Nobody told her. 
• GNV – Gainesville Regional Airport, Gainesville, Florida. Easily the smallest airport I’ve ever been to. The airport is so small that people who are picking you up can practically meet you on the tarmac. I don’t know that you can fly anywhere but Atlanta from Gainesville. 
• GPT – Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, Gulfport, Mississippi. It’s a tiny little place, and you have to leave the gate area if you want hot food. I got stuck there once; Delta offered $200 for people to get off a crowded, overbooked flight, and I bit. Problem was, I almost missed the next plane because I was napping. Not incredibly convenient to the casinos (when they rebuild the casinos, that is); you’re almost better off flying into New Orleans. 
• HOU – William P. Hobby Airport, Houston, Texas. There’s nothing like getting on a plane in someplace cool — Dallas, even — and walking outside and standing in the stifling underground parking garage at Hobby Airport on a 100 degree day with 100% humidity. 
• HSV – Huntsville International Airport, Huntsville, Alabama. Their slogan is “More than just an airport.” Wrong. 
• IAD – Washington Dulles International Airport, Reston, Virginia. I dislike everything about Dulles, from its International Style architecture to its distance from DC proper to the mind-boggling lack of Metro service therein. But I really dislike the people-movers; those weird shuttles that take you from the concourse to the terminal, and that move ever-so-slowly. That, and every time I flew out of Dulles there was bad weather in Atlanta. But the Udvar-Hazy wing of the National Air and Space Museum is here, and that makes up for a lot. Still, there’s a reason why the Metroliner to DC is so popular. 
• IAH – George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, Texas. That always seemed so pretentious to me. “Intercontinental”. Please. The funny thing is that I never started flying out of IAH until recently; it’s the big Southern hub for Continental (which may explain the name, come to think of it). It’s not the best place in the world to change planes, although there is a Popeye’s Fried Chicken joint. 
• JAN – Jackson-Evers International Airport, Jackson, Mississippi. I don’t think anybody thought about it at the time, but changing the name of the Atlanta airport to “Hartsfield-Jackson” could have been awfully confusing for people going to Jackson, Mississippi. But they’re smart folks in Mississippi, so they changed the name of their airport to honor civil rights martyr Medgar Evers. Nice. And Jackson State University is a good place to do a training, too. 
• LAS – McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s no other airport in the world quite like McCarran, but remember one thing. They have the worst slot machine payout of anywhere in Vegas. 
• LBB – Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport, Lubbock, Texas. Preston Smith was a Texas governor who is most famous for his response to a demonstration, which wanted him to free a Black Panther leader locked up in Huntsville prison. “Free Lee Otis”, they chanted. “What do they have against frijoles?” Smith asked. That has nothing to do with anything, mind you, but the scariest flight I was ever on, turbulence-wise, was between Lubbock and Amarillo, when I was in high school coming back from a speech tournament. It’s a cool airport to fly into, though, if you come from the south and overfly Palo Duro Canyon. 
• LEX – Blue Grass Airport, Lexington, Kentucky. Right next door to the Keeneland Racetrack. The countryside around it is extremely pretty when seen from the air, endless green fields stretching everywhere. 
• LGA – La Guardia Airport, New York, New York. The longest nights in the world are the nights you spend at the airport. I was working for American Airlines — moonlighting from my real job — in 1997, and got an employee standby pass. I was able to fly up without any problems, but all the flights out of New York went out half-full because of noise restrictions, and I couldn’t get an American flight back to DFW until the next morning. Fortunately, it was a Sunday night, and I read the Sunday NYT cover to cover and slept on the flight back. 
• MAF – Midland International Airport, Midland/Odessa, Texas. You saw Friday Night Lights, right? The airport is right in between the big rivalry cities of Midland and Odessa. Odessa people call the airport “The Terminal”, because they don’t want to admit that it’s the Midland airport. One of the uglier airports in the country, but not so ugly as Odessa is just by itself. 
• MCI – Kansas City International Airport, Kansas City, Missouri. The Kansas City airport is well to the north of the city, and it’s not altogether easy to get there or get back. I say this to tell you that you never, ever, never want to drive anywhere with someone else in the car who cannot read a map, because you will get lost. 
• MCO – Orlando International Airport, Orlando, Florida. This is my most embarassing airport moment. I was meeting my fiancee there when I was still living in Atlanta; we took separate planes. I got there first. I got my bags, went to the rental car counter, found a car in the parking garage adjacent to the airport, and put my bags in the trunk of the rental car. Then I went back to the airport — leaving the rental car in the garage — found my fiancee, went to pick up her bags, and then went back to the garage to pick up the car. Only I couldn’t find the car. I looked everywhere — not realizing that Orlando has two identical parking garages with rental car parking, one on each side of the terminal. We had to walk all the way to the other side of the terminal to find the car. Not an auspicious start to the trip. 
• MDW – Midway International Airport, Chicago, Illinois. I was there only once, in 2000 this must have been. Functional but not pretty, even with one Wrigley-themed gate. The only thing I specifically remember was not being able to get a hot dog, or find an ATM machine. That, and they had stairs leading to the jetways, with lifts for wheelchair users. Not cool. 
• MEM – Memphis International Airport, Memphis, Tennessee. It’s the huge FedEx hub, of course. The last time I was here was on September 11, 2002. You could have swung a dead cat anywhere through the airport and wouldn’t have hit anything except the odd skycap. Nobody wanted to fly that day, but I had to, and the airport was a ghost town. 
• MFE – McAllen-Miller International Airport,McAllen, Texas. It seems weird, but security seemed a lot stricter here the one time I flew in, mostly because the Border Patrol was involved, and they looked like they meant business. The airport is right in the middle of a very commercial area, so you can stay right next door, or go to the Starbucks without paying airport prices. (This was originally posted as being the Harlingen airport.) 
• MIA – Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida. This is one of those airports where you have to know — absolutely have to know — what terminal you’re going out of, because there are like six of them. (DFW is the same way, but DFW is a little more spread out.) Still, I like Miami Airport, a whole awful lot – flew in there for our honeymoon, for one thing.  And you can get really good Cuban food.  Weird note: was in Terminal E coming back from Aruba, and someone had let in a little bird — not a pigeon, more like a wren. It was wandering around eating scraps.
• MSY – Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, New Orleans, Louisiana. Nice gift shops if you like pralines. The last time I flew out of New Orleans, I had been playing blackjack in Gulfport. I had to rush to the airport (which is actually in suburban Kenner, not New Orleans proper) and didn’t get to stop for lunch. The guy in the seat next to me had gotten a muffaleta sandwich from Central Market, and ate it there on the plane the whole way back to Birmingham. I could have choked him. 
• MOB – Mobile Regional Airport, Mobile, Alabama. I had a conference here, it must have been in ‘03. I had a morning speaking slot, and an early afternoon flight out. So I did my presentation, and was trying to leave as soon as I could so I could get ribs at the Dreamland barbecue joint. Except that somebody buttonholed me, and would not let me leave the hotel until I had explained something about the ADA to her that she didn’t get. Long story short, I didn’t get out of there in time to eat at Dreamland. (I’ve since eaten at the original Dreamland in Tuscaloosa and recommend it highly.) But I did get to eat at one of the few Whataburgers east of the Mississippi, so there’s that. I don’t remember anything about the airport except that I made my flight. 
• MYR – Myrtle Beach International Airport, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I didn’t fly in on Hooters Air, and I didn’t play golf or go to the beach (because I was there in December). What I did do, if I recall, is speak at a South Carolina educational conference and watch wild-card playoff games in my hotel room with a jar of salsa and a big bag of chips and some Vanilla Coke. Some trips you remember more than others. 
• ORD – O’Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois. I only changed planes twice here, so I don’t know anything. It seemed a lot like Hartsfield, but then most airports do — big food court, dinosaur bones, neon artwork.   No free wireless access, darn the luck.
• SDF – Louisville International Airport, Louisville, Kentucky. I know I’ve flown in here at least once. What I don’t remember is why, or what the airport looked like, or anything. It must have been some conference or other, but I can’t remember. I’m surprised I remember as much as I do about the other airports. 
• SNA – John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California. Remember the story about the Orlando airport? I had the same thing happen here, but with hotels — there are two different Hilton hotels at the Orange County Airport, one on each side. If you go to the wrong one, the staff will give you directions to the other one. So there you go. 
• PHL – Philadelphia International Airport, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It’s to the south of the city, off I-95. I know this, because I flew in there once to meet my fiancee. We were going to spend the night in Philly and go sightseeing. She’d lived in the Philly area for years after college, so she was driving because she knew the way around. We left the airport, and she got turned around and went south on I-95 for ten minutes until she realized we were going the wrong direction. I am probably not supposed to tell you this. 
• PHX – Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve only been there twice. The first time, I was changing planes on a Southwest flight; I remember that there were these very long, steep ramps that connected the different terminals. Years later, I was reading an Air Carrier Access Act case (Adiutori v. Sky Harbor Int’l. Airport , 880 F. Supp. 696 (D. Ariz. 1995), aff’d without opinion, 103 F.3d 137 (9th Cir. 1996).) where the plaintiff claimed that the airport discriminated against him when he was injured in boarding a shuttle between the terminals. I nodded my head knowingly, because the only way that plaintiff was going to get from one terminal to another was on a shuttle. Was there again in 2006, in the Continental part of the airport, which needs a major makeover. Almost terminally grotty. Lots of tacky Southwestern murals, and horrid brown carpet.
• RDU – Raleigh-Durham International Airport, Raleigh-Durham North Carolina. I about had a travel-related nervous breakdown here once; it’s detailed in this movie review of Punch-Drunk Love. The only other interesting thing about Raleigh-Durham is that they have a fairly interesting used bookstore that only has airport novels, and I suspect that their inventory is largely based on books left behind on planes. 
• STL – Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, St. Louis, Missouri. I was here once, on the longest flight of my life. It was one of those Southwest flights that just hopped between cities with long layovers. I didn’t have to change planes, but I probably should have. It was Chicago-St. Louis-Houston-Austin, and you wished you were dead when you landed. 
• SAT – San Antonio International Airport, San Antonio, Texas. I had a flight cancelled here one time. I was on the last plane out to Atlanta, and Delta cancelled it and put me up in a LaQuinta. I got on the next flight at six in the morning. I’d left a message for my boss on the office answering machine, and I called and left another message with her secretary when I landed. My boss didn’t get either message. I got to the office a little after ten, and my boss yelled at me because I hadn’t called and she thought I was dead or something. But I wasn’t.  Check out the mosaics if you don’t have anything better to do.  One of the better-looking airports now, almost up there with Austin.
• SAN – San Diego International Airport, San Diego, California. Nothing is better than flying into San Diego from the East Coast. The weather is nice, and you still have a few hours of sunshine left. On the other hand, not much is worse than flying from San Diego to the East Coast on a red-eye flight, especially if you’re like me and don’t sleep well on airplanes. 
• SEA – Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, Washington. I was here for a high school choir trip about twenty years ago, so I assume they’ve remodeled it since then. I can’t tell you a thing about it other than it is very cool to fly in right over Mount Rainier. 
• TLH – Tallahassee Regional Airport, Tallahassee, Florida. They have something at this airport they should have at all airports. It’s a big Lucite block that’s filled with contraband — knives, mostly — that airport security has confiscated from idiot passengers. Also, both Florida State and Florida A&M have nice little lounges in the airport, for reasons I don’t quite understand. 
• TPA – Tampa International Airport, Tampa, Florida. I flew in here for my last solo vacation before I met my fiancee. The thing about the Tampa airport is, unsurprisingly, that it is in Tampa. The only problem was that I was actually going to Clearwater, and you have to go over these long causeways that are the only way to get anywhere in Tampa, and it took bloody forever to make the drive. I ended up getting to my hotel after 10 pm, and Clearwater practically shuts down at 10 pm. I was lucky to get a sandwich. 
• YVR – Vancouver International Airport, Vancouver, British Columbia. Last but not least (and the only Canadian airport on the list). It’s a two-tier airport for international arrivals (only seen one other like it, in Aruba). If I remember right (or understand right), international passengers arrive and have to climb up to the top tier, which is a walkway leading past the rest of the airport that dumps you to Canadian customs. It is very strange to look down onto an airport terminal from above. Having said that, it’s just an airport, although one that serves Tim Horton’s donuts.