[DixieGal]

Yer all a bunch of sissies, boo hoo hoo. Well, welcome to the trenches - it ain't gonna get no better! I'm fixin' to tell you some airport HORROR stories that will turn your hair white!

In order from easiest to worst, but not inclusive of every airport I've been through nor of all my airport horror stories:

O'Hare - A long layover there is good. You can get Vienna Beef hotdogs, eat cheese popcorn from Pop of the Walk (What's the name of that popcorn place? I forgot.), go to the Chi Art Institute, or the Field Museum if you have a really long layover. At night or in blizzards, just stay in the terminal and eat hotdogs and popcorn. Make friends with your fellow stranded travelers - you have a hatred of airports in common already. Now for the horror part - my inlaws like to pick us up for a day or night out on the town. (terrified shiver)

Cincinnati - Nice, small, humble Cinci, right? Wrong. This airport is about the size of Bham's so you can stroll from terminal to terminal without being rushed. It is clean, well marked with signage, friendly terminal workers. A flyer's dream, right? A lot of people are using it to avoid ATL. HOWEVER, this is where old airplanes go to die. I remember getting off a heckish 10 hr connection from Paris, (more about CDG below) getting a snack and strolling along to my terminal with plenty of time to spare. We had come down from the rage we felt at CDG, so boarding was pleasant, no problems. Four hrs later, we were still sitting on the plane while the mechanics kept telling the flight crew that they couldn't keep the electricity going. (BTW, winter in Cinci claws its way inside a plane without electricity.) The long delay was because they had to request a spare plane from Indianpolis. So we all disembarked one plane and re-embarked another. Made it to Bham in less than an hr after that. Couldn't say the same for our bags. NOBODY'S bags had been transferred to the replacement plane. And after many calls to tell them to "just go look in the bottom of that broken down plane in the hangar," it took them 2 days to get around to looking for them.

Atlanta - Where does one begin to describe that 10th circle of heck? Baggage? Magically changing terminals numbers? Utter lack of any sort of readable signage? Baggage handling at ATL is carried out by a couple of goons with big muscles and bad attitudes. You pick up your bags, if they should happen to arrive with you, and ride the trains and travel the miles until you get to this warehouse-looking place, at the door to which the goons begin bellowing to you to run and bring them the bags. I was once physically threatened because I wanted to get something out of my bag. And I'm a GIRL, but they were gonna hit me! Terminal numbering is arbitrary there, and how the heck is one supposed to have the foreknowledge to know that Term C8, C9, and C11 are near each other (relatively speaking), but you gotta take a train and taxi and another plane just to get to C10 somewhere over in Boondocks, Georgia. Once, the ticket agent gave me a boarding pass to CDG but the connecting boarding pass left Heathrow. AND SHE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO FIX IT!!!! So we got to Paris with a 1 1/2 hrs layover, ran like blazes to the ticket agent, ran like blazes again and boarded the plane with the crew just as they wree shutting the doors. (More about CDG below) Another time, we got a parking ticket becuase Husband pulled up to the curb, was asking the security guard a question, and the other security guard came over and gave us a ticket WHILE the other one was talking to Husband. And when I backtalked him, he threatened to arrest me! OK, maybe I called him a nasty name, but can you blame me? Somehow, I always get hurt or threatened when I'm at ATL. Had a girl pushing one of those suitcase buggies slam into the side of my leg and break the bone. ATL is a very violent place.

Charles De Gualle - While ATL is the devil's connection in the US, CDG is his main hub. After what I assume had to be a long search for the only ugly location in all of France to plunk this sprawling monstrosity down, they pursued the art of confusion with single-minded devilish devotion. Riddle me this: One boards a plane through a tunnel thingy, right? But one can not ever never ever disembark through one. Every flight into CDG ends up with you on the tarmac in a shuttle bus - if you are lucky. Sometimes if there are only a few dozen of you, then you wait in the glass booth for a plane to land and release enough prisoners to make it worth the airports while to send a shuttle. Don't bother trying to find your own way, becuase they don't allow you to walk around outside the terminal. I have had two especially horrifying experiences at CDG: One was just very inconvenient, the other was life-threatening. The most inconvenient experience I ever had at CDG was when my flight to Rome had to connect with there. We all shuffled off that long transatlantic flight with stiff backs and swollen ankles, all 800 of us. Now, one quickly learns that at CDG, one will face a line from farther back than one can see the booth to present passports. This time, we got there just in time for the passport takers to go on strike. During the course of the next 3 hrs, another plane landed with another 800 passengers. We all stood there in a room waaaay too small for 1600 people for 3 hrs, at which time the strike ended and the booth drones returned to work. We only missed a total of 5 planes that day. However, back in 2004, I think, Terminal 2 or 3 (the new one) was newly opened for business. All glass and steel, sexy curved walls, really great. This was our first time thru the new terminal and we both remarked on how badly you could feel the floor shaking under the feet of all those disembarking passengers. About 2 hrs later, it fell off the airport. Several people were injured and killed. Let me repeat: THE TERMINAL FELL OFF FROM THE REST OF THE TERMINAL. We were still waiting for our flight at the time, which of course, was re-terminaled, which meant another blazing run through CDG. Luckily the floors sort of bounce under your steps, so you can run really fast. I wonder when those will also fall off the terminal? But I'm not alone in my hatred for CDG. I'm attaching an article from the latest VacationsToGo newsletter.

You ain't had a bad flight until you travel Air France.